Earl Stewart on Cars - 10.23.2021 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Bev Smith Kia of Stuart

Episode Date: October 23, 2021

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning visits the local "Bad Boy" Kia dealer to see if they have changed their ways and will finally honor their online promo offer. 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, CyberSiber. 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 self-warded dealership. And now, on with the show.

Good morning, everybody. For you viewing us by streaming, you'll see something different. You'll see our beautiful faces, mainly mine. I'm the most handsome one. No, I'm Nancy. but we're taking the mask off and I just thought it was kind of a spur of the moment thought we're all vaccinated double vaccinated and some of us are triple vaccinated we have fact three of us have boosters and we're all completely protected and we've seen the

COVID issue in our area of the country come down significantly and hopefully in your area of the country wherever you're listening to it so it was symbolic. We talked about it last year on the show about why do we wear the mask. We had some people that didn't like it. It does muffle their voice and it's always nice if you're streaming to be able

to see the lips move and the faces. So here we are. You can see my lips move. You can see my face. I think people are saying out there, put the mask back on. I don't care. I'm going to take it off. You can look at Nancy. If you don't like it, you don't look at

Nancy. And we have We have a substitute. Josh is in for Stu. Josh is my youngest son. Stu is my oldest son and Stu is taking a weekend visiting my grandson in New York. And here we are in the studio. We got Rick back and we really apologize for the void in the show last week

because Rick Kearney, who was our certified diagnostic master technician, was gone and we had to fake it for last week. last week we uh google a lot and we uh probably made a lot of mistakes and pretended like we knew stuff we didn't know now we didn't do that i took over for you rick yeah all right yeah but rick is back and and of course speaking of rick uh i know there's some pen-up demand for uh questions on cars mechanical uh i say mechanical it's no longer so you know it's uh it's all electronic now and rick's got the answer that's the bottom line

So if you have a squeak, rattle, or roll in your car and you don't know what it is, and you're afraid to go to the dealer because he's going to take advantage of you or the independent repair place, you just don't want to get a lot of money charged for something and it shouldn't cost a lot of money. Call Rick. 877-960-9960. And Rick monitors our YouTube channel, because we do stream, and we have Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, What else do we stream it on?

Streamerewellandcars.com W.W.W.Stremeuraloncars.com. So we're in a living color all over the globe. And Rick can give you a diagnosis. He can give you a, you know, you can't be absolutely sure until you see the car and drive the car, put it on the diagnostic equipment. But he's been doing this for over a quarter century,

and he knows how to fix cars real well. And he knows symptoms. If you want to, you really want to get cool. You can send a snapshot, video, even a recording. That's always a good idea today with the 21st century, the digital age. You know, you don't have to go physically places anymore. You can send a audio clip, video clip, a combination of both. And let's somebody diagnose it, Rick.

You know, that's actually something that a lot of folks have done when they have an intermittent weird noise on their car. Yeah. Take a video of it and show it to the mechanic. Yeah, instead of going, it goes, beep, beep, or goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I mean, it's always to have the real video, audio, right? I'm sure those impressions that are pretty entertaining the, wow, wow, wow. They're good, though.

All those sound effects, they definitely help, don't they? Yep. Yeah, we're using our cameras on our phones for so many different things. Some, we wouldn't want to mention on the air. Oh, boy. Anyway, anyway, when we get a car diagnosed, wherever you go, It's a good idea just like if you're going to get yourself diagnosed. If you have a symptom and you go to the doctor and he tells you that this, this and this,

if it's something that could be serious, you get a second opinion, don't you? And in fact, very interesting, insurance companies have the data on this. We're talking health now instead of cars, but on your physical health, that if you get three opinions, typically, one of them differs from the other, too. too. So, you know, if you'll do that for your life, maybe you want to do it for your car too. You want to be certain? I mean, if you get a, somebody says it's going to cost you $2,000 to fix this. You know, even if he looks good and sounds good and maybe he's got the credentials, you might want to go to another guy and then maybe a third party, and it's just the way you should do.

It's a good idea. Getting three bids on prices, three diagnosis on car maladies and yourself, your own physical diagnosis so that's my first tip of the day and we're going to we're going to have our mystery shopping report and Stu is typically the Cybermaster Undercover personal mess Josh does a lot of that work anyway behind the scenes even when Stu is here works with Agent Lightning quite a bit and he will be in charge of that today. We probably have more comments from people about our mystery shopping reports than just about anything else. And we're going to cover a lot of material today and I remind all of you that you can get just about everything

that we say on this show and then some at earluncars.com. www. www.e.orgoncars.com. That's our website, blog. blog articles and on our mystery shopping report we have a list archive of all those mr shopping reports and you can you can read them you can listen to them a podcast um and from all that data that we have been gathering over the years we have a list of dealers and we say you're safer with these dealers than these dealers you have the recommended dealers and the do not buy from dealers we grade the dealers

and you can choose who you want to buy from you're never going to get well I won't say that we've actually had a couple A's recently I see a trend I think our dealers

I sure hope I'm right seem to be cleaning up their act a little bit and we just never got an A but we've had a few recently so choose you want to go to a C dealer or D dealer

we don't put the F dealers on the recommended list. We put them on the don't buy list. If they get an F, they're so bad that we give them a chance to redeem themselves and we go back later and check them again. So

Josh Stewart is in charge of that. You're going to love the report. I always say that. We shopped Bessmith Kia. Are they in Fort Pierce? Yes, they're in Fort Pierce. Fort Pierce, Florida. And we have to say

that now because Agent Lightning is going all over the country. And different states. And we also have vigilantes in different states. And we will ask you, Nancy will remind you, I'll remind you right now, see this hat? If you're streaming us, that's a free hat

you get, if you will volunteer to be a vigilante. And you can go to earlvigilandys.com, or you can just go to Earlandcars.com and get the information. We ask you to fill out a little bit of a personal information about your experience, knowledge about cars, to be sure that you qualified to be a vigilante. I mean, vigilantes are not lynching dealers. We're just helping.

Yeah, we're helping the victims. We're helping the people that are taken advantage of, especially those that are not digitally sharp. You know, if you're a senior, and Nancy and I are seniors, a lot of us are not as sharp on the 21st century digital thing. I mean, smartphones, PCs, you know, the web, and the rest of it is a bit of a challenge. And most of buying now is going online. That was really speeded up by the whole COVID phenomenon.

Amazon is the prototype X. What a great example. You know, I bought this shirt on Amazon. I bought my pants, my Levi's on Amazon. I think I bought my underwear on Amazon. You just took the words right out on my map. So if you're online savvy, you can really get a good deal. I'm not saying you can't buy a car on Amazon,

but you can buy just about everything else. And if you own a car and you can do it digitally now, find a dealer that offers that and try to get an out-the-door price. So vigilantes are already. there to help you. And we have several. If you go to Earl and Cars.com, we list our vigilantes and you can contact them and find one near your area. So I'm going to introduce Nancy Stewart. She's sitting immediately to my left. And probably the main reason we took our mask off is so you can see Nancy. She's quite attractive. Not quite. And it's all yours.

at any rate, pardon me for interrupting you, but to what Earl said about volunteers, remember, too, Earl was just talking about Amazon and, you know, being able to, you know, find your way around the Internet. There are some of us who aren't as savvy, and you too can volunteer to help. You can help in a big way, just like you can with Earl's vigilantes, and it's all on Earl at Cars. Earl on cars and there you can go and you can sign up not only for Earl's vigilantes where you be

helping everyone in your community and everyone in between and we really have some very talented volunteers Mark Mark being one of them he is amazing and from time

to time he gives us a call so took advantage of that helping seniors maneuver for their way around the Internet. It's an important part of all of our lives now in more ways than one, whether we like it or not. 877-960, or you can text us at 772-497-60. And don't forget, youranonymousfeedback.com.

