Earl Stewart on Cars - 10.16.2021 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Mike Maroone Chevrolet

Episode Date: October 16, 2021

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning visits a local Chevrolet dealer in West Palm Beach to see what kind of a deal they will make on a new 2022 Chevy Trailblazer from their limited inventory. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. Sign up to become one of Earl's Vigilantes and help others in your community to avoid getting ripped off by a car dealer. Go to www.earlsvigilantes.com for more information. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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

Back live. And, boy, are we covering a whole bunch of countries. I'll tell you about that in a little while. But Jonathan just found out that we are truly international in our reality. speech. Welcome to Earl Stewart on Cars. You heard the recorded introduction. Well, let me make one correction here. One of the main backbones of this show is Rick Kearney and Rick is taking a well-deserved vacation. And Rick is our certified diagnostic master technician that answers most of the, you know,

complicated or sometimes not so complicated questions about maintaining, repairing your car and issues you may have with your car. So we're going to have to kind of fill in that very, very important space with whatever tools we have available to us. We have Nancy Stewart and Stu Stewart and me. We also have access to Colonel Google, we call on the internet. And we've got some folks on standby that we can text and possibly call to answer your questions on mechanics and issues and actually the computerization of cars. So keep your questions coming. If we don't know the answer, we'll be honest with you.

We don't know that. We'll ask Rick when they gets packed. But Rick Kearney is on vacation this week, and we'll just have to play it by ear on your highly technical computerized car questions. We could make it up as we go along. Oh, we can lie to you. We might do that.

You never know. At any rate, thank you for tuning again, and we're going to be on the air here from 8 to 10 Eastern Standard Time. We're here every Saturday, and we would love to hear from you. That's especially with Rick out of town, we need to hear from you and your comments and constructive or otherwise criticisms. I'm going to start with our most popular source of contact, and it's unusual. I mean, of course, we have not. Let me start with the telephone, because that certainly is most important. 877-960-9960.

You'll hear that number repeated by all of us because, you know, it shows two hours. The average listener comes in for 15 minutes and goes somewhere else. We have our lives to live and you're busy, we're busy, everybody's busy so we know very few people sit here for two hours listening to us. We love it when you do. I mean, we do have a few

devoted people that listen for longer periods of time, but tune in, tune out, that's usually the name of the game. And if you happen to tune in or you're going to tune in later or think about it later, our telephone number is 877-960-9960. So forgive us for saying that over and over again, but it's important.

877-9-60-90-960. Now we prioritize that number, the dial-in number, because we have other sources I'm going to get into just a minute, because we have like five lines coming in. Sometimes, depending on things, conditions, technical and otherwise, if you call in and all the lines are busy, you'll get a busy signal. We hate it when that happens. So we try to grab the call so you don't have to listen to a business signal or maybe no one answering the phone.

So as soon as we see that light up on Nancy, Nancy Stewart, or my co-host here on her computer, when she sees a telephone call come in at 877-960-99-60, we jump on it. Now, the other ways to reach us, I mean, there's a bunch, text. Text are important because we build a backlog of these. If we don't get to it right away, we will get to it before the show's over. And that text number is 772-497-6530. Again, that text number, 772, area code, 497-6530. Now, I was going to start with this because it's unique.

It's an anonymous way to communicate with us. We don't know who you are, where you are. We can't find you even if we wanted to. Anonymity, that's a good thing. Privacy. People like that. It's an N-word. There's too much invasion of privacy a lot of people feel today,

and I certainly understand that. So if you have an issue with your privacy or just treasure your privacy, you go to your anonymous feedback dot com. Y-O-U-R-A-N-Y-M-O-U-S feedback, Your Anonymous Feedback.com. And that's a website. And you go there and you put your issue, comment, question in, and Stu will be monitoring that. And when it comes up, we'll read it, I'll answer it, discuss it, and we don't know who you are. And it makes a lot of people feel more

comfortable. Now remember we also are on YouTube. We are on Twitter. We're on Facebook. Facebook.com forward slash hurl on cars. YouTube.com forward slash hurl on cars. Typically Rick monitors YouTube but Stu's going to be real busy today monitoring a whole bunch of stuff hopefully because it's your input that it makes a show. A lot of regular callers, please, please call all our regulars out there. You know who you are. Some of you are vigilantes, and Nancy Stewart will cover the vigilante club. We have a very special club that we recruit people that are knowledgeable to help us on the show.

And there's a gift that we will provide for you if you are qualified to join the vigilante club. Now remember, everything I said on the show, everything Nancy and Stu and usually Rick, it's all on earluncars.com. I mean, we have a wealth of information on our website, our blog, website, earlancars.com, everything you ever wanted to know. Every column I've written, we've got educational articles, information on joining the vigilante club, a list of the good dealer, car dealers that you can safely buy a car from

and the ones you want to avoid like the plague. I mean, go to earluncars.com and you can turn off the radio or turn off YouTube. You don't need to listen to me. Everything you want to know. But this is kind of fun.

And if you don't enjoy this show, we love it. So you're... Let the party begin. We're getting ready. We're getting ready to start the Earl Sturban Cars party. And I'm going to start the party with Nancy Stewart, my co-host, and she's been with me since the get-go when

we were just a little half-hour show many, many years ago. Nancy, the mic is all yours. Good morning, everyone, and welcome. We enjoy your company, and I'd like to share with the audience this morning that we have a new producer in the studio, and she's going to be the first female producer and we'll be working with her and it's pretty exciting considering that she is the first

producer and I'm happy that's why I'm speechless so empowering empowering women and that's what we do here what's her name? Also Elise Roberts

Denise Elise E as in Edward E Elise Elise Roberts. And she's a great asset to the show, and we're looking forward to working with her. I have an important announcement, speaking of women. The first two new lady callers, you win yourself, $50. $50, the first two new lady callers. And give us a call and share your experience with us, whether it be servicing, leasing, sales, anything at all. Just call to say hello.

877-960. For you others, you can take in Texas at 772-497-60. Also, we have a great mystery shopping report, and we have some other breaking news, and that is in reference to the podcast listeners. And what I have here is a printout of all of the countries that we're reaching and that's all around the world

so we have a wide reach of shows via podcast and some of the interesting places that we show up in our let's see we got United Kingdom, Australia the Russian Federation we also have Brazil and Germany so those are some Argentina, Tunisia, just to mention a few.

So it's pretty interesting. I think it's just about every country. 50 countries, I counted. Yes, yes, absolutely. And we're really happy to share that with you. And Jonathan shared it with us, and you know him. He's our, well, irreplaceable guy. So, ladies and gentlemen, we have an exciting show ahead of us.

Don't leave us. Stay with us. and whichever segment is your favorite because I know a lot of our listeners tune in in Tune-out. So again, 877-960-99-60 or you can text us at 772-497-6530. Don't forget your anonymous feedback.com

where you can go and express your opinion about anything. And now I'm going to turn it back over to the recovering car dealer. Well, let's go to Stu because he is a very important bar of the show also. He's the hands-on day-to-day guy. He's active in the industry today, and boy, are we going through some crazy changes the way this COVID has impacted the whole world, and especially the automotive world, and a lot of issues that manufacturers and dealers are dealing with, which affect you.

And he sees it every day because he is in a real live car dealership. running that car dealership and talking to everybody, the customers, the employees, and trying to deal with the factory and the manufactured issues. And if you have any questions that are live real-time, you direct him to Stu Stewart. He's also monitoring your input when you come in on the texting and the anonymous feedback, YouTube, and the Facebook. Not to mention that, but he's Commodore of the Mr. Shopping. report and he chooses the targets and dispatches the secret agent and that is arguably the most

interesting thing on radio. I mean, I got to tell you, it's Mike Wallace in 60 minutes and then some because we name name. So Stu, what's going on over there? I guess if you live long enough, you can say that you've seen it all. I just cannot believe the times that we're living in right now. I really thought I had seen it all in the car business. I mean, we've been through the Great Recession and tsunamis and recall crises and I know I'm forgetting quite a bit. Because I just put them all together for you, for your book, all the various crises over the last couple of decades where the media had reached out to you and you wanted to be on CNN or Fox News or something. And let me just jump in there quickly and brag. I didn't even tell you this too, but I got an email from my ghostwriter.

and Ron Van Zell and John Van Zell. And I have the rough outline of the book already. And I haven't had a chance to look at it. So, yeah, I'm writing a new book, Redemption of a Recovery Guard Dealer. And I've reached the point of the first rough outline. We still got months to go on this. But I thought it might be years. So one of the cool things that's going on, well, first of all, the book, you've got to send that to me.

Do you have the outline in your email? Well, I just got it. I'll send it to you. Oh, cool. I can't wait to see that. So the second book, if we're going to take a little tangent here, is going to kind of take where you left off with the first book, but it's going into a lot more detail. I mean, where the first book was more of like a how-to guide, this is kind of like the why behind the how-to.

Yeah, the redemption. Exactly. The, you know, the backstory. Everybody's got a great backstory to Earl. He's got a really, really good backstory. Anyway, so we think it'll be published in 2022 sometimes. Yeah, but we're not sure. on the exact date. For sure.

But in that book is going to include a lot of things in the last, you wrote the Confessions in 2012, so we've had about a decade to add material to add. So I know I'm hyping the book a lot, but, you know, it's not going to profit you.

It's going to be for charity, I'm assuming. It's all going to Big Dog Grants Rescue. That's right. Oof! That was for Rick. Sorry. Yeah, the stuff that's going on right now

in the car business is blowing my mind. I just, I just, I can't, when I'm writing about it, every mystery shopper report, seeing the same story, watching how it's actually changed real behaviors on the ground. It just blows me away. Here's something really interesting. We're kind of at our dealership where we're remaking our sales process.

We're refining it, making more modern. And I'm using our wealth of information from our mystery shopping reports to get the point of view of the customer. And one of the things that we did was when we did this process, instead of writing up this corporate process, we wrote it from the customer's point of view, what they see, what the experience when they walk into a dealership, what happens, how long they're waiting. And it was funny as we're writing this process, I realize I'm drawing from all these mystery shopping, every single thing that's gone wrong to Agent Lightning. We're searching to find a way to avoid that at our dealership.

So that's what the mystery shopping reports are essentially for. If other car dealers would get out there and pay attention to them, they could study these things. And I promise if you study these mystery shopping reports and what goes wrong, you'll figure out how to make things right. So we're hoping they're paying attention, I don't know. You know, again, talk about the mystery shopping reports. One of the questions

my ghostwriter asked me is, we're talking about mystery shopping reports. He says, he says, what was the most unusual, the worst, the best, whatever, mystery shopping reports, you can remain, remember. And I said, I laugh.

I said, you know, the funny thing is, I say on the show every week and I think our listeners must think I'm nuts because I usually say this mystery shopping report we do this week is really unusual and but I mean it and and this mystery shopping reports too you'll agree I think it blew you away, blue me away blew Nancy away and what we're saying I think is change I mean that's what we're looking for and some good some bad but the times they're changing the car dealers are changing and hopefully this show has had some

impact on it but Mike back to you still. All right. So I'll jump over to the first text of the day unless we got a I think there's a signal coming over there. We do. We have a live one? We do. We definitely do. And you know what ladies and gentlemen to what

Stu said just minutes ago it's amazing. We sit here and we think about these decades. We think about the journey and what we've done and the proof is in the mystery shopping reports and there are the dealers out there that are changing their ways and some that are well getting worse at what they do if that's possible worse meaning they're taking advantage of the consumer so i sit here today and speak for everyone else how proud we are that our listeners are really listening and they're out there and they're making changes

and they're letting their voice be heard by being in control in the showroom, on the phone anywhere. Okay, 561, excuse me, I was getting ready to give out my cell phone number. I was looking at Earl's column, and if you didn't catch it this past week, you can do so by going to Earl on Cars. You can also go to Hometown News or the Florida Weekly, and it's also a very good read. what's great about going to Earl on cars that you can pull this up and so many other, as Earl said earlier, that just fill you with so much knowledge and we're pretty proud of that

too. He's quite a leader. Okay, we're going to go to Claymore and say good morning. Claymore. Good morning. Good morning. I have a question for Rick. I have a Honda, two-door, four-cylinder that died in a small flood behind a door, behind a store, and the people I told it to tell me I need a new engine. I'm wondering if stuff just shorted out, and what would be the process to check out whether I need a new engine or something less severe? Let me jump in for Rick, and if you just tuned in, Rick is on vacation this week, so we're going to have to kind of fake it a little bit.

I'm going to give you my advice, and meanwhile, Stu's probably frantically trying to contact one of our other technicians that can give us some specifics. But when you have a situation like that with a flooded car, Honda, or whatever it may be, you probably have one of the most complicated challenges for any mechanic anywhere. Water, there's nothing worse than a car being immersed in water, because you never know what is going to be happening to the car today, tomorrow, and six months from now. That's the reason they total flood cars, and my first thing would be to do everything you could to get your insurance company to declare your car a total and replace it. That would be the best and the first approach I would take. have issues with that and it can't be done and you need to look into repairs, be advised that no matter what they find wrong with the car now, you might have issues that they can't find because they don't manifest themselves for six months or maybe a year later.

So I would get my best mechanic to take a look at it. If it looked like something that was reasonable in terms of cost, you might want to proceed. I would go with another opinion if the amount to spend was more than a small amount. Probably will be bigger. You don't want to put good money after bed, especially into a flood car. And you have to be aware that if you do get it running and if it runs smoothly, you might want to consider trading it in anyway. If you get it running smoothly,

now you have to make a decision here. Do you want to become full disclosure until everybody, this car was a flood car and I got it fixed and it's running smooth now, or do you want to be like most people and most car dealers, take it into a car dealer and buy or beware and say, I'd like to trade this in on another car

and let him worry about whether or not it's been in a flood. Let your conscience guide you on that. that, but that would probably be the wise choice. I would never take a car that had been immersed in water, flooded, and drive it any longer than I had to. I'd want to put myself in another car, ASAP. So excuse the long, rambling answer, and does anything I say make any sense?

It does to me. Definitely. Hey, Klamour, this is Nancy Stewart. Have you had the car checked out at all? Yeah, by maybe a mechanic or a friend or anyone? Yeah, I had it checked out at one car mechanic stuff, but they have a dodgy type of reputation. The car was only in water for about an hour, maybe two at the most, while it was being weighed to be towed, you know, back home. So I'm wondering if it could be a starter or a sillinois thing on the starter or the module,

or whatever. I think they told me the ride was spent trying to start it. I don't know how you can do that. Yeah, water can destroy anything. So that's one of the problems. Flood cars, that's the reason insurance companies are pretty frugal, and they don't want to part with their money. But insurance companies don't even argue

when you can document a car's been underwater. And you say only an hour, how would you feel if you were underwater for an hour? That's a good example. That's where I was going. A car underwater for an hour is a dead car. It's just a question of when is going to die. And I would certainly replay what I said earlier about getting rid of the car

and the most expeditious, profitable way to you and getting into another car. In Claymore, you've got a laundry list of things to check as far as that car is concerned. Because, like I said, it doesn't matter whether it's a minute or it's an hour. Put a baby in a bathtub and you'll see what I mean. And the outcome is disastrous. So for you to make sure that all the moisture's out of your car, for the electrical components to be checked, the transmission, I could go on and on. I think that I, myself, if I were driving the car, I'd want to, well, get rid of it as quickly as I could. one last question

what is a car worth after that the inside just still great okay that means the seats etc well as I said if you can get the car running so normally and it can you know this happens a lot

and you do a good deodorizing on it make everything dry you're basically doing what dealers do to a lot of customers is you're preparing the cars so that people don't know it's been on a flood. Now, depending on the way you look at life and morals and ethics and whatever you want to look at, I'm talking,

I'm saying that it's a doggy dog world out there. If you go into a lot of car dealerships, they'll sell you a flood car in a heartbeat, and they won't lose any sleep over it. So if you want to go into a car dealer and have them appraise your car, you might not want to say this car has been in a flood to say I want to buy that car and here's my car what's at worth

and go to three different dealers and go to the car the dealer that gives you the most for your trade end Stu had a point. I have a question that came in from Mark who's one of our listeners and he wants to know and this is important when it was driven into water was the engine hot had it been running?

Yes. Okay. This is Mark he's a former he's a listener but he's also a former works in a body shop and very well mechanically versed. If the engine was high, he says he believes there's no doubt you're going to need a new engine. It's kind of like when you take a hot frying pan and you put it in the water, it can bend

when it suddenly cools something so you can do a lot of damage to the engine? So your challenge is, can you get it running enough so you can take it in and get a good trading allowance on another vehicle? If you can't, then you're going to have to just say, I got a bad car here, and then it's probably going to come out if they look close enough, this is a flood car,

and then your car will be worthless. Your first, all, you didn't mention anything about insurance. Is your car insured covered by Allstate State Farm or anybody? It was covered, but just for liability. I say, okay. Well, then you're going to have to get it running as much as possible, get it detailed. I'd spend, if I had to spend $150 to get the car detailed,

once you get it running and you spend some money to get a really good detail inside and out it'll smell good it'll look good take it to a dealer they're paying top money for cars today you catch a dealer asleep he'll give you too much money for the car grab it and run you might want to sell the car and wait until use car prices come down and then buy another one if you can get by without a car for a while but you got a problem I don't want to explain it when I get to the big table in the sky. Yeah, don't know. There you go. Don't explain it. So here. No, no, do the right thing.

Do the right thing. And Claymore, Nancy, here again. I'd also check for myself under the hood and check for any corrosion or anything. Whenever you're prepping that car for a sale, you know, I'd dot all the eyes and cross the teas

because there's things that they look for when you take a car out to get some sort of an idea as to what it's worth and just like girls said you know really polish her up take care of it and be prepared to negotiate because the Honda what a great competition for us what a great vehicle and i'm not sure what your you know car is but uh you're sitting on a gold mine at this time because of the pandemic and microchip shortage and inventory shortage that used car that's worth a lot of money much more than you would thank you very much

thank you I will consider well good luck call us back let us know how it worked out for you will you please yes I will thanks Claymore all right

877 960 9960 or you can text us at 772 4976530 and as I said earlier www www your anonymous Feedback.com. Take advantage of that. Ladies, I'm waiting. Two female new lady callers.

$50 for the first two lady callers. Just to call and say hello. I'm going to send it back to Earl. And I'll send it back to Steele. All right. I'm sending over to Jonathan. That's a guy. Hey, we'll kick off with the text. Let's send it to Elise. We're going to kick it off with the Anne-Marie's text. Good morning. I've noticed car ads from local car dealers popping up on my computer when I'm playing games or surfing the web. Some are from dealers whose sites I have perused out of curiosity, but others are not. By the way, I delete cookies after each surfing session to hopefully cut down on the ads that track me. How does a car dealer focus in on a potential

customer by using ads on the web? Thanks. That's a great question and is right in my wheelhouse of expertise. So I do this every day. That's what we do. Yeah. And it's really cool. But first of all, I'm not going to make any editorial, but... That's cool if you're a car dealer. Yeah, but the whole concept of how it works, and I think you take this advice or leave it. I don't delete my cookies, and I allow tracking, because what I've discovered is no matter what, when you're on your phone or you're surfing the web, you're going to see a lot of ads. They're going to send ads to you, no matter what.

And for a while, I was deleting cookies and avoiding tracking and trying to be... be anonymous. Tell us folks what a cookie is. A cookie is a little chocolate chip. I like those best. They're delicious. Usually it's flour and baking soda and no. A cookie is a small little bit of computer code that when you visit a website, your browser, which is your program that you use a look at websites, it'll insert a little snippet of code into your

in your browser. So then you're recognizable by other websites. And it can tell other websites the prior websites that you are at. So if you're shopping for cars, you're going to little cookies put into your browser that says this person was on this website, toota.com, or René Shevelet. Let me jump in. This shows you

why, how deceptive the whole advertising world is. Somebody came up and said, you know, we need to have more privacy. We need to give the surfers of the internet more rights and they said the law is you have to put this disclosure anytime anyone's looking at the website or the Facebook or whatever

it says cookies are going to appear unless you put remove all the cookies now nobody knows what the hell a cookie is so they're giving this disclosure to protect them from something that they don't define and studious defined it And if they defined it and told people what was really happening, that your footprint is being left by your IPL code on your unique computer, and this can follow you anytime you use that device, smartphone, PC, whatever it may be, that would scare the hell out of most people. But a cookie, yeah, I don't care. Cookies are nice. Well, you kind of interrupt and derailed what I was saying because I was saying the opposite. And I think you agree with me, which is, who cares about cookies?