Your anonymousfeedback.com. And, ladies, ladies, I implore you, give us a call. Hello. Let us know how your service went, whether you were looking to buy a vehicle. Whether you were selling your vehicle, the demand is high today. That used vehicle you are driving is worth a whole lot more than you think it is. So with all of those options, give us a call. You can win yourself, $50 for the first two new lady callers. First two new lady callers, $50 win-win situation. Give us a call at 877-9-6-9-60.

And on a sidebar, I have to mention you and I on our way in, Earl, we were talking, well, maybe I was talking about the past and how things began with us, and gosh, Jonathan was around back then, and what a crazy. crazy time. And we haven't thought about click and clack for a long, long time. But what an amazing ride. What an amazing journey for all of us here on this radio show. And it's been so much fun. And we're so passionate about helping you and giving you information. But guess what? Most of all, you make the show. We enjoy your company. We enjoy your calls. We enjoy your comments and you can take advantage of all the options and getting in touch with us so do just that

we're going to have a fabulous show this morning and god bless tom and ray two amazing people i believe that they were just mechanics and they just started out and they never realized the journey that they would continue on as two brothers out of boston for the next 30 or 40 years and here we are on the same, I believe, the same path. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to turn the mic over to Josh. Josh, and we can't thank him enough. He is making his presence here. He's filling in for Stu and Josh.

We just don't say enough great things about Josh. He is irreplaceable, and he is a huge part of this. well this journey that we're on he's very important i couldn't agree with you more nancy you don't say enough nice things about me guys no it's an honor to be here sharing uh sharing the table oh wait a second did you say oh boy earlier well you know you were getting a little blue on a saturday morning i had a it is an honor to be here with you guys i look forward to uh some callers and and uh and giving them some sound advice to protect them from from the treasurous world of servicing and buying a vehicle.

I have an anonymous feedback if you want to get the ball rolling on that. Perfect. This one's in your wheelhouse. Actually, it's a sign to you, Dad. Earl, you've been saying that the chip shortage would be over and inventory back to normal by the end of the year. This doesn't seem to be the case. All my reading now says this will last until possibly 20, 23. Are you still singing the same tune?

I wonder if this person was driving in with us this morning because we were tossing it around pretty good. 95. It's been on a lot. We nearly flipped that Tesla. Okay. Yeah, the chip shortage will be over for many of the manufacturers by the end of the year. It depends on who we're talking about. In general, all the manufacturers will be in a better position by the end of the year.

So it's a matter of what you're looking for. What kind of vehicle do you want to buy? Toyota actually happened to come out better than most of the manufacturers in this whole chip issue. They are very tight right now on microchips, and therefore their production is probably bottomed out. But the information we've gotten now is that we are bottomed out, and things are going to look better in November and December. And things will probably be even better in January and February. So it's not a black or white issue. you need to decide when you want to buy your car or when you have better yet need to buy your car

and wait as long as you can. That's all. I mean, if you can't, if you can wait only, well, if you can't wait, then you have to buy the car, right? If you can wait, you're better off to wait 30 days than buy today and then you're better off in 60 days. we had a prospective customer the other day that we advised on buying a CNA van and we said yeah we'll sell you a van today it'll take a while prices are going to come down probably if you buy 60 to 90 days you'll save a couple thousand dollars so how important is saving a thousand two thousand three thousand dollars to you higher priced car the greater the savings and you just have to use your judgment one you you have a double whammy coming up, the microchips will become more plentiful, productional increase, and we've got the new models coming out. The 222s are already here to some extent. By January, you'll have almost all the 2022s out.

So you're always better to buy the current year model car, especially when there's availability. And if you buy a 2021 now, you get the double whammy, you get hurt on depreciation, and pay too much money for the for the last year's model car you know when you buy a when you buy a when you buy a 20-21 car and the 22s are out nobody remembers three years from now that you bought that car new they don't look at as a three-year-old car they look at the calendar and you bought a 2021 when you could have bought a 22 so they think you got a four-year-old car not a three-year-old car and the difference in depreciation between a three- and a four-year-year-old car is substantial. So I say I'll wait till December, January, and no matter what car you buy, you'll

save some money, certain cars you'll save a lot of money. Earl, whenever we were on our way in to the show, the state of dealership, you and I were talking about the microchip, is this fake news, what you just said and what I read and what someone told me, is it fake news? They're looking at 20, 22, 2023, as far as the microchip shortage is concerned. Now, things are getting better. Yes, that is fake news. That is not going to take until 2023 or 22 to correct the microchip shortage.

Okay, so you're saying that December, 21, microchip shortage won't be something we need to consider. Everything will be back to normal. This is like 60 minutes right here. Yeah. Yeah. What I said was that it's going to get better in December. Better. And it'll get even better in January. It'll be getting even better in February. Okay. 2022. Uh-huh.

Okay. Thank you. We are going to go to the phones where we have a young lady by the name of Lori Carter, and she is a first time call. Oh, great. Welcome to the show, Lori. Well, good morning, and thank you. Good morning. You've just won yourself $50. Woo-hoo! No way.

This is my lucky day. You make sure you leave your information so that I can get that check-out to you. You can send your information to my email address. Okay, thank you. I will. What can we do for you this morning? Well, I was lucky enough to buy a car that I've been wanting for about 50 years, a 2017, Mustang.

Ooh. So now, yeah, I know. So I have a Ford Focus, 2017 that I would like to sell. Am I better off trying to sell it locally or just go online

and try to get bids from different dealers? Lori, have you have you heard of we buy anycars dot com? Oh, no, I haven't.

We buy any cards.com. A lot of people haven't. I'll turn the mic over, but Earl. Well, Josh will answer that question because we get a lot of calls, and we buy a lot of cars to third-party sources that we used to never do. Yeah, Lori, you're in a great position because you're one of these rare people nowadays who has a car to sell, but doesn't need to buy a new car already. You already bought the Mustang, is that right?

Correct. It's sitting in my garage. Oh, looking really pretty. Oh, nice. You should get behind the wheel and take it for a Saturday drive. I'm definitely going to do that today. But bottom line is, what Nancy said is completely correct. We Buy Any Car is one of the local outfits that will just purchase a car from you and they make it real easy. My advice to you, and I believe my father would have the same advice, is to shop it around.

take it to two or three different dealerships try a couple online resources a carvana is one vrum dot com is another you're you're really in the driver seat here because you have a car to sell and everybody wants to buy your car right now so be patient get at least three or four buy offers and go to the highest one okay and then can I like bargain with him say oh sure you know say I go to and let him know that somebody else offered me this. Are you willing to come up to this? Blah, blah, blah. Absolutely.

Right now, a car is worth what somebody will pay for it, and you don't have to take the first or second or even third offer. So, like I said, be patient, be strong, and get all the money. And, Lori, if you've got the time, hmm, take advantage of it. Negotiate. Negotiate. I don't have to worry about, I don't have to worry about the price dropping out on me in the next couple of weeks.

No, no. No, not not. Every, everyone is looking for a used car, the auto industry I'm talking about. There's such a shortage on new and used cars because of the, we have an inventory shortage, we have a microchip

problem shortage, and you are sitting in the driver's seat, and that vehicle being is you have the time, take your time, go get four or five prices on your vehicle, if you if you have the time, but you're going to be paid, well, much more.

I'm going to say triple, Josh? It depends on the vehicle. Or double. About probably 30% higher than she would have got last year. It's a pretty strong used car market right now. So 30% more in my pocket? That's, you know, impressive. So that's our advice, Lori.

All right, well, thank you. I listen to you guys just about every Saturday that I can. Oh, thank you. so much. So much from you guys. I mean, you're just a wealth of knowledge. Yeah. Well, we appreciate you saying that, and we really learn a lot from our listeners.

And please, Lori, spread the word to the ladies that they, too, can win themselves $50. And it's always the first two new lady callers that can win themselves $50. And thank you so much for helping me to build this platform for women in this industry, because we've become a voice, we've become very powerful, and we have really taken the auto industry by surprise. They depend on us for spending the kind of money that we spend. Thank you, Lori. Thank you. Have a great day.

You're what? Bye-bye. Let me talk a little bit about the high-priced cars. Of course, the dealers know that you're looking to get more money for your used car, and you know that your used car is worth more. So like everything else, they're going to exaggerate, and they're going to tell you that they're going to pay you far more for your used car than they will. Now, remember, the reason they're buying your used car is so they can sell it to somebody else,

and they don't want to pay you too much. They want to buy it for as little as possible. So you're going to find most dealers are going to be saying the same thing, including our dealership. We say we want to buy used cars. and we will pay you more and we will. But we won't pay you too much. We'll pay you what we can afford to pay you

and then take that car that we bought from you and retail it to somebody for even more than we paid you. So look at the facts. Nobody, no car dealer is going to pay you too much for a used car because then if he does, he's going to lose money when he tries to retail it. So it's your hot button and they know that and they, if there's somebody out there then thinks that if someone can offer me enough money for my trade end, I'm going to go in

there and sell it to them. They get you in the door. Why? Not because they want your trade end, because they want to sell you a car. And then surprise, surprise, surprise, you're not getting as much for the trade-ins you thought you're going to get. They may have done that by a little sleight of hand, paying overcharging even more for the car you're buying so they can pretend to give you more for the trade-end.

So nothing has changed with dealers. They're going to tell you what you want to hear to get you in the door, and then you will be taken advantage of. And shopping and comparing with different dealers, shopping and comparing with this new phenomenon that's come on in the past couple of years, the third-party used car sellers. I mean, they are proliferating. They're proliferating to the point where I can

can't even remember all their names now. I think Carvano was one of the first, and we buy any car.com, Vroom, and there's a couple more that I can't. One of the old Reliables is CarMax. CarMax is a good company. They're fair, they're honest, and they do buy cars. They've always bought cars, but you still have, check and compare. CarMax will pay you a lot more for a car than Vroom on one day, and then Vroom will pay you a lot more for a car on one day than CarMax, and the same goes for Carvana. Each of them has their own customer base, and they have their supply and demand situation, and that's how they're going to base the offer they will give you underused cars. So as Nancy said earlier, if you can get five or six bids, you're better off

than three or four bids. You're in the driver's seat, like Josh said. You can really, you can really be the boss and you can end up getting a good amount of money for your used car and that won't be that won't be true a few months from now i don't know when it's going to slow down but it's a role that does it's not going to last forever and you know folks uh what to what earl said you know about nothing much changing in this industry um i could do two hours on that uh but i want to thank everyone who is listening and who you know gives us compliments a weekend we got because we are changing the industry. And as we change the industry, we're helping you, and you're helping us.

Give us a call to a free at 877960 or you can text us at 772-497-6530. We're going to go back to the phones and we're going to talk to Frank. Good morning, Frank. Well, good morning to you all. It's always nice to hear new folks on the radio such as show. gosh, but first thing I want to say to Rick, I called a couple of weeks ago about an onboard motor that we kind of try putting diesel in by mistake instead of gas, and we took his vice and got it cleaned up and put the gas in and starts up perfect, runs perfect.

There was no issues with it, so thank you so much. Excellent. Glad we could help. Yeah, and also the guys that did a repair on it, the dealer says that motor's work. for a lot. It's only 10 hours of use. It's like almost a brand new engine. It's like you guys don't have cars. They don't have outboard motors. So in another week or two, I'm going to put it up for sale and hopefully get some money back on that. And for Josh, I had a rare opportunity to meet him a few months ago on a Thursday when I was trying to get a keymate for a car.

And he may remember I had brought some goodies for his sales staff, some bagels. some cookies and things like that. I do indeed. I always remember the man who brings the bagels. Oh, boy. So anyway, and then we actually went to, I know you guys like Big Dog Ranch, but we went to Peggy Adams for our two cats the other day. I couldn't believe the amount of new buildings in there.

I had been there for a few years, and it was like overwhelming. A very nice operation there. Absolutely. And then I got to get this young man to call in probably next week or the five. week. He worked up in there. He's 20 years old, and he needed a new car. It was going to be his first new car. And he was looking for Kia's, and it wasn't getting any deals down here. So he went up to DeLan, Florida, where his grandmother lives last weekend. And the car they showed him had a sticker on there of $27,000. And he says, well, that's not right, you know,

the Southern Maroni sticker and stuff like that. And he had a his grandmother was able to get them down, I think, to like around $20,000 from 27 for a brand new 22 Kia. Of course, I don't know what they're really supposed to be worth, but anyway, he said he almost had him down in the 19s, but they're, you know, and I wanted him to call him and tell you his experience because whatever he did was really outstanding, so I'm sure he'll call you, I'll let him know, but anyway, let's see what else. Yeah, that's about it, but we enjoy your show.

Oh, I got this question. Amory that goes there and sees Randy has been getting her Lexus service here for years. She's touring with the idea of possibly selling her car. I guess, like you said, right now it's the highest time. I mean, it's a one-owner car, super, super clean, maintained by you guys. You have any idea of whether it was 2008, Lex or Lexx-R-X-3-50 might be in the market for them? You know, Frank, it's harder now for us to, we can give your price, we can tell you what we would pay for that vehicle, but we'd also say somebody else might pay you more.

All we can do is analyze our market, our supply and demand, and what we think we can sell that car for when we buy it from Anne-Marie. And when we buy it from Anne-Marie, we're going to try to find that car for. a retail buyer that will pay us a profit. And if you go to Carvana, you've got a CarMax, you've got to Vroom, you go to another Toyota dealer that has, of course, Toyota dealers love used Toyotas. People tend to come and buy them from the, you know,

the dealer that manufacture their franchise for it. So, you know, a price from us, we'll give you a price, and then take it to a call Carvana. We buy any car.com, CarMax. check with the local toilet dealers, Palm Beach, Toyota, Southern 441 Toyota, whichever ones are nearest you. You get four or five bits. Have fun.

Anne-Marie can get all the money for that car if she shops it around. Josh, what would you, do you have a number over there? I don't know how many miles are on it, but to a dealer, it's probably worth in the ballpark of $8,000 to $9,000, I'm guessing. But she might get $10,000 or $12,000. Oh, to a retail customer, that's, yeah, she sells it privately much more, but like Earl was saying, it's worth what somebody will pay for it. They won't overpay for their situation, but it's worth more now than it's been in a long time. Yeah, no, that sounds pretty good.

The only drawback is you need to replace it. There's no cars out there right now. Exactly. So, if you sell a car, you're going to say, I don't want the car now. I mean, I don't want to drive the car, but you, you, I don't want to drive the car. A lot of people are trapped. You know, they have to. The sad thing is that, yes, their car is worth so much money,

but the dealer, if they have to buy a new car, is going to take all that premium and then some when they charge them for the new car. In some cases, you know, the extra value of the used cars that's not going to compete against those addendums and market value adjustments that you might find on a new car. So definitely tread carefully there. Yeah, what I tell people, you know,

If you have a car, you know, I don't need the car. That's a no-brainer. But if you have a car, you drive some, if you can make a couple thousand dollars more on that car by selling it today than wait in six months, how much is it going to cost you for substitute transportation in six months? I mean, if you put very few miles, if you have another car in the family that you can use,

double up on your husband or wife's car or a carpool or take Uber or a Lyft or, you know, or public transportation, I mean, Palm Tran. Take your bike. Yeah, it depends on what you can get by with and what the cost would be. But, yeah, if you can get out of the car today and make a home run and then just be a little inconvenient, not too inconvenient, is something worth considering.