If you don't, you're going to get ads no matter what. The FBI is not tracking you, and the NSA is not tracking you. Earl Stewart is tracking you. And so, and he's a good guy. But he's not really tracking you. All that means is if you don't let yourself get tracked, you're going to see a bunch of ads that are completely boring and meaningless to you. If you are tracked, you're going to see ads on things that you're interested in.

Well, I interject this, and then we'll get on with the point to the customer, is that if you do not take the cookies, you will not get the ads that are of interest to you, true, but you're also going to get those ads. So if you add the edge you want to get to the edge you don't want to get, you're getting twice as many ads.

Okay, let's move along and answer the customer's question. Well, I'm going to answer Amory's text. So there's many different ways that you are tracked. Some are and we've just been, we just beat cookies to death. That's just one way. There are behavioral targeting

which basically, also does, does use cookies, but it puts together a profile of view of where you are in your shopping headspace. Are you just researching new cars or your refrigerators? Or are you in the process of looking for a deal and contacting retailers? And that determines the type of ad that you get and where you see it. There's demographic advertising. So if you're on certain websites that are typically browsed by people of your age or ethnicity or socioeconomic status or things you own, where you live. There's geographic targeting this

that advertisers want to say we're going to show ads only when you're within five miles of Treasure Coast Toyota. I wonder who's doing that. And there's a whole bunch of different ways. They know how much money they make, they know where you live,

they know what church you go to, they know who your friends are. This is probably well, okay. The type of friends are with. Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm not saying, okay.

And so the point is that there's never been, with artificial intelligence and quantum computing, there's never been a time in our history when you have any privacy whatsoever. So they're coming after you, and there's nothing you can do about it. I say relax and enjoy the ride and delete it and move on with your life.

But, yeah, advertising is super, super, sophisticated day. And the alternative to this is regulation, government regulation, which tells all the advertisers they can't do this anymore. And that's going to be a huge battle. And we could write a book on that answer, but we've got better cut it short. Yeah. And when I cut out my tracking, I started getting served up ads for tactical knives and cattle feed and very boring things to me. I'd prefer to get

ads on puppies and sourdough. exactly all right I'm going to take a stab here at a mechanical one so we have a text here and this is from Sean in Ohio he says my car's stalled a couple of times recently unfortunately on a side street with no traffic I think it might be an issue with the fuel filter being clogged and I think a light for the fuel filter came on too what do you think I especially asked him what your make and model it was so it's a 2019 Volkswagen Jetta and a exit Bobby back at the dealership. So Bobby thinks, well, most, he says most fuel filters are

built into the fuel pump now. But there could be several other conditions that cause it. It could be a crank or a cam sensor that's faulty. But here's the good news. Unless you've gone a ton of miles, you're probably, your 2019, you're under warranty. You need to get that to a Volkswagen dealer, and they can hook that up to a scan tool. And the code that will tell them whether it is a fuel pump filter or whether it is a crank. crank or a cam case sensor. But the best thing to do, typically it's a couple hundred dollar repair, but you're under warranty, most likely, unless you have really high miles shone.

So I hope that helps. See, that was pretty good. I have zero mechanical experience. Yeah, and for people that don't have mechanical knowledge and people that are trying to fend for themselves, and Rick, when he's here, recommends this all the time, is go to a chat room, go to a, you know, Volkswagen jet room, go to a, you can just Google, your bank model of your car, and what the problem is, and it'll steer you to one of those chat rooms. And people love their cars, and they talk about it, and a lot of knowledgeable

people talk about the cars. They even rank the answers in terms of the best answers. So if you go to a chat room and you've got a Volkswagen Jedi and you've got a particular issue, you'd be surprised the knowledge that will be free to you, and then you can ask questions, and they'll answer your questions. So there's never been a time. in our history that you can get answers to questions about problems with your cars even without calling your own cars you can do it online and we also have a couple of comments on the on the it was a Claymore's question Negan on YouTube says wanted to but Claymore's off the line if water was sucked into the

engine because water doesn't compress and that that'll make that just messes up everything when that when the engine tries to compress and see do we have any other text over here from no that was it from Negan we can go back to our main text here and let's see oh we do have this Jonathan I don't know if you can put it up on the screen am I catching it at too late of a notice we have one of our vigilantes sends a picture of his new vanity plate that he actually has on his car there oh it's zero dealer fee I love it wow I thought that might upset you because I thought you wanted to get that plate for your new car.

Oh man, if I don't know, you beat me through it. How much will you take for that plate? I don't know. Tom, you hear that? Make him an offer. Or he'll make you an offer. Did you get that on the screen? That's really cool.

Hey, Nancy. Okay. We're going to go back to the phones. We're our favorite caller. Marty is holding. Good morning, Marty. Good morning, everybody. Welcome.

I've got to ask, I guess, either Earl or Stu. Normally, when I buy a car, at first I go on Kelly Blue Book to see what my trade in is worth. And then, if I go to one of these, we buy your car type places, I've always gotten more from my car from a dealer than I've ever gotten from we buy any car or any of those places. so it just so happens and I just don't feel it's luck because I try to negotiate with them but people also don't realize when you go to we buy any car

obviously if you're not trading in a car it doesn't make any difference but you're losing the sales tax if you're not doing a trade that's correct so but I just wonder Kelly Blue Book usually always shows me a higher value

then these we buy any car type places. So what do you think? Well, Kelly Blue Book isn't writing any checks to anybody. So that's just a guide. So, you know, what's the phrase? You know, you put your money where the mouth is or where the rubber meets the road. Getting any appraisal or any valuation of any car,

whether you're getting from a dealership or a we buy any car. is a subjective experience and each appraiser has different motivation. Kelly Blue Book uses different sources and it's, I feel that's a more reliable guide, but any particular dealership, depending on their individual situation, is going to make a decision on how much they're going to put on that car based on what kind of profit they want to make. Are they losing money? Are they having, are they, is there a department in crisis?

Are they trying to like save themselves? are they taking advantage of the current inventory situation in a fair manner, or are they price gouging? Let me jump in there. We have a management meeting at the dealership every Wednesday, and we have a wholesale guy that's been with us for a long, long time. His name's Ted Caboos, probably the most knowledgeable man on the wholesale I've ever known since I've been in the business. He's like a Rick Kearney of wholesale cars. It spends a lot of time. That's almost all of his time at auctions, buying and sell.

selling used cars. And I asked him the very question you just, you raised, Marty, and I said, what would you do if you were looking to get the most money for your trading, your car? I said, where were we, how would you try to sell that car? I said, I, we do the radio show. I'd like to use your, your answer on the radio show. He says, I go to we buy any car.com, or I'd go to Varum, or I'd go to Carvana. He says, they are buying, they are buying, they, they're They are paying crazy money for cars. So we actually at our dealership will sometimes call Carvana or We Buy Any Car.com to be sure we're giving a fair amount of trade in and sometimes we'll sell a car to We Buy Anycar.com

or Carvana if we could to make a deal or to get more money for the car. So, these car, like when we buy any car.com, has a huge amount of cash. They went public. If you're in the stock market, you'll know what I'm talking about, an IPO. And they raise billions, literally billions of dollars. And they can spend money for years and not make a profit. And they do spend money like the old term drunken sailors. So definitely, if you have a used car that you want to trade.

inner cell. Before you go to a dealer, check all the different sources. There never have been more sources like this. I can't even name them or remember them all, but we buy any car.com, the room, V-A-R-O-O-M.com. CarMax has been around forever. You get to a number from Carbax. Carvana. Carvana, yeah. And there's There's others. They're coming online all the time because it's such a lucrative business in today's crazy market. So, Marty, shop it around.

The dealer will not give you that much money. If you do your due diligence and go to enough third-party sources like Carvana, you will get more money for your car, I promise you. Yeah. Now, I'm just posing this is just a hypothetical question because I'm not getting rid of my car. However, in my car buying experience, which obviously is not as vast as yours, I've always gotten more from the dealer than any other source. Well, Marty, that's a dangerous statement to make because you're a negotiator, you're knowledgeable in the business, and you're a tough guy to put one over on. But a dealer can offer you anything you want for the car.

And to the person that's not as sharp as you, you can go into the dealer, and if you say, listen, I'm going to buy a car from the deal that gives me the most for my car. I can show you a million for your car. He'll give you as much money as you want, and then you'll slap it on to the price of the car you're buying. So the dealer, the only way you can get a good number from the dealer on your trade end is to take your trade in to two or three other dealers and take the new car or whatever car you're buying out of the equation and just say, dealer, A, B, C, and D, how much money will you buy my car for? Take it out of the purchase equation, and then when they give you that number,

then negotiate a separate price for the car you want to buy. But to say, blank, I get more money from a dealer than anyplace else is a dangerous thing to put out there on the air. People will take you literally. Yeah, well, I'll just tell you this. In my experience, which is obviously limited, I first discussed the discount on the car. Okay? So now, not in today's market where they're not discounting. I'm not going to buy a car in today's market. But in the old days, which is a few years ago, I first see what the car, what they're willing to discount it for. And then I talk. I'm not going to buy a car. I'm not going to buy a car, but in the old days, which is a few years ago, I first see what they're willing to discount it for. And then I talk. And then I talk trade. So I do do what you're saying. I don't take, you know, a number that they're just going to give me and take it off the MSRP. So I do do it in a few steps. As I said, I do try to negotiate a good deal. Well, I don't worry about you. I know you're never going to be taking advantage of, but for the average listener who is not as smooth, you need to, the dealers

are trained to find your hot button. They call that the four-square system. That's one of the names for it. And everybody's got a hot button when they go into buy a car. Some people want the best price on the new car. Some people want the highest trading allowance. Some people want the lowest monthly payment. Some people want the lowest down payment.