Well, that's good advice, as always. Thank you, guys, so much. Thank you, Frank. Have a great day, Frank. Can I do one thing that we'll see, hopefully you don't beat me up here? how about one quick corny joke question for you go for it

I do what you call a rabbit that has fleas no rabbit with fleas no bugs bunny and on that note okay

Frank it was that's a corniest joke I heard of Frank it was great talking to you remember one man's junk is another man's treasure so you can you know you can definitely

make out on your wife's vehicle. I thought you were talking about his joke there. One fan's joke is enough. No, I'm signing a lot. Frank, it was good to hear from you. We'll talk to you next week. Thanks, Frank.

Okay, doke. I have $50 here. Yep, one more female caller. I'm waiting for you. $50. And that's a win-win situation. Give us a call and share whatever experience you had. And everybody out there is an experience.

So, Rick's got to YouTube. Give us a call. Please, ladies, $50 for the first two. Excuse me, first, the second female caller, 877960, and you can text us at 772-497-6-530. We're going to go to Rick, and we are so happy he's back. Good morning, and Negan One is asking, I would like to ask Earl if he is over. opened up his Tesla. Watching some videos in plaid mode,

it accelerates at 1.3 G's, which is phenomenal. They say people could actually get a little sea sick or a little motion sickness from the massive acceleration. I'm actually considering getting one in a year or two. Yeah, I know I haven't opened it up. And I'm dying to, and I've talked a lot about it, seriously considering going out of the Palm Beach Speedway. They have a drag strip out.

there and it would be relatively safe compared to Indian Town Road. And here's another interesting thing. You'll give me an opening to talk about something I thought was very, very interesting about Tesla and Elon Musk and

fully autonomous cars. There's been a lot of hype and concerned about fully autonomous cars. Tesla, a number of Teslas have been in accidents and a few people have been tragically killed. Sometimes the cars were allegedly on fully autonomous.

And I think in a couple of cases, people were playing cards or in the back seat, playing with a dog, and crazy stuff like that. How much of that is true, we don't know. Anyway, it's very bad publicity for Tesla and the whole fully autonomous phenomenon. So here's something that Tesla is doing, and you can't say Tesla without saying Elon Musk,

because he truly runs the company. And it just popped up on my software, on my Tesla plan and my son Stu also is driving a S plus Tesla and it popped up on his software message and it says beta program fully autonomous driving and it said that would you like to enroll so if you want to have a fully autonomous car you enroll and it's a test it's a safety driving test and you and you by approving it you you approve it you prove Tesla to see every facet of your driving. How fast you're going, how fast you stop, how fast your corner.

And remember, Tesla has cameras all around the car, they see stop signs, red lights. You know, they see the whole driving environment and how you drive through that environment. And for those of you who are worried about privacy, forget about it. Because once you say okay, Tesla knows everything about you and what you do with that car. So that's where I am now. I said, okay, and they are going to either let me be an autonomous driver or not. And I don't think I'm in the past. But the funny thing is, I have a 96 score, which is good.

Out of 2000 or? 96 out of 100. But they're only going to take people with perfect scores. And my son, Stu, has got like a 91, which is a good score. That doesn't make sense. I think they should give the autonomous driving to the worst driver. And if you're a perfect driver, you don't need the help. Well, from a cell, you know, Elon Musk is not only a genius in terms of electronics and design and whatnot. He's also a genius in terms of marketing.

And so he is now fighting the media. Now, what is the biggest enemy of Tesla right now? It's the fact that Teslas are unsafe. And there's a lot of hype on that and a lot of talk about it. And I don't believe for one minute they're unsafe. I don't think they're any more unsafe than any car, probably safer than most cars. But he wants to market the car. He wants to sell a lot.

So he's defusing the entire attack on autonomous driving by saying, hey, look, the only people will be able to drive my cars autonomously are those that are super safe drivers. And that's the kind of person who'll read a newspaper on 95. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Nancy would argue with me that I'm a super safe driver. But 96 is a pretty good score. Or I'm dropping the ball, and they break it down by component, they say that I corner too fast. And, but they, you know, in terms of speed and stoplights and acceleration and the rest of it, I'm all green. I get good scores.

But I corner too fast. And I don't even think I corner too fast, but I do. Okay. To your cornering. Whenever you corner, I end up on your last. I do that in a purpose. To Elon and this extremely safe Tesla, well, here's my opinion.

I don't think that he took the passenger into consideration because the passenger is free willy. He or she is all over the place. There's no place to secure your body when you take a corner So, therefore, it can be a very dangerous situation unless you become seasoned in the Tesla and you're aware of the driver's next move. Thank you. That solves the whole problem.

That's me. I'm aware of your cornering. Thank you. So, anyway, going back to the question, I can't recommend the Tesla plaid more in addition to it being the fastest car on the planet, A fastest production car, I mean, it's faster than Miseratis, Aston Martins, Ferraris, you know, all the super, super hot cars, it's faster than all of those. And as you say, zero to 60 and under two seconds, under three seconds, 2.9. 2.9 seconds, 0 to 60, and the quarter mile, under 9 seconds, and over 155 miles an hour and a quarter mile.

So it's an incredibly fast car. It corners extremely well, handles extremely well, and you go ahead and buy it. I mean, it is a great car. Why does it become a contest on 95 when somebody pulls up beside the Tesla? And I've got to say, folks, yes, it's another man. He's in the opposite lane. And it's a contest. Why?

I don't see any ladies pulling up beside me and giving it the gas and say, hey, let's go. let's go. But in a Tesla, it becomes a contest. Guy's got a lot of things to prove, you know. Thank you, Josh. We are going to get to Rick, who's got a whole lot of YouTube's. All right. Well, I do have one more from Mark Ryan. He says, beyond the chip shortage, are you seeing inventory shortages on general replacement

and maintenance parts, either from the manufacturer or supply chain perspective? And yes, we are seeing a few issues here in there. there, not just with computerized parts, but believe it or not, batteries, because in the shop, 12-volt batteries usually have some sort of a long warranty period for proration. So because of the specific rules by every manufacturer, you have to replace it with the exact same model and size of battery. But batteries, because they're coming for Toyota, they're coming from interstate, we're actually having a bit of a hard time sometimes getting the correct batteries in and that is one of our supply

chain issues so folks if you bring your car into the dealership and they tell you hey you know we're having a hard time with certain parts you know please be patient and understand that sometimes our hands are tied we can't just get any battery off the shelf to put on your car and we can't just call out to a local parts store to get a battery we sometimes have to use an exact specific battery and sometimes they're just not available right now. So, yeah, there's still some issues. Things are getting tight yet. Absolutely.

Okay. You know, I neglected Anne-Marie's opening text. Should I get to that? Oh, boy. I've just discovered that fact and I feel awful because normally we kick off the show. So I think we should get to that right now. I think you should. Good morning, she says.

And then she describes, this is a very long one, so I'll summarize the first part. She describes two pretty awful accidents involving a car carrier, one that hit like an overpass the car carrier carrying vehicles you know she says it hit an overpass that was 10 feet 10 inches tall another thing involved a amtrak train hitting it so then she asks two incredible accidents in a little over month and driving behind a car carrier on the interstate prompts the following questions one are vehicles fastened to car carriers or is gravity keeping the vehicles in place we can and we can answer that one right away I think yeah they are supposed to be chained down quite securely. Yeah, they crank them down pretty good. I see them offloading the vehicles almost every morning, and there's a lot of rattling of chains involved. So rest easy, and Marie for behind the car, it's chained down.

Number two, if the vehicles are fastened, how securely are they fastened to the carriers? Very securely. Yes, I think they're probably double and triple check, because that'll be a huge, huge hazard there. Number three, is it just a streak of bad luck that two crashes made the news? are things getting more dangerous and number four have you ever had a problem with damaged vehicles coming off the car carrier i'll handle these i think yes it's probably just a string of streak of bad luck and uh yes from time to time we've had some issues uh with cars off the carriers a bit of rick

speak to that actually i just want to mention on on the she mentioned one where the carrier went or too low of a bridge correct yeah now that's on the driver because the driver is supposed to know i i had to have a cdl license for a while in my career so The driver is supposed to know the exact height of his vehicle loaded exactly, and he is to be aware of any bridge that he is encountering to make sure that he has more than excessive clearance to be sure he's going to get under that bridge safely. Well, let me jump in there and say this, that one of the problems is there are a lot of things that are supposed to be and what the rules are, but right now there's a huge shortage of drivers and there's a huge shortage of trucks, I guess, because of the overflowing. and demand and they are dangerous and I think they're getting a lot of novice drivers out there that are new and experienced and they are they are dangerous I that's one of my pet peeves by the way not car carriers but big

big trucks and for a lot of reasons Nancy and I have been doing more traveling on the highways sawgrass Expressway and turnpike than normal and especially with the overload of trucks and transportation today, car carriers, and tandem tractor trailers and big, big, big vehicles. If you're driving a car like I do, you are totally blinded by a large truck or vehicle. You can't see in front of you, you can't see if you're alongside, and God help you if you're on the Sawgrass Expressway during rush hour, you're boxed in by big trucks, you're totally blind.

You cannot anticipate stopping. You can't anticipate signals. You miss exit signs. And, you know, of all the extraordinary safety issues that we have, even when we don't have the volume of trucks on the roads that we have today, I think that's one of the greatest. And do car carriers create accidents? Yes, they do, but not so much.

because they go under bridges, but because they blind people. And then, you know, they restrict the lanes, and they should. I don't know whether it's good to restrict the lanes or not. When you restrict the lanes, you pack them all into the two right-hand lanes, and then the left lane gets overcrowded

by everybody else, because they don't want to be there with the trucks. And if they don't do that, and the trucks are in the other lane that you'll want to use if you want to pass. So, I think, you know, we're talking about this infrastructure and spending trillions of dollars, I think they ought to have highways just for trucks and other highway for passengers.

I mean, that's a radical idea. It would cost a couple trillion, I guess. Probably. I don't know what the answer is, but it's one of the greatest safety issues, in my opinion. I'd like to hear from our audience. Anybody out there driving a car, I bet you feel the same way. If you're an SUV or a truck, a little bit different story because you have better visibility. Absolutely. And for anyone that's a bit short, myself, I feel safer maybe with a booster seat because when I'm on 95, I want to be able to see the exit that's coming up that I'm going to be taking in.

If that truck is there or in my blind spot, I miss that exit, that was the old days. Now I'm a seasoned driver, and you just have to stay focused and you have to keep an eye on the traffic around you. So, folks, to Earl's question, give us a call toll free at 877-960-960, and we are going to go back to the phones, but one more reminder for one more lady, give me a call. $50 you win this morning, $50, $877-960, we're going to go to Marty, and we definitely enjoy speaking to Marty from West Palm Beach. Hi, Marty. Hi, how's everybody doing without your mask today? We're breathing, a sigh of relief. Good. This is more of a hypothetical question. I was fortunate enough.

I had my Camry lease that was up in November, but my wife didn't like the RAV-4, so I got a CRV in April, and they gave me a good deal, and they gave me more for the car. They bought the Camry outright. My question, though, is if you have a lease, I assume you're paying more for a lease now than you did a year ago.

So my question is, if your lease is up and you go to the car dealer and they don't even have the car you want, do you extend your lease, or what would your policy be? I can jump in there if you like. You said it right there. The key is to start early. Extend your lease is an option. It may not have to be an option if you start three months. months early, but give yourself 60 or 90 days to find a car and also make sure that you get

the full value for your lease because, you know, historically, your car doesn't have equity at the end of the lease, especially if you have a lot of miles and such. But nowadays, it's rare is the case that the lease isn't worth more than the payoff because, you know, the banks didn't anticipate, you know, the skyrocketing price of used cars, you know, three years ago when that residual was set. So just start early or extend your lease. If that's an option, most leasing companies will give you at least a 90-day extension, I think, without much request. And make sure you ask them to find out, you know, to shop that lease turning around to make

sure you get all the equity that might be in it. Jay, what's happening to the residuals now with the high use car values? Are they reflected in a residual today if somebody comes in for a 36-month lease? They are. Yeah, that was another part of this question. question there. So, yeah, between the two factors, dealers charging more for the vehicle and then the car manufacturers and leasing companies pulling back on their lease incentives because they simply don't have to. I mean, the supply is... But if the residual is high and the lease

factor interest interest rate lease factor is constant, which I think it is, why wouldn't the lease payment be less? No, no, but that's the thing. Along with like cash incentives, the banks have pulled back on their lease program. So the residuals are aren't as high as they should be, and the money factors are a little bit higher than they should be. So they're not adjusting their residuals up. It's a double-edged sword. You're getting charged more by the dealer, and then the bank's terms aren't as favorable, and as a result, the lease prices are much, much higher than they were six months ago, two years ago, you name it.

Yeah. In my case, they paid off the seven months I still owe it on the lease, plus gave me a little extra money towards the new lease. So in my case, as I've said before on many calls, I negotiated quite well and got the car for what I wanted to pay and also didn't pay the seven months that we still do. But that was back in April. Now I don't think I would have got anywhere. I brought the car in for service in September, and they didn't have one CRV on the lot. Yeah, you hit the sweet spot there because the used car prices were pretty strong back in April,

but the shortage wasn't as acute, and so the dealers weren't gouging as much as they are now. So, you know, good on you for the timing there. Yeah, well, now I got two and a half years on that lease to go, so hopefully in two and a half years, things will be better. All right, very good. Thanks again. Thank you, Mardik. Thanks for listening. Okay, bye-bye. 877960 or you can text us at 772-4976530 we're going to go back to Josh he has some texts

I have some texts here this one's for Rick morning Rick I was driving my 2008 Prius last night and getting ready to park when the triangle light came on the car still starts and when I put in park reverse while it's running the light goes out but the second I put it in drive the light reappears. There's also a message that is displayed on the monitor screen that says caution and says something about putting it in park. It's a 2008 with only 30,000 original miles. Can you possibly help? Is it safe to drive to a shop? As long as it's still starting and running normally, I would drive it to a shop quickly. The first thing I would have them check is the 12-volt battery. Quite often when the 12-volt battery starts getting a little weak on those, it

causes all the computers to get a little goofy. It's it almost like it makes them a little punch drunk and what may be happening is it also double check to make sure all the doors and the hatch are securely closed first. Imagine if it's that simple. It could

very well be that simple. Especially that back hatch, if it's only halfway latched and it's moving up and down a little bit that'll cause that triangle. Let me jump in there. Isn't there a code that you can rely on. When I see a yellow light, just like a yellow light,

that says caution. When it's said a red light, it says stop. So when you're indicating your warning indicator is yellow, it's not an emergency situation. Right. Yeah, okay. So I think, and the little triangular, is that a generic sign?

She didn't say what color it was. I'm not sure. Yellow and triangular. I get it on my car. Actually, on the Prius, the triangle that shows up is always going to be red with an exclamation point in it. Oh, I thought she said yellow. And it generally refers to an issue with the hybrid system. But there are times when that hybrid system, when it starts acting up, it still gives you the ability to have what's known as the limp mode.

Excuse me, didn't she say yellow? No, I reread it. There's no color mentioned at all. No color mentioned. Okay. Gotcha. Okay. But they will quite often have a limp mode so that you don't have to tow it to the shop. You can still kind of limp it in to get to the shop. Is it cap the speed or something? Yeah, it may very well. But I would get it to the shop as soon as possible. As far as the triangle and the color in it, how many colors are there?