You might have a hot button, but once you tell them what that hot button is, you're dead meat, because that's where they're going. And you need to have all four of those in the equation. You need to get a down payment that's fair, a monthly payment that's fair, a price that you pay that's fair, and a trade-in allowance. So you need to shop and compare competitively all four of the supposed hot buttons, because one might be your hot button, but they're all important. yeah

well I can tell you this a few of your salesmen that I've dealt with before they know me so when I come in there they run they try to you take this guy Marty

I know him he's a tough nut I'm out of here yeah or a lot of them say even when I go into your finance guy I said I'm going to save you

all the trouble oh man we're not going to make any money here now Just say no, no, no, no, no, and just sign. Well, they said, Earl said we have to ask you these. I said, well, you can ask, but I said, I'm not buying anything. So I'm a tough, let's put it this way. I realize I'm not your average buyer.

Well, everybody was like you, we wouldn't have a radio show, Marty. You realize that? So we're glad we got a vigilante out there and someone that we can point people to advice. You want to help you. You want to call Marty. And if you live in the South Florida area, he's the man to talk to. Yeah.

All right. Well, thanks. I just wanted to just, again, check on Kelly Blue Book. And, you know, you're not the first. Everyone that I've gone to when I say Kelly Blue Book gives me this number, they say, well, they don't buy cars. Yeah. Yeah.

So, you know, I've heard all the stories. Yeah. It all depends how long the salesman's been working. Exactly. Hey Marty, you certainly did educate us this morning and we appreciate, you know, your phone call and even the most seasoned, educated consumer. I'll tell you what, in this climate that we're in right now, all the rules have changed. So I'm very happy that you are, you know, the leader of the PACs, so to speak, and appreciate your phone call. Yeah, well, my car now is a 20, Camry, so I'm not buying a new one for a while. It is a 20, 20? Yeah, yeah. Well, you've got a great product.

So right now I've only had it for about 19 months. Yeah. Get it in and break it in. Three or four years, yeah. The trouble is now you don't have any car, you don't have that same car unless I would order it probably. Yeah, bingo. So I'm going to pay more to order it than it's going to be, you know, I'm going to pay more to get a new one, even though you're going to give me more for, for,

that car so yeah wash it depends on what's just what your situation is that sounds like as if that

you may be able to you know wait some time Marty we have another caller calling in so have a

wonderful weekend stay in touch with us you too okay bye bye bye we're gonna go back to Stu

okay I'm looking for Rick's YouTube sign okay I'm monitoring we haven't getting any

did we have a caller we don't okay we have an anonymous feedback over here. It says regarding your video on service fees. A dealer I used to go to used to list the items included in their hourly charge, shop towels, sealers, etc. The sign is down now and a fee is just added on. But you know, you got to give them credit. If they really wanted to include everything was in that fee, that's pretty interesting. I know that in South

Carolina there was a law passed with the dealer fees several years ago that allows the dealers to continue to charge the dealer fee, but they have to justify it. So they have to say, if you have a $700 dealer fee, they have to calculate the amount of hourly wages they pay to the office staff and the cost of the paper and the paper clips and the gas to shuttle things to the DMV, and that goes into their processing. And what about your BS? It's totally a mean. It doesn't mean a damn thing. You could add, you could add your phone bill. Here's my phone bill. My phone bill last month was $2,300. So I'm going to divide it. up in a number of cards.

This is your piece of my phone bill. And this is my salesman's commission. And this is what I pay, Stu. And this is what, I mean. They had $10 for the title clerk's breakfast. Yeah, that's true. It's all BS, but that's pretty funny. Oh, here's another anonymous CBEX.

At what point will you remove your masks for the show? I know when. There you go. He just did it. I just remove my mask. Look at that beautiful mug. I'll go on a lemon. and say right now the CDC is

recommending in Palm Beach County, Florida, where we are broadcasting from, that indoor mask use continues. We're about a 5% trans-positivity rate, so when it comes down a little bit, guidance will change, and we'll follow the guidance. Here's Daddy's comment. I don't think the CDC knows their ass from their elbow,

and I think that they're making, they're contradicting the FDA, they're contradicting the scientists, everybody's contradicting everybody else. We've been following the CDC at the dealership. Yeah, we have, we have, man. We've got to follow somebody. But who are really following is our own conscience.

And we'll make that decision as far as masks based on our own conscience when we think that we can have a customer come into the dealership and not be harmed in any way from other customers or our own employees, then we will relax the mask policy. But it's just a shame now the way. And I'm not going to digress because I've told the others are on the show. This is a show about cars. It's not a show about masks.

When we have a mystery shopping report, we usually note whether or not they have masks. Well, that's a point we should point out, but we don't want to make a big deal out of it. But here's my opinion on why we're wearing masks. We're trying to make a statement because masks are under-emphasized. And I think a lot of the people, including our governor in Florida and other governors like Texas, ought to have their heads examined with some of their policy.

So Earl Sturancars policy is to be careful and worry about people's health and COVID. And be honest with you, we don't need a mask in here. Everybody in here has been fully vaccinated. And where this is more than a. an abundance of caution, it's a statement to you that you've got to be careful out there, folks, and whether you're buying a car or buying a turkey, be careful out there. And this is about cars, so we're not going to go on and on about that. But I just wanted to make the point because the question came up.

That's right. Okay, we're going to go back to the phones, and we are going to talk to Warren, who is from New Jersey, good morning one good morning guys how are you today great welcome back thank you thank you i had a couple of questions but i just wanted to say something about math and i don't get any politic right through that up here in northern new jersey and in new york city uh with between the vaccination and mass COVID has practically disappeared so judge for yourself what that means anyway you make your own judgments on that and it's mandatory in schools and every place though But, okay, that's the only thing I'm going to say on that.

I have a question for a couple part questions. I myself was going to send a bender about a week ago. Not a lot of damage to my car, which is for 2010-4 tourists that being going to get rid of. I have collision. Do you think it's worth fixing or just take the money and put it towards the new car? The back fender got damaged. I don't know. I haven't got the settlement there, so I don't know how much it is.

You think it's worth fixing? We'll just take the insurance money and go for a new car. car. So your question is, should you have it fixed before you trade it in? Yeah, should I have a fix or take the money? I would say, I haven't got the settlement. I would say I'm going to get about $1,500. That's my, yep, but somebody told me that's what it's about worth.

Did I spend the money to fix it for, should I just take the $1,500 and go out and get something else? I'm going to go on the limb and to say, I think he should fix it. I mean, $1,500 is $1,500, but right now, these car market is going crazy. So if you can get that car looking clean, fix the damage, get it detailed up, I think you could inflate that value for yourself.

And that's just a thought. I mean, I don't know, what do you think? Some people just get the insurance check. It depends on how hard you want to work on that. I would try it both ways. I would, I think, first of all, it's not going to cost a dealer with a body shop nearly as much to fix the car as the insurance company will reimburse you. So they can fix the car for a lot less. If a good deal that's going to

look at it hard and say, I can fix that car for $8 or $900, you're better off to have that $1,500 in your pocket if he will, in turn, pass along that knowledge in the way he... If the dealership has a body shop. Exactly. If the deal has a body shop, and he's at the mercy of somebody else. And most dealers don't have body shop. So the answer is probably, like Stu said, go ahead and get a fixed. And you can ask them, I mean, you can have that conversation with the salesperson and just to get information.

I don't think we have enough info right now and say, how would you like this car? Because if they, like, Earl said, if they did have a body shop, or if they have a relationship with a body shop where they're doing like, you know, like a wholesale sort of deal, they could get it done cheaper in which case that'll maximize your, your bucks. One, I agree with the guys. I attempt to find out how much that's going to cost. If that was the final price, I think you mentioned $1,500. Did you?

$15? Yeah, I mentioned, I said somebody told me they do with knowledgeable. I haven't got the settlement yet. I'll get that next week. Yeah, because it has nothing to do with the drive the ability of the car. It's just so it's a body van. They need to drive the car forever. So that's pretty much the other question.

I have two other quick questions. My daughter was also an attendant vendor a couple of months ago, and it's a leased car. And I said to her, she called the insurance company, and they said, oh, you're not insured for collision. I said, that's impossible. I said, you must be insured by the leasing company, where it's the gap insurance where you're paying for it,

and you don't know about it, because she hasn't had a chance to call you. You think that's the case that she left insured by the leasing companies? You're saying it's a lease car that your daughter has? I said there's no way they let you out

of the dealership without collision. Yeah, they require it on the lease, yes. Right. It's a minor damage, but the leases coming to an inn and you want to get a sick. When she called her insurance company, they said, Oh, you don't have collisions.

So she was going crazy, so she called me, because I said, you must be insured by the, you know, for leasing. She's got, of course, she needs it. They must, giving you the gas. You don't even know if you're paying through your lease gap insurance and the collision. There's no way they're going to let you out of that lot.

In other words, you would never let a car out, a lease car out of your lot unless it was insured, correct? I mean, you're not going to let somebody drive your car out of a little. You're right. Absolutely. I mean, there's no way that would happen. No.

I said, that's got to be the case that you're paying for, and you don't even know it. So I said, you know, follow up with them next week if you think you would. The last question I had was, I'm looking about the chip shortage and everything like that. And I haven't agreed with you one thing. You think that all these conglomerates, you know, whether it's Ford, Toyota, Honda, they had something up with leave or building their own plants or doing something. They're not going to let this go on that much longer.

There must be some way that they figured out if they're not fixed with. What are your thing in this? I'm sorry, you broke up there. Yeah, yeah, we'll repeat that. Okay, the chip shortage. Oh, the chip shortage. Oh, the chip shortage, okay, yeah, yeah.

Okay. The chip shortage is a variable from manufacturer to manufacturer. Some manufacturers are experiencing extreme pain like General Motors. Toyota, for whatever reason, is experiencing less pain. I forecasted for a long time since the beginning of this whole mess that the chip shortage was going to be over by the end of the year. I still believe that.