Green, amber, and red. Three basic colors for the lights on your dash. Okay, because I just had my light color. up on my dash in that triangle and I thought it was yellow. Maybe it was... Well, but that's on your Avalon. Yeah, that's an Avalon. Prius only has the one triangle light and that was going to be red. I find it surprising they don't have a standard color code throughout the entire industry.

Well, it's so many different things because... Yeah. But if you go with the idea that yellow or amber generally means it's something you want to get checked soon. but you got a little safety margin I don't think it's model specific was my point I think it's a generic indication probably NHTSA

dictates some of this stuff yes yes and you know in the day I would be really the lights on but today you know I just pull over on the side of the road open up all the doors slam them get back in the car lights off and then if that doesn't work

I check the gas and that's not good on 995 either I pull over on the side of the road. And also, as far as the gas tank is concerned, you know, I'll wiggle that too. In the day, I would make a phone call, you know, it was something, but it's something, if you don't panic, you can, you know, you can take care of yourself. I just saw a photograph of one of the scariest Halloween displays. It was a row of pumpkins all carved with the check engine light, the tire pressure light, the warning light, the warning lights. from each on the dash.

It was hilarious. It can be very overwhelming. Okay, let's move along here. Okay, we're going to go back to the phones, and don't forget, ladies and gentlemen, you can reach us at 877-960-90-60, and guess what, ladies, I'm sitting here waiting for you to give us a call. One more female caller, $50. We'll go back to the phones and talk to John, one of our favorite callers from Palm City.

Good morning, John. Good morning to everyone. I'm full of questions today. The first one probably Earl can answer. Josh was right on the button when he said to use cars from this time last year up 30%. The actual figure, according to the Mannheim used car value index, is 27.5. Do you people, or Earl in particular, think that the used car values will still go up or tumble a little bit? you know as you said on the new ones now they'll loosen up because of the chip shortage

what about your opinion on the used cars will they go back down a little bit i think use car prices are going to come down slower and i think that there's two phenomena we're going so it's just a normal supply and demand and of course when you have fewer new cars people are buying use as the use cars manufacturing speeds up new car manufacturing speeds up, it'll take some of the pressure off used car prices. But the parallel phenomenon that's keeping used car prices up is the big guys that have come online like, well, we buy any car.com and Carvana and Vroom, and there's a bunch of other ones. You know, used to be just CarMax was the only big guy out there. And so they're pushing cars and they're buying cars.

car dealers trade in a lot of cars the independent used cars don't trade they trade in cars too but they don't get as many trade-ins or good trade-ins so I think you're going to see new car prices

and this is just a this is an Earl Stewart prediction I haven't read this anywhere that the new car prices are going to come down quicker than used car prices now second question for Earl do you think that

now that getting MSRP, if you can find the car, that some dealers are actually raising their dealer fee prices that they charge? They have no conscience. I mean, they're probably too busy to raise them. They'll make it too much money. It would take too long to order new buyer's orders. I think they're just jacking up their market adjustments. Where there's a way. The dealer fees are best when you are pretending you're selling the car at a good price.

now they don't even have to pretend. They walk in, the first thing they say is microchip shortage, microchip shortage. We only got one car. If you don't buy it, the guy over there is going to buy it right behind you, and blah, blah, blah. So, they're in a fat city, as far as car dealers go.

And they just, they don't hide their markups. They just say, okay, we have a market value adjustment of $5,000. Wait until you hear the Mystery Shopping Report in the second have the show, John. You're not going to believe what they're trying to charge over MSRP.

When things stabilize and people are really competing again and not getting too much money for every new car they sell, then they have to get sneaky. And that's when they raise their dealer fees. They do three things. They raise their dealer fees. They proliferate their dealer fees. Instead of two, they go to three. Instead of three, they go to four. And I forgot what the third thing I was going to say was, oh, they changed the names. So they come up with ingenious ideas, electronic filing fee, doc fee, delivery fee, handling fee, you know, flower fee. I mean, come up with anything. Coffee, coffee.

Coffee, yeah, coffee. Don't forget to know that. And there's no regulation. And there's no regulation. A personal report, probably the best we ever had from Molnack's Ford, and it came up with fees. I think you said they have a very small or no-dealer fee. But I want to tell you about a new ad that I see, and it's in the area of West Palm Beach, there's a dealer called Classic Cars of Palm Beach.

He's been running full-page ads. He's on Route 1 at the Jupiter to Questa. I've passed it, but I never went in. They've been around a long time, haven't they, John? Yes. And he's running full-page ads. No deal of fees, no hassle, no BS. It's unbelievable. It sounds too good to be true. And I think because I've run down at Wave Lot, I'm just going to stop in once. But he specifically says no deal of fees, no hassle, all down a list that he lists. And it sounds very impressive. And he's right in Jupiter, right by Tequesta. But the good news is it's a dealer, a used car dealer. That's a saying no fees. It's easy for a used car dealer to say that. But Brayman, who's a new card dealership, I heard that he owns, well, a deal has been around for a long time also, Palm Beach Auto Sales on Military Trail, and that's for ultimate, you know, cars that they

sell pre-owned. But I heard now it's owned by Brayman. I don't know how true that is. I haven't heard that, but it's entirely possible. Bramon's got a lot of of money. Well, I happen to just stop by like a kid in the candy store of Brayman, and I, because I was a caller with service, and I dropped in, and believe it or not, next door to the service, is the rolls and Bentley's. They didn't have any stock on cars, except for one, all the used cars on the showroom floor. They can't get the new ones, like everything else, a shortage. And it's affected. all automobiles it looks like, especially ones that are imported from other countries.

So let's hope this all blows over. Not that everybody's in a market to look for a rolls or mentally. But I've got to tell you. I really feel sorry for those people who are buying those rolls. They use one. They detail them so perfectly. I mean, it's unbelievable, and it's done at the dealership. So it's a shortage of cars.

It looks like everything imports especially. even in normal times it takes you six months to get a Rolls-Royce when you order it so now I understand instead of six months you have to wait a year but you're all at those prices I would buy it as if I had the money

I would stay away from a Rolls for a penalty Yeah that isn't exactly my cup of two Now John I want to your mention about the increase in used car prices I mean a true car consumer report.

I mean, this is pretty significant. 29% 29% increase. And if we didn't have enough to worry about out there, I'll tell you what, knowledge is power and doing your homework. That is for sure because now, I don't

even know if I could call it a minefield, because things have gotten crazy. You have time. One fast question to Rick. Rick, following cause, New Corvette is mid-engine A lot of the high-performance cars

Mid-engines McLaren, you name it But Toyota, in the mid-80s From 85 to 89 Had a mid-engine Toyota MR2 It was a sports car There was no frills

No roll-out on windows, no power steering No door locks No anti-lock brakes But it was sold at that time for like $12,000. What is the reason why a company that's top-notch like Toyota doesn't come out with a mid-engine car? They actually tried it again in the mid-90s with the MR2 spider.

And again, a mid-engine, and it just, it really, it was a niche car. It only had a small amount of people that were looking for something like that little racer car. And you had to be a small person, too. Yeah, definitely. anytime I had to work on him it was like I was putting them on not getting in them so John you got to remember that

nobody cares about mid-engine cars anymore because electric cars basically handle like mid-engine cars because they don't have an engine and all you have in the middle of the car is a great big battery so the center of gravity and electric car is exactly where you want it and so they don't care where the engine is

you got a little bitty motor but that's a very light compared to a normal combustion engine. It duplicates that weight distribution. They had mid-engined, and boy, that thing was some large failure. Yeah, my Tesla basically handles like any mid-engine racing car is one of the reasons I corner too fast, I guess, is because it feels so good when you go around the corner.

Beautiful bucket seats wrap around you, whip around that corner, and I feel like you're going, taking the corner 10 miles an hour when you're taking at 25. Well, Elon Musk is a permanent resident now at Texas, and he's going to turn that state around with alternate energy.