It is not a uniform over. It will be over for some manufacturers. It will still be difficult for others. but on average it will be much, much mitigated and the people should consider waiting until December, January

to buy a car, and the volume and the production will be up. I just tell you the question is sort of a statement, don't you think that all these manufacturers, whoever it is, General Motors, are already sourcing from other places, then a place

like General Motors or Toyota, They're not going to sit back and wait. Aren't they going to build their own factories or preparing for something that they're going to ever let this happen again? And they'll be online with chips, like you said, in January and February. They've got this thing covered already. I don't think so. I don't think microchips are a – I'm an expert on microchips because I used to be an electronics engineer. In fact, I used to design and microchips.

so I know about microchips. And microchip production is a highly specialized, expensive, difficult thing to do. You just don't say, I'm going to give you a billion dollars, I'm going to start a microchip company. You need to have extreme expertise, experience. The United States used to be the world leader in microchips, and then they got lazy and they fell behind,

And now the microchip industry is now offshore, and we're importing microchips from other countries. There's one or two major microchip manufacturers in the world. And to become a player in the microchip business, you're talking 10 years. If someone said to me, I'll give you all the money in the world you want, you have to be building microchips to put into Ford's and Hondas and, and Sherman tanks or whatever, you've got to have microchips, it would take me 10 years to get up to speed

to supply them. So I do not believe the auto manufacturers will be able to do this. Okay, so I was wrong. So you educated me on that. That sounded very, very, very interesting. I wouldn't have known that in a million years. All right, guys, thank you very much.

I think your show is great. I enjoy listening to it and have a good weekend. Thank you very much. Great hearing from you. Ladies, I have $50 for the first two new lady callers. You still have time to give us a call at 877-9-60-99-60, and you can also text us at 772-497-6-5-30. And this global chip shortage certainly has changed our lives, and it is global. How do you feel?

Give us a call. We'd like to hear from you. 877-960 9960 I think we'll send it back to Stu Okay let me see what I got over here This is a weird show

Without Rick, you know Yeah, it's a little I miss Rick He provides a little foil for me Okay, let's see This is interesting When do you think airless tires will become available

Well that's one of the things I've been wondering about all my life I Nancy and I talk about an old uncle I had he's passed away and a great guy Uncle Charlie

and I remember as a kid saying Uncle Charlie saying they should come up with an airless tire and it made sense to me and I mean course of the time you could have an airless tire but it would be so bumpy it would knock the fillings

out of your teeth but yeah I don't know why they don't I think they actually have airless tires. They do. And it's so expensive that it's, you know, it's not worth the investment. I mean, you're better off to wear a bunch of tires out. And Michelin has. I saw a news article on the last couple of weeks that in 2023, they were bringing them to the market.

And they look like honeycombs. And they call it their non-numatic tires, airless tires. And I guess the trick was they've been able to make these, like, rigid, like these spongy. springy matrixes that kind of compresses, but to make them feel like the tires that we're used to is a big challenge. Well, how old they do it's going to sell you a nitrogen

if you've got a... Well, they'll blow nitrogen on the tires. Where there's a will there's away? They'll blow through the tire. It's kind of strange. I was looking at the Michelin one in the article, and it looks weird, and to me, it doesn't look good. It looks like incomplete, but this has just changed, and when every

car in the road has those on it, it's going to look normal. And I'm sure they'll figure out ways to make them look cool and come up with fancier versions like we do with our current tires. Interesting. Yeah, but it's pretty neat. They look like it because, you know, when they go to Mars and they drive around on Mars and the various rovers, they don't have pneumatic tires there.

They have to have those airless tires because the air pressure is so low there. The whole world is changing dramatically. Just think how Tire Kingdom feels listening to this conversation. Think of all the people that, are manufacturing, you know, Michelin, Goodyear, Firestone, think of all the tire companies that, you know, we sell tires, car dealer sell tires, everybody sells tires. And pretty soon you're not going to be selling any more tires. And the maintenance, rotate and balance, forget about it.

All the things that we think about today with cars, repair is becoming obsolete. The car of the future won't require repair or make. repair or maintenance or a driver. And we're not talking about 100 years from now. We're talking about 20 years from now. So how scary, interesting, exciting. You know, it's just crazy. I just am so glad that I'm able to see this happening.

It's crazy. Yeah, it's phenomenal. I'd like to share something with the audience, and that is from the American International Automobile, dealers association and it's about this tax that you're going to be paying on the on your EV and here it is supporting a four thousand five hundred dollar tax credit for only EVs built at unionized plants unionized plants interesting and that are built in $4,500. How do you feel about that?

877-960, or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30. We're going to go back to the phones. Let me, Jack. Can I have? Oh, we've got a phone call, because I want to talk about that, and then we'll do the phone call first. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, you can stay tuned for that. We're going to go to Doug, who's a regular caller. He's calling us from Boca. Good morning.

Good morning, Doug. Welcome. Good to hear from you guys So Sim's lease has been up And they don't have any Hondas at all And we went there the other day And they wanted to buy her car

They said oh we'll give you good money for your car And then she said well You don't have any car for me So why would I do that So we extended our lease For another two or four months hoping they'll have some stocks that they went from 600 cars in the law to only 32. Well, that's great.

How many months to the extent that they lease, Doug? Three more months. Oh, that's great. Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned that because all the listeners out there, a lot of people panic and good reason to panic when your lease is coming up because it starts the games, let the games begin. You'll be getting phone calls typically from the dealer six months before your lease is up.

Everybody wants that car. It's like a bunch of pack of dogs around a big, juicy steak. People want those cars, and the dealers are bidding up used cars because they're so low-supply high demand. They can make a ton of money on that, so they want to buy your lease car. And, of course, they always want to sell you another car or lease another car. So you feel like a, you feel like a, you know, as I said before, you got some fresh meat in your pocket and the dogs are following you around. But you did the smart thing. Extend the lease as long as you can because in three months, you'll be able to buy or lease a car for thousands of dollars less than it would be if you leased it a day.

You get a great deal on a lease in three months compared to what it is today. Cool. And then my other car, the S-I, they wanted to buy that, like right off of the... I go, oh, I'm not telling you my car. No, it's so cool to be wanted so badly. I mean, not you, but your car. And you can't go into a car dealership, at least one that has any intelligent people working there if they don't try to buy your car. That's about the only source of cars. Think about it. The volume of sales is down, and so that's the way dealers get the material for their used car lot is from their trade-ins. Now when you have so few trade-ins, how are you going to keep the used car department going unless you buy the car?

So if you buy the car, you've got to buy it for less than you're going to sell it for. So they tell you that you're going to get the world's highest price, but they don't want to give you the world's highest price because if they give you the world's highest price, they can't sell it. for the world's highest price. It's a crazy, crazy world, and you're in the driver's seat. It's got to be fun. Everybody wants that car you got, Doug, and it'll be after you. Okay, well, Ellen says hello, and I hope you guys have a great day. How about Sam? Did Sam say hello? Yeah, she's still a little sleepy. Okay, that's all right. Well, Doug, it was great here in front of you.

you. You guys too. We love you guys. Have a great day. Thank you so much. I look forward to hearing from you again. I can't help mention this again. I talked about this earlier in the show and when we opened and it is about

all of the countries that we reach or reach us and it is wow, what a surprise. It's fantastic over I think 50 countries here and I'll hold up my little printout right here

and this is this is pardon me we got Pakistan we do so this is for the podcast listeners around the world and we have a very wide reach via podcast earlier I said

before the show and he says that the podcasts are only a small number of the listeners or viewers I should say on YouTube or Facebook so multiply that And it's shocking. I mean, Algeria, I'm looking at Nepal, Chile, Israel, Japan, Turkey, Australia, Brazil, Russia, Romania, Georgia. Indonesia, Ukraine.

So it's really... Turkey, India. We need to come up with something. We have the special prize for the first female caller. We could have like a special... For the first North Korean caller. Yeah. How about Vietnam?

We have calls from Vietnam. Oh, I want someone to call from Italy. Nepal. I want to have Nepal. That's a great idea. What we'll do is we will have a list of cool countries, meaning obscure, and we will say, if we have a bona fide call, we'll have a reward of some kind. Okay. Yeah, very cool. Yeah, it's very interesting.

So, ladies and gentlemen, there you go. And can our listeners, everyone out there, find this information at Earl and Cars? Very good. And let's do it right now. Israel. If we have a call from Israel for the rest of the show, what are we going to do, Stu? We'll give you $10. $10 if you call from Israel during the show.

A modified call from Israel. I have something even more tempting. Osabuka. I really make a great Osabuka. So anyone from Italy give me a call. 877-9-60. Nancy's going to ship your Osabuca to you. You're going to ship your Osabuca

to the first caller? Well, there's a will, there's a way. Okay. 877-960-9960. Give us a call. Ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers. Can I go back and talk about the AIA-A-A? Yes, you can't.

Is the American Automobile International of Dealers Association, and it's a PAC. It's a political action committee. It's an organization of dealers, mainly import dealers, disguised themselves as the whole auto industry. They actually are anti-Detroit. They are mainly, as I say, Nissan, Honda, Toyota. Toyota is the big dog in the AIA-A-A. And they lobby Washington, and they lobby everybody, and they have big bucks. very well supported, and that was, they're pushing now because they're angry at the legislation that is coming up that is going to tax people on electric cars if they are built by a non, if they're built by a union, non-union labor. And what you don't know, the deep, dark, dirty

secret here is that most of your, most of your import manufacturers, like Honda and Toyota and Nissan, these cars are manufactured at non-union plants. And so they are mad because they are going to say you have to be unionized or else we're going to tax you. And they're pretending to represent the whole auto industry. And they're pretending to represent the whole United States and saying it's a fair thing. Now, I'm not going to take a position. I happen to have a position on that, but I'm not going to tell you what it is.

But I just think it's pretty sneaky of the AIDA is representing something when it has a ulterior motive. It's for the imported car manufacturers. It's to protect them. It is not to protect America and the American way. Okay, that's all I got to say about that. I definitely agree with you without even putting it out there in, you know, word for word. I just made a lot of Toyota people really mad at me, but that's it. Exactly.

That's what I do. I think you may I'm happy. Toyota is against it. They're lobbying against it. So Toyota thinks that it is unfair. Right. They're only giving the credit to cars built at unionized plants. Yeah, and they think that's unfair.

Oh, you don't agree with Toyota? No. Oh, okay. No, I think that they should say why. In other words, in other words, most of Toyota's plants are non-union. So it doesn't affect them. Yes, it does. It does affect it, yeah, yeah, and they don't think it's fair, but they're not saying that General Motors, well, I don't want to get into it.

They are, people don't know who they are. They think it's the auto industry, and it's not. It's the imported auto industry that is the AIT. Yeah, GM, Chrysler, Ford are not lobbying for this. They are union. They're happy with it. They're happy with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was my point. Yeah, because it'll put Toyota at a disadvantage. Okay, folks, I hope you caught all that. Every moment is very exciting with very exciting news. I would love to hear from you.

What do you have to say? Let your voice be heard. Hey, 77-960-99-60. We're going to go back to the phones for, I'm going to say, an oldies, but a goodie. And that's Roadrunner, Steve. He's calling us from Palm Beach. Good morning. Good morning, Steve. It's nice to hear it from you.

Good morning, everybody. How are we doing? I was on vacation. Oh, no. We missed you. We were wondering. Yeah, I was on the West Coast of Florida. Uh-huh. The man, my friend, he wanted to look at the new Nissan Frontier to check it out.

Uh-huh. Up on your favorite place on Lake Worth, Nissan. Uh-huh. So he's looking at the price, manufacturing price, $38,000. okay now they came up with at all the price and they added on $5,000

so my friend goes what's that for? Well because there's a car shortage there you go how do they do that? Okay sure I'll give you five grand I feel bad for you If you go to the store

and there's only one low for bread on a shelf at $2 I'm going to pay $12? It depends on how hungry you are. If you're really hungry, you're going to pay $12 for that loaf of bread, I promise. Oh, if I was really hungry, I'd steal it. No, there you go. It's so good to hear from you, Steve. How do they do that?

Yeah, there's an inventory shortage. There's also a shortage of shame. There's a shortage of shame and decency, and that's going hand in hand with the inventory shortage. Yeah, and that answer that you got about there being an inventory shortage, I'm just scratching my head. He really put that out there. He didn't make any excuses for this outrageous increase in the vehicle. It is just, how do they do that?

And if I wanted to trade in a call, I could add on $5,000 to my trade in? There you go. You put a sticker on your trade, an addendum. What do you have in the trunk to negotiate with? You know, I could charge $10,000 more if, how about some broccoli? There's broccoli in the trunk. No broccoli, too gasey. I'm just trying to be as ridiculous as they are.

I know that, but that means you can put any price. You could add on any price. That's true, but it's up to you to say no and walk away. They can ask all they want. But Steve, you know, the funny thing is they actually sell that car and they get to $5,000. I know they do. How stupid can you be? Especially if you're financing the car,

and you're going to finance an extra $5,000? Supply and demand. Every day I get emails from Nigeria and strange places saying that my rich uncle died, and if I'll send them $200,000 and good faith, I get $200 million. And I say to myself, how can anyone be that stupid to fall for it?

And the fact of the matter is, when you send out 20 million emails, you're going to have one moron some poor soul that's going to send them the money and it happens and you read about it in the newspaper I'm going to make a confession Roadrunner Steve

years ago years ago I fell victim to something like that and it was when I bought a Blackberry this is in the years before iPhone so this puts it a while back and I was all excited it's an ad for all the rebates for this new Blackberry Pearl I went into the Verizon store

with my brother thinking I was going to I was going to pay around $199 for this thing. And, of course, I didn't qualify for all the stuff. I went in there. I actually had my credit card in my hand. I was so excited to get this thing. And he goes, okay, great. And I'm handing the card.

He goes, that's going to be $821. And I looked at my brother, Josh, and I continued to hand him my card because I was so caught up in the excitement and the ether that at that moment, I just wanted that phone, and I didn't care. And I paid all the money for it. And the guy probably high-fived his buddy as soon as we walked out. but it can happen when it's an emotional experience

and you get excited you don't see things clearly and so that's what happened to me that's a good point to admit it at that age did you have enough credit on your credit card oh I did I was still like in my 30s

I think but I wasn't a young that young but I was that happens to anybody I mean any age is they get excited to get caught up in the thing and no I didn't do research no I didn't shop and compare. I was a terrible, terrible consumer. And Steve, you know, it's amazing in this climate how much more we have to apply knowledge because there's so many loopholes. I mean, these car dealers are taking full advantage

of the global chip shortage and the inventory shortage in any way, shape, or form if they can convince you that it, hey, it's just okay. Every other car dealer's knowing it. You know, this complacency sickens me. People are afraid to admit when they were taken advantage of. And, you know, I congratulate Stu. Very few people will say, I was a sucker. I mean, I can't tell you the number of times. I've done something stupid.

And people don't, most people don't want to talk about it. And that's the reason dealers get away with it is that, you know, what happens? When you go into a car dealership, you tell all your friends, I just bought a new car from Napleton, Nissan, or I just bought a new car from wherever. and they say, did you get a good deal? Oh, did I get a good deal? I mean, you wouldn't believe the price. I got a really good price.

You don't go, even when you find out you got suckered in and you got taken advantage of, you don't want to tell your friends that they made a sucker out of you. So that's how these things continue on and on. We love to talk about it. And I appreciate your call on the show because you expose something that's going on. A lot of people won't talk about.

Yeah. So how do they do that, Steve? It's like a fish story. How big was the fish that got away? Right? Your arms are going to go through a full extension. Exactly. Okay.

And what do you got a new phone system? It takes a while to get through. It's not a whole lot of lines. So, yeah, if it's a couple of people are calling, then it gets backed up. Yeah. We're lobbying. We're lobbying to get that improved. Yeah.

It's going to happen. By the way, you had a blueberry. I'm still on my flip phone that I'm talking to you right now. Blueberry. Look at. I love that. Black, whatever they were.

I'm getting made fun of. All right, everybody stays safe and well. Thanks, Roadrunner, Steve. I'm getting made fun of online. People are commenting on the Blackberry Pearl now. Thank you, Steve. Still had, All right, have a good day.

You're welcome. Did you have black tooth on your blueberry? I did. I had black tooth in my blueberry. And you know, you know, to mention pricing and negotiating, it doesn't matter who you are, I can look back just a short time. That was just a day before yesterday. you looked me straight in the eye and you said hey listen I'll give you a thousand dollars for those sandals

you were in a situation you were in a moment so thousand dollars wasn't so bad it depends on how inconvenient you know you get into a situation yeah anyway I digress hey 77 960 9960 or you can text us at 772 49730 don't forget your anonymous feedback dot com. We're going to go back to the phones where we have Frank who has given us a call many times. Good morning, Frank. Good morning to you all. It's always a pleasure of waking up on a Saturday morning and hearing your discussions and questions and answers and very, very enjoyable. Anyway, here's a question for you. If you buy a car on a stake and you can bring it back, I mean, you'd give

the sales tax here in Florida or do you have to go out of state and then you know you pay the sales tax um where you're registering the vehicle okay because it's one we don't seem to see any cars down here um and then here's the second part of that question not that we're looking to buy one is the Nissan's having a problem I mean are they going to be around or that's a that's a good question I mean Nissan's going to be around for a while I mean Down the road, when we talk about the future of the big car manufacturers and whether or not everybody's going to be around, no, not everybody was going to be around the future. But we're talking 10, 15, 20 years down the road. I don't think Nissan's going anywhere.

Well, you know, Frankie hit on a very weak company. Nissan is a dead automotive manufacturer walking. They have nothing going for them. They don't have management. They don't have technology. They're really, really, they don't have a dealer network. If there's ever been a history, they, you know, their CEO broke out of jail and is in exile and Libya or someplace. It's just a joke of a company.

And when the car companies start to fold, they will be one of the first. But as Stu said, they're not going out of business. They got a lot of cash. They've been around a long time, and to my knowledge, they don't have as much cash as when Carlos Gohn got caught with his hand of the till, but they got a lot of cash, and they'll be around for at least another 10 or 15 years. Yeah, and the reason I brought that up,

we just came back from Connecticut. My girlfriend's from there, and so we go back home to the world. You know, you drive by the Toyota dealership where there are three cars and a lot. You go by a Chevy Ford, they may have 10 cars. You go by the Nissan deal. 500 cars sitting in that lock in Middletown, Connecticut.

I go, I know, look it. That's a bad sign. I didn't have time to go in the three hundred at the markups for it, but I couldn't believe they're inventory. Row after row after row. It was like a container ship that drop in.

Wow. I haven't seen anything like that. I'd love to get a picture. Next time you're in that air, that would really be interesting. Automotive news would like to get that picture. I mean, there's a dealer with the problems. I was shocked, but the good news is one of Amarie's cousins

does HR Block tax work, and so she says, I know that one guy that has this particular dealership, and I can still get a car if you want one, because they're just not there. I said, well, maybe we'll buy a car and drive it back, and I'll figure out the tax money. Yeah. Oh, one other thing about your Toyota, the Land Cruiser, the one I kind of remember from

when you've grown up, it's all over the world. Discontained. I'm sorry. Yeah, they dropped it. Yeah, that's what I thought. I believe it. I said, I couldn't say it was like, you know, in your printing a line, seen in the middle. Yeah, it's such a legacy vehicle.

They're going to keep making the Lexus LX, the big giant SUV that's kind of like a land but the length is going away. I don't understand Toyota. I mean, I understand that the demand for SUVs. That's all anybody wants to buy, but Toyota right now has so many SUVs. We've got another one. There's more coming. Even, you know, they drop the Avalon and they're going to replace it with the crown,

but not the Japanese crown. Yeah, and I think they should have kept the name. They should have kept Land Cruiser, turned it into an all-electric vehicle, maybe even an all-electric truck or something. But I think they're making a big mistake. It really calls me for those diseases. Yeah, they do. Well, they might bring it back.

They brought the Venza back. So, who knows? Yeah. Well, one last thing with electric cars, now that the gas is going stupid, it seems like they're really trying to push it towards electric. I heard something, though, about Tesla. They can actually monitor it when you go on your car in the five one

and put them on all three motors and go crazy. Is that just rumors, or is that something they can actually buy them when you do that? I'm having a hard, Frank, I have a hard time hearing that last. sentence. Could you repeat that? Yeah, I heard some rumors that Tesla can actually monitor when your dad or mom is driving that car. Yeah, that's not a rumor.

We've confirmed that. Stu can tell you about that. I'll tell you about that. I'll tell you about it because we have another question from Donovan online asking about it. So there is a full self-driving upgrade that is coming to

the Tesla's where it actually drives on city streets and all that. But to qualify for that you have to prove that you're a safe driver. So you agree to allow Tesla using their sensors to monitor how you're driving. And this is really funny. So they said you're going to be evaluated for about two weeks. And I didn't know what they're evaluating. Then Earl found it, and it's on his Tesla app.