Oh, you got that right. It'd be amazing if anybody turn Texas around. I'm looking forward to the shopping report. Thank you, John. Give us a call to all for you at 877-960 99-60.

You can text us at 772-4976530, and don't forget, your anonymous feedback.com. Now back to Josh. Yeah, I got a handful of texts here. We can catch up a little bit. Jonathan and Wellington sends an interesting point in. He says, if a bank will only give a loan based on the value of property and no more, how can you get a loan for $35,000 for a car that has a value of $25,000? Deal ships are charging way more than the vehicle is worth.

I'll be happy to feel that one. The banks actually, at least car banks, you know, they might be different than mortgage banks. They'll typically advance if you have good credit more than 100% of the, like, quote-unquote, book value of the car. So your example here, like $35,000 on a car that has a $25,000 book value, doing some quick mental math, that's like 140-ish percent. And that's probably at the top end, but a bank will advance that much money if you have, like, you know, Sterling. credit. If you have challenged credit, it's a different story, but I'm sure in a lot of these cases... And home mortgages are a lot longer. I mean, you know, a 30-year-a-law versus a three-year a loan, big difference. Indeed, indeed there is. So, yeah, so they're not capped at 100% of

the value, but, you know, it is depending on the customer's credit, but getting a loan for 130 or 135% or even 140% is not unheard of. So good question, John. Or zero. I mean, you know, you can have zero down payment. I mean people are just if you got an 800 beacon score they don't care. And if the customer doesn't have great credit, the dealership will warp them for a big

down payment or try to, you know, if they have a trade in, that'll help offset that that addendum sticker. All right, go ahead and answer. Josh, we're going to go back to the phones. Mark is calling us from Palm Beach Gardens. Good morning, Mark. Good morning, all. Hey, it's nice to hear from you.

can be doing good this morning. Yeah. And that was a great intro for Earl's vigilantees, Nancy, when you started to show up. I know all the other vigilantes love to get texts and emails and so forth. I had two questions. Josh may probably, I want to congratulate Josh when I was working for the dealer and I first met Josh. He was handling the consumer car rental department

and we went in the body shop office and now to see he's way up in the family tree and being taking care of the high end of the business and being on the show, I just want to congratulate you, Josh. We've done a great job. I appreciate that. Thank you.

And you may be able to answer this question. As far as the car rental department within Earl Stewart, Toyota, um and i'm just asking this because i'm familiar with the dealership what you know you hear uh out in the uh consumer market about how high the prices of rental cars have gone up it's like when they talk about percentages of increase in consumer expenses car rentals seem to be way up

there the top um i remember somewhere along the line car rentals used to be the base cost was about $30 a day. What are the, in your dealership, what is it charges for rental cars these days? It's around $50, $45 to $55 right now, depending on the vehicle. That's not too bad. And because of shortages and all that, do you have enough fleet cars for that? Well, that's been a challenge. Rick mentioned the issue. with getting batteries before so a lot of our customers waiting on that battery were put into rental cars on Toyota's dime right so the key is not you know you you want to sell those vehicles because you could get a fortune at the auction or buy it from your own used car department if you

sell it to them but but then replacing them is the trick and I believe Toyota just recently pulled back on on the rental fleet allocations so I think a lot of rental car departments the dealerships are going to be holding on to their fleets a little bit longer until the inventory situation settles out. Yeah, I was just wondering if it was becoming a hindrance for, you know, customer satisfaction, everything. As Earl's always said, and as Earl teaches employees, that your customer is always right, even if they believe they're, especially if they believe they're right, there's no question you're satisfied the customer. That's Cyril's your code. My second question is, is view at the dealership, then again, I just want all the other listeners to understand that I had kind of a personal connection with the dealership, though.

I'm not trying to do an advertisement for a real Stewart-Toyota. But are you guys, like all the other industries, are you guys finding it hard to get good, qualified employees? I mean, I'm sure your sales staff should be pretty good, but what about mechanics and body shop people in all around? Is the industry experiencing employee shortages like a lot of the other companies in the country? As a matter of fact, yes. Your point, you're right on the money, actually, in the sales department, because our, you know, the volume has come down due to the vehicle shortage. You know, we're well-staffed in sales, but it has been a challenge to find qualified technicians and service advisors. You know, it seems that the labor shortage that's

affecting every industry in the land is affecting the auto industry as well. So we're always on the good lookout, on the lookout for a well-qualified technician, and they are few and far between. There's a challenge for us, maybe more so than a lot of dealers, because we require any new employee to be vaccinated against COVID. And so we have a lot of qualified people. there that you know that would otherwise have come to work but we're very careful and so they got to work in another dealer that doesn't require that that was kind of like part B of my question that I was going to ask because you know a lot of mechanics whether it be in the repair shop or the mechanical shop just the

type of people which I'm very familiar with not that there any different than most other Americans that they are kind of a little bit more hardcore and they may be you know maybe a higher percentage of them don't want to have a vaccine but anyway those were just two interesting thoughts I hope it wasn't boring material for your listener but thank you very much and again Josh great job and Rick it's good to have you back man The show suffers a little bit when you're not there. A lot of bit. We're actually looking into cloning Rick,

so we don't, to solve our technician issue. We're really close. We're going to make sure that they bark as good as Rick does. This one will be made without vocal cords. Rick's going to have his own show soon. Did you hear? Yeah. He's going to be the other half of click and cleck.

He'll be click and click. Yeah, he's definitely an asset to the, the show. Thank you. Have a wonderful weekend, and thank you for taking my call. You're welcome, Mark. Thanks for doing what you do for us. 877-960. Or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30. And I have no more calls, so I'm going to give it back to, oh, excuse me. Let's go to Rick. Rick has, yeah, he's got some YouTube. You've got to get a bigger sign. I'll do that. Or I have to wear a higher pair of heels I got to see over everything this one is from e. Regis and he says good morning Earl be ready you're going to love this one oh boy I have a quick question are the fees the

dealers are charging for nitrogen in the tires legit they're trying to mix it in with other tire warranties oh boy well that's a Nancy found an article in consumer reports they addressed it after their original expose years ago where they proved that nitrogen in the tires was worthless and it wasn't damaging, you'll get free nitrogen and take it, put it in your tire. They use it in cars at NASCAR. They use it actually in the space shuttled, you know, it's a lower expansion gas than air, which is actually 78% nitrogen, so any oxygen dilutes the expansion factor. But it's only if you're racing in a car at 180 miles an hour or going in outer space,

do you want to pay for nitrogen? And they did an extensive test on all tires over a year, and consumer reports prove that it's valueless. You really sounded like a physicist there when he said oxygen dilutes the expansion factor. I was really impressed by that. Thank you. and the other one I have here is from our buddy Donovan he says funny thing is most electric cars will end up being a mid-engine car which he corrects to a mid-motor car what's the difference

well it depends upon the weight distribution is all really it's the distribution of weight well but the motor the weight of the motor compared to the weight of the battery is insignificant Right, but a lot of them, the battery is underneath the body of the car and spread so much that the weight distribution, like we've all noticed when you step on the brakes, your car nosedives. But that's good. So you just don't want unequal. If you had the weight completely distributed on the bottom of the car, it would be an ideal. Exactly. Now, with your Tesla, do you notice a difference when you break? Does it nosedive like a normal car does? Does it seem to stop smoother and flatter? Well, my normal car didn't nosedive either, so I... Oh, okay.

My Lexus didn't nosedive. Well, because that was rear-wheel drive car, yeah. But, no, it's the best handling car I can ever recall driving. So it's a big improvement. Yeah, I like it. Huge, yeah. Cudos Elon. I have another text here, or unless Rick's not complete.

I do have one last one here. Go for it. Fun Photos 2004. I'm sorry. I'm in the rental business. Cheapest car I have today is $95 a day, and that's a subcompact car, and the line is out the door, $95 a day.