And it's a safety score. And it grades you based on hard stops, hard turns, following too closely, et cetera. And they give you a score. So he finds his, he sent me a screenshot. So he has a 95 out of 100 safety scores. He's improved it. and I had an 85, and so my father is a safer driver than me, which was not what we expected to find out here, didn't we know?

Yeah, see, all the slings and arrows and nasty comments about my driving. I will say I drive a lot more than my father does that. Well, it doesn't make any difference. I mean, you know, it's more time to screw up. Anyway, so I've improved it, by the way. I'm an 89. It's an average, you thought. I'm an 89 right now.

And then I found out, and I don't know if you know this, you might not even get in because what they're doing is first they're giving it to people who that's got hundreds and they're limiting the amount of people so they're adding people to the program anyway i'm getting off topic but yes it's true frank they they do monitor your safety and i didn't know this and i'm going to tie this in with donovan's comment from facebook i mean from from youtube Tesla has a new has their own insurance company and i didn't know that so donovan says Tesla launched its insurance company in Texas and it's unique for Texas it's based off the new safety score for full self driving so Tesla is getting into the car insurance industry using their own cars to determine your safety to base your rates so pretty interesting stuff very interested wow well thank you guys well you all as always have a great weekend and I appreciate you guys being there and we'll talk to you another time all right frank be good thank you so much 877 960 9960 that That's a number that you normally can get through on, but right now what we've done is close the lines and that will allow you to take advantage of the text number, which is 772-497-6530, where you will vote on the Mystery Shopping Report from Mike Maruni Chevrolet.

and I do have to give credit to Agent Lightning and what a fantastic job she does weekend and week out. She certainly is seasoned at this point, but although I think she came to us season and it was a win-win situation, so Agent Lightning, our hat is off to you. We're going to take some more text,

are we going to... You got to YouTube? Yeah, we have some more Donovan on YouTube that wants to know from Earl. What other brand? and he's dubbed this a new list. It's the dead automakers walking. What other brands does Earl think

are dead automakers walking? I think all your French, there's some good ones that won't make it. I mean, I kind of wonder about Subaru. My favorite auto manufacture quality-wise, but there's a small Honda,

great car. You know, I think all of them there's only going to be three or four. So you can't really and Nissan is a no-brainer. I mean, they're a terrible

manufacturer, terrible company, and they shouldn't even be around. Mazda, you know, they've come along, they won't be around. You're going to have, you're going to have whoever pairs with the best

software people. So, you know, you have Volkswagen, you have Toyota, you have... I hope Toyota pairs up with Apple. You have Tesla. I mean, let's face it, Tesla is the... You talk about the dark horse,

the one that everybody laughed at, including me, and I was watching CNBC the other day. Stew's tired of me saying that. I watch, Nancy and I watch it all the time. But there's a guy named Jim Kramer, who is my favorite.

financial guy. And if you're a financial guy, you'll know who I'm talking about. But he's my financial guru. He pooh-poohed and laughed at Tesla over and over. Tesla is crazy. You're never going to make it. It's a cult. It's like a religious cult. They're never going to succeed. You know what he said last week? He says, he says Tesla is going to dominate the other industry. And the guy that was with him is financial consultant. and buddy said, you are always saying Tesla was going to go broke. They couldn't possibly make it. Elon Musk was a joke.

He says, when did you change your mind? He says a few weeks ago when I finally drove a Tesla. I mean, I've never, you see, he's an analytical guy to say that. That sounds too subjective. But you know something when Nancy and I first drove a Tesla two or three years ago, you know, that's when we came around. We said, holy macro. wholly different experience. Yeah, and

Stu is driving one now. I'm driving one. But yeah, so Tesla will survive and you'll have three or four. So if I had to predict, I would say for sure, Tesla, Volkswagen, and Toyota. And the rest of them?

Adios. And you can't predict. There's so many things, like you said, there's going to be partnerships with other tech firms and things like that. The future is, the details aren't. murky, but the general trends we see very clearly. If anybody in the big three makes it, which I don't think they will, they will be

Ford. General Motors won't make it, and Chrysler, Jeep won't make it. And what about Fiat? All right. Okay, let's see. From Alice North Palm Beach. Hey guys, dumb question here. What is the difference between

comp and collision insurance in Alice North Palm Beach? It's not a dumb question. You're not in the car business. You don't talk about it all the time. Comprehensive insurance covers things that happen to your car, like a tree falls on it or it gets vandalized or something like that, collisions when you bang into something else and damage your car. And a lot of people don't know about the comprehensive.

It covers some unusual things. So you have something that might happen to your car that you would think there's no way this is covered. Look at your comprehensive because that's the reason they call it comprehensive. Like rats? Yeah, it covers a whole bunch of stuff. So the insurance company won't tell you to look at it, but you should read it because

it really can save you some money that's right okay how much time do we have because this is a very we're at 936 right now we have a very open-ended question I'm going to get comfortable Andy and Boka asked Earl

how does a person become a car dealer your daddy is a car dealer any other any other questions that's how I became a car dealer and that's how Stu became a car dealer it's a family affair No, interesting. It is an interesting question because the car business used to be that way. It's no longer that way. When I came in the business in 1968, my father founded the dealership, Pontiac dealership in 1937.

And at that time, during the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, it was family business. It was typically father to son, sometimes the grandson, usually by the third generation, generation, you know, it died out and then it would be sold, but it was a family, they were family businesses. Really kind of cool. And Stu's right, you could get comfortable because I could do two hours of that. But no longer the case, it's now publicly held companies, Pinsky Auto Group, Auto Nation, Sonic, and on and on and on. Big, big, multi-national, giant companies are owning all the car companies. companies. And we are, I say we, our dealership, Earl Stewart Toyota, is an anomaly, one dealership operated by a family. But it used to be father, son, kind of thing. But we do new people. I mean, you can make it from the ground up. I know a couple of people. I started washing cars, got an interest of selling, had a talent, worked really hard and worked his way up, and he's a dealer now. Those are exceptions. Yeah.

Our mystery shopping report is a segue. Yeah, exactly. It's a father, daughter. Yeah. And it went from Roger Dean to Cheney Dean, which is the daughter. I was just going to mention that. So folks, to those of you that are listening right now, it doesn't have to be, you know, son related. There are some daughters out there, few and far between.

But this report that Stu talks about Roger Dean, you know, I remember back in those days, and, you know, a warm and fuzzy kind of a situation at that dealership. And we're going to take a look back, and we're going to take a look forward as far as the mystery shopping report is concerned. So it's one you will enjoy. Okay. Maruni Chevrolet, Mike Maroni Chevrolet. Last year on December 17th, Roger Dean Chevrolet became Mike Maroonie Chevrolet.

Dealship's changed hands all the times. And what makes this take over noteworthy is it involves too long-time Florida Cardinal accounts, Maruni and Dean. The Marronis came to South Florida in 1977, after 20 years making a name for themselves. Al, the father, Maruni, sold his nine Florida stores to Auto Nation. Mike Maroney, his son, continued on to the Other Nation as its CEO until 2015. And in 2017, Mike Maroney, the son got back to being a car dealer.

That was after his non-compete agreement expired with automation. He acquired four dealerships in Colorado and formed the Maruni USA Auto Group. So here we go. Big Auto Group, starting all over again. The same year, Maruni USA bought a minority share in Roger Dean Chevrolet, a dealership familiar to our listener. It's been there for a long, long time, 50 years, I think. As you know, Roger Dean Chevrolet was a long-standing dealership on Okeechobee Boulevard in West Palm Beach. The dealership was established over 50 years ago, and the name Roger Dean is well known and respected in South Florida.

Roger Dean himself passed away in 1997 and control of the dealerships were passed to his daughter Patty. Now, he had another daughter, Jeannie, who had some dealerships in Martin County, St. Lucie County area. And I'm not sure what happened to Jeannie, and those dealerships, I think they've changed Sands also. It was Patty Dean who entered into the partnership with Maroon, USA, and who ultimately sold the whole thing last year. Whenever there's a change of ownership of a car dealership, there is a change in the way it does business. It's unavoidable. Even if it's much of the management remains working for the new owner, the style, rhythm, and culture the dealership will change. We mystery shopped Mike Moroney Chevrolet

one week after the change over last year really they'd give him a chance to change Agent Lightning uncovered a bait and switch ad and it was kind of surprising we thought maybe you know there would be more of a change but it didn't happen and they got a D-minus score it was really pretty rough Agent Lightning returned this week

to see what a D-minus dealership does with the inventory shortage. And, of course, after the new ownership, has had a chance to, in culture, has had a chance to sink in. So here's the report as if I were Agent Lightning. I arrived at Mike Moroni Chevrolet on Okachiribi Boulevard late afternoon.

I know you people from Nepal and Japan listening around the world. I have no idea what you're saying right now. There's an Okachobi Boulevard. Isn't that interesting? A lot of people. Okachobi. I think It's a Seminole Indian name

Okachovie might as well be gentlemen I mean if they're in Nepal they're speaking So it's a big lake It's a huge lake and it's an Indian name, Seminole Indian And it's a major boulevard Used to be Automotive Row in West Bond Beach

Okay I entered the Charobin and was treated by An older gentleman seated at the front desk Now I like a Steve Stu wrote that I like the way this is the way he defers to old guys. You know, you don't say an old man.

That's Agent Lighten with right that. You don't see an old guy. You say an older gentleman. You say an old fellow? I'm not an old man. I'm an old gentleman. Now, even though I'm not a gentleman, anyway, I digress.

He asked what I was there to see. I told him I was interested in the Chevy Traverse. I said, looked like they had a couple of stock from one I could see online. The man said that they sold the last traverse the night before. He told me in maybe a few months before they see another one, then blamed the global microchip shortage for the problem. He said it was killing their industry.

Not really. That's what old guys say. Yeah. Killing the industry. Never got to be the same. I told him I was aware of the situation, but I had no idea. It was as bad. Then I asked if they had any other comparable SUVs,

just another man approached, not a gentleman, or an old gentleman. He didn't. A young gentleman approached. and said his name was Ronald. He had overheard the conversation between the older gentleman and myself and was now apparently taking over as my salesperson.

Ronald asked if I needed third road seating. I say it would be nice, but not necessary. He told me he had a big Tahoe. I read that too fast. I thought it was a big toe. But I said, I had a big Tahoe and a couple of used traverses. He could show me. I said I wasn't interested

in news or anything as big. as a tono. Ronald thought the perfect choice would be a new equinox, but unfortunately, they didn't have any of those in stock. Then he suggested a trailbraiser. He said he had a new 2022 right out front and led me outside. That's right, folks. The 2022s are out and they've been out. You buy the 2021, you're buying last year's model. We found a black one, unlike with an MSRP of 26-205. That's a low MSR. And when I saw that, I said, what? I mean, that's low.

That's half the average cost, average price of a car these days. And there was no addendum. Whoa, boy, that hit me between the eyes. 26, 205, MSRP, and no addendum. I'm starting to trouble. I waited at the vehicle while Ronald left to find the keys and get a dealer plate. When he got back, he opened all the doors and started the engines. Visual.

All four doors opened. He butterfied the vehicle. Yeah. He went over the features of the car, asked him if he had a parking sonar, where the car beeps if you're about to hit something. I mean, that, to me, is like, does it have a horn or headlights? I mean, I wouldn't buy a car without one. He said, no. He says, because of the chip shortage.

GM isn't offering features like that, or blindside monitoring. I don't know if that's true or not. I don't believe it. No. That's what he said. So, I asked Ronald about pricing and wondered aloud about all the add-ons that were sure to come. Ronald said, no, the sticker price was the price. But, of course, there were fees, oh, here we go, that's all I'm thinking, that would be added.

He asked if I was a Costco member, because then he could take $1,000 off from me. Whoa, that'd be, knocked me out of my socks right there. I told him I was, and I, you know, I'm going to hold this up. Costco, Costco, write it down, buy a car through the Costco auto buying program.

If you don't, you're going to pay too much money. Wear a t-shirt that says I'm a Costco member when you go to a dealership. And I don't think I even have stock in Costco. I'm not trying to sell you

Costco. I'm just saying, buy a car. That's the way you do it. So good point there. No addendum. And he asked if you're a Costco going to give you $1,000 off.

Anyway, and he said he believed there's a $500. GM rebate too. Boy, I tell you what, I am feeling good. Now, as a buyer, we took the trailbraiser for a spend, came back to the dealership. He found my record in the system because Agent Lightning had been in there

before, as I said. Then asked for my driver's license. Ronald spent a few minutes working on his computer. Then announced he'd be right back with my sales figures. Ronald was back in eight minutes. With a smile on his face. He said he always brings his best price to the table, doesn't believe in the back and forth, Then he dramatically flipped over the worksheet he placed between us.

The top line labeled sales price was MSRP 26-205. They added $804 in government fees, and that's a lot of government fees. And I won't dwell on that, but that is a lot of government fees. I suspect there is e-filing and private tag agency built into that. Maybe, but we don't know. As well as a 995 proc doc, which is processing document. I like the proctoc. They don't want you to know what it is. That sounds like a proctologist. That's what it is.

Yeah, exactly. I didn't want to say that because I thought it was a poor taste. No, it's just medicine, medical stuff. They took off $1,500 in the rebate line, and that was comprised of according to a handwritten $1,000 Costco discount and a $500 GM rebate. I said he did pretty well. Well, he actually got me below MSRP, and that is unheard of. of, and we've been shopping a long time during this COVID thing, and this just ain't going to happen.com, two-thirds of the car transactions now in new cars over MSRP. Ronald asked me how soon I expected to do a deal. I said, I need to talk things over at home.

He said, whenever I was ready, he'd be happy to help me. Then he said, they would really appreciate it if I would say hi to a sales manager before leaving. Nice way of putting the T.O., you know. Ronald walked me over to the older gentleman. Ah, the older guy was the boss, who initially greeted me. Ronald told me I needed to talk things over with my family before deciding. The manager advised me not to wait too long because he doubted the trail by the blizzard would be here after the weekend. And I'll be telling the truth. Okay. P.S. I saw only one person wearing a mask in the whole dealership, and he was wearing it improperly exposing his nose.

You do that a lot if you have a big nose, and I got a big nose. At any rate, I got a picture of the winter sticker here. I'm blown away by the fact that this was a clean, legal, honest. Yeah. I just, I'm emotional. Last week, I was emotional,

and I hope this is a sign of things to come. I'm just praying that maybe Earl on Cars, maybe the word is getting out I don't know what's happening but I'm seeing a trend here and Maroney is to be congratulated for turning around Roger Dean I'm wondering if that's what we experienced

because it was so soon after the transition last year that they hadn't gotten the chance to put in the Maruni way and it was doing the old way because Roger Dean even though we you like them personally you were friends with them and I was evil back then

so I liked all the bad guys But even during the show, I don't think they're, I don't remember Roger Dean being a particularly bad dealership. I don't think they did great. But that's great. I mean, I wasn't expecting that at all. I thought there was going to be a lot worse. Maruni, you know, he's been around forever. I still remember the commercials.

I remember the Maroonie jingles. And so I kind of equated that with old school car biz, but we didn't, we didn't really see it today. So I'm impressed. We don't have any grades coming in yet. Oh, no, we got one. Mark gave him a B-plus, and he thought Earl was going to cry. When we gave, last week we gave me an A-plus? Yeah.

All right. So I'm going to give them just a, I'm going to give them an A-minus, because we still have the fees, and there was some questionable information. But, yeah, they did great. Nancy, what do you say? Well, I, too, think that it was a good report, worthy of, because of the different little details in the report that I didn't exactly

agree with, I'm going to give them a B plus. Very good. Frank gives them an A. Also, Bob gives them a B online. Let's see if we've got me on Facebook. Sarah says that's outstanding, so we don't have a grade, but I think outstanding counts for an A. So right now, we are getting the consensus coming in, and I think Mike Maruni,

is getting an A. Even Jonathan Wellington is pretty tough. Gives him an A-minus. You know, I say what I'm going to do here. I'm going to surprise even Stu. I'm going to give them an A-plus. And I don't agree with Stu that the $804 in government fees had electronic filing fee or things in there.

I don't think Maruni would do that. Now, they may have made a mistake in the government fees, but I don't believe it would be slipped onto the country. The reason I don't think that is because usually on these worksheets that's pre-loaded, and on a worksheet, it doesn't always break everything down in as much detail as on the actual buyer's order, so they'll tend to lump things on lines. And I'm wondering if that's just the programming or they just don't know how to change that. If they could break it out, they probably would, but we don't know until it go on the finals.

You see, this is a criminal offense, and I just don't, I think Maroney, He is too smart. He's got too many. He's an automation protege. He ran automation for a lot of years. And now he's his own corporation, a big one. And he's too big a target to lie to customers because someone picked this up.

They'd have a class action suit. And the criminal charges against him. Particularly because this is not even, most of these worksheets will have a lot of disclaimers on it, saying this is not a binding thing. doesn't make it difference. Well, I know, I'm saying, but this is actually

they labeled this, not worksheet, they labeled this purchase agreement. I would think that that would be very easy to argue that it is a sales contract. In which case, you're right. Yeah, it'd be a, yeah, this is a clear violation of, if nothing else, the Florida unfair and safety trade practice act.

I just don't think it could be a mistake. It could be a mistake, but it would be corrected. I think this is probably as good or maybe the best shopping report we've seen in a long time. And remember, the last shopping report that we gave good grades, it wasn't that good a price. This is actually below MSRP, and the other one was slightly above MSRP.

So not only is it totally honest and transparent and no haggle and no hidden fees, but it's a good price. So I'm going to give them A-plus, and I think what we need to do is find some other Maroney dealerships. and see how if it's a... And see if it's a trend because we really might have a big hero here which I hope because I I've always liked

Maroney and I've always liked one of my best automotive friends, Steve Moore was best friends with Mike Maroney. So we'll see how that goes. You know, this could be something... You know how we saw this change in

used car sales over the years even before the pandemic where almost everybody became one price in used cars. cars. Yeah, yeah. And I think once the customers got comfortable with it and the dealers got comfortable with it, maybe with this pandemic thing and the inventory shortage, and they're effectively becoming one price. Maybe this is going to happen, you know, at the other side of this, they get used to it, the customers get used to it, and the prices will come down, but

maybe the haggling thing, people will finally, you know, discard it. It's amazing the number of dealers that you were pretty tight with, one of them when I said oh boy, Steve Moore, and how the times have changed all the good old boys. Yeah, exactly. And I know we're getting near the end here, but of the show,

and I mentioned Costco before, but I can't over-emphasize the Costco auto buying program, and Maruni is pushing that. And Maroney is as good as I think he is, and if his chain of dealerships is all

operating like Maroni Chevrolet. And by the way, if you want to buy a Chevrolet, you should go to Maroney and Chevrolet on Aquachemble Boulevard. You can forget about Schumacher Chevrolet. You can forget about the Chevrolet dealer. I mean, a lot of Chevrolet dealers, and this is by far the most honest Chevrolet dealer we've ever run across. And Chevrolet sells a lot of cars. So if you want a Chevy, go to Barney Chevrolet on Okeechobee Boulevard in West Palm Beach. We wouldn't steer your own.

And because, you know, they ask if you're a Costco member, hey, it cost you $65 to join Costco for a year. If you say no, but I am now, because I would sign up immediately. Well, worth it. Sign up for Costco and buy a car. Auto-co auto

buying program. Absolutely. Folks, I didn't mention earlier, Earl's vigilantes, but if you're tired of car dealer dishonesty, and you want to help out. You can join Earl's vigilantes by going to Earl on Cars. All the information is right there. It's a win-win situation where you can help not only consumers, but consumers in your community. So go to Earl on Cars and check it out, and you can help others maneuver their way around the Internet.

For some of us, you know, is that we need a little help on that. that aspect. So, Earl and Cars.com. And there you'll find Earl's vigilantes. And there you go. There's the hat right there. Do you see that, folks? That's Stu's design and invention. Pretty cute, huh? I like that. Okay, folks, we're out of here. Stay tuned next week. Same time. We'll be right here. Have a wonderful weekend. Back here at 8 a.m. Thank you.