You're a bandit. Goodness. Oh, we just don't charge enough. Geez. Well, you know, let me address rental cars because, say, if you're advertising $95 for your rental cars, your cheapest car,

God bless you, I hope you rent a lot of cars. as long as you tell the people you charge it $95, and they can shop and compare. My problem with rental car companies is a big chunk of what they charge you. They don't tell you about. And they make their money, and I know this because I'm in the rental car business. I hire people that were with other rental car companies, and they have multiple different insurances and charges and add-ons that are like dealer fees,

They're hidden fees. So they'll advertise $50 a car, $95 a car, whatever it is. And then you come in there and you have to decline all these insurances and extras. And that's where they get you. That's a hidden fee. So I'm amazed that this texter here says that he's getting $95. We'll Google this and I don't think you'll see anything near that for a cheap subcompact car. If you're at an airport, you'll pay through the nose.

They'll vacation destinations, but like just on a, you know, just in the middle of the West Palm Beach. I guarantee you, Enterprise, they're one of the largest independent, and they do rental, they do airports, but they do everything else. Too, I'm going to give Sarah probably around $50 a car. Yeah? I mean, a day for a car, average. All right. Unbelievable. Anything else, Ray?

Okay. All caught up. All caught up. We're going to go to Pennsylvania where Dawn is holding. Good morning, Donald. Hi, good morning. How is everyone? Great. Welcome. Thank you.

I'm a first-time caller because I never really knew that you were here except for a while back. I happened to find you on YouTube and asking about my late dad's car, which is a 66 Chevy Impala Convertible Maroon, and I was given some good information that you said that, who will, like, check around. in car clubs and different things. And I wanted to let you know that it did get sold for $15,000. Lots of money for a $66. This was in, to a military guy

and he's going to fix it up and he's going to put it in shows. Well, that's good. You know, so that's actually almost an antique. Is it an antique? A 66? Yeah. It is.

I think it qualifies. It might be. You know, you might even have a higher value other than that once it's fixed up and, you know. Once he fixes it up, it did get sold, and we were very happy that we, my mom needed that, you know, the time at the, and, and he, it's a local guy, Northeast, we're like between, we're near Sprant and the foothills of the Poconos, and there's a lot of car shows up here, all the time. So we're very happy that he was excited about it. and I think my dad would be happy, and I had a car club in the space coast of Florida. It was the Space Coast Camaro Club, and I really didn't know much about Camaro's. So I started a club, which I thought was great for a while, and I still have my 92 Chevy Camaro

anniversary, and it's been sitting in climate control storage for years, and I don't know what it would be worth. So I'm wondering, because I don't know if we're thinking about maybe selling it, and I had to get it repainted because once a palm fron fell on it when I was living in near Cocoa Beach, Florida, and I got a pin of the blue color, but metal flake. I don't want to take too much time, but when I bought that car, my friend said, go to this car dealer in Merritt Island, Florida, and I said, oh, I don't know, okay. And I went in, and I looked around. I didn't see anything.

And the guy called me, the sales guy, and said, didn't you find anything? When I showed you, and I said, no, I didn't see anything. He goes, what about that Camaro? And I said, oh, I don't want a black Camaro. And he goes, it's not black, it's blue. And guess what? I had blue blocker. When I went back there, and I found that car, and I saw it, and I said, oh, I negotiated it, and I got it, and I got it.

It was only four years old, and I'm the second honor, and I've had it ever since. Wow. I came to Pennsylvania, and I saw the pot holes, and I said, I'm not driving my car up here, and I'm still in Pennsylvania. Amazing. So I wanted to know what that was worth, and I have my little 2007 Chevy Cobol with 11,100 miles on it. No, I'm sorry, 111,000 miles on it. And I wanted to know what those two are worth if I could know that. what the 92 Camaro's worth

Donna you could go to you could take that and go to the antique car sales website and you can go to Hemmings.com where she can call John from Palm City and Donna I'm fascinated by your call and I really appreciate you being

a first time caller number one and you're from Pennsylvania my neck of the woods, and you won yourself $50 this morning. What? No, that's okay. I can't. And if you send me your contact information to my email address, I can get that check out to you. Oh, wow.

From, you know what? Could you donate that to someone? I certainly can. I can donate that to Big Dog Ranch. Would you do that? I can. That would be great. That would be great.

I'm just to talk to you, and I just want to say one more thing. My dad, my family, we know the Jack Pallens family, the late Jack Pallon's the actor. He would come to our stagecoach in restaurant in Drummond, PA, and he lived in Cunningham, PA. And when we were at his auction, well, they had it when he passed, and then we went to Tachapi. My husband and I worked his auction there because we knew the family. And, you know, so he had a car that my friend. bought in the auction, and it was an older one. I think it was a Buick, and do you know he couldn't even sell that? And I said, why didn't you call Bob Dylan? He loves his dad talent. Maybe he would

buy it. Anyway, he loved this area, and if someone could come to Northeast Pennsylvania, our house is for sale. So that's really right now. It's a really nice place, and I think you guys are great. Donna, thank you for that. God bless you. And I want to thank you for Well, supporting my platform here at Earl Stewart on cars, it's real important. It's not so much about, you know, it's not important about the money part, but the ladies who do call and they share their opinion because they play a huge part of the auto industry. And it was great talking to someone from Pennsylvania. It's so great to talk to you all. And, you know, I think, like, if I wish you were on the radio up here, WISP is our AM station, and it will be so great.

to have a call-in show or something, you know, we would love that. But we wish you the best. I wish you the best so much, all of you. Thank you. Have a wonderful weekend. Donna. I hope to hear from you again. All right.

Thank you so much. You're welcome. Bye, Donna. We have a few more texts. I can run through these real quick before we get to the shopping report. Yeah, I've got plenty of time. All right. I'll talk slow.

This is from Steve in New Jersey for Rick. He says, I bought my new car in June of 2020 and immediately put 3M's clear vinyl wrap on the headlight lenses. After 17 months and 13,000 miles, the lenses still look brand new. How has your lens protection experiment worked out that you started some time ago? It's actually the side that I put the clear protector on stays just, I would say, a good 50% better than the other side. So it's a good product.

Yeah. If you start it right off the bat, you're going to see a nice, good protection from it. I would highly, highly recommend a professional application unless you're very comfortable with doing those wraps yourself. I was not, it was the first time I tried anything like that. There's no margin for error. And yeah, it takes some skill and practice to be able to do that right. And it took me a little bit to get it even just one side to look halfway decent. So yeah, find a professional on that. But yeah, it's worth it. Cool. Thank you very much, Rick. All right, Anne-Marie chimed back in after the discussion about the big trucks on the highway, and she said, I really wish cars came with a periscope or a drone that enables the driver to see above and around big trucks.

Like, great minds. I thought about that so many times, yeah. And Stu's been talking about a periscope in cars for years. So, you know, and the idea of a drone that you could launch during traffic jams or certain situations that could just follow the car. and give you a bird's eye view that might that might happen i think yeah it's possible who knows well but imagine too when all the cars are all computer connected and suddenly on your screen you'd be able to see an overhead tv view showing where every single vehicle is because they're all talking to each other and they know exactly how far apart each car is and exactly how to plot it on a map for you wow that's what on my test by have a large screen right in front me the driver and uh it isn't

exactly accurate but it shows I can see on my screen if there's an SUV or a car or a truck and I can see the car that's behind me I can see the car that's passing me on either side it's all on the screen in front of me and it distinguishes between cars trucks yeah you can tell if it's an SUV or car truck and so you're right when all cars can talk to each other it'll be absolutely accurate you'll be able to say you don't even need to look out the window well when cars are talking to each other

traffic should flow like 150 miles an hour bumper to bumper it'll literally be like drafting in a NASCAR race they'll be all super close with the computers controlling it traveling at the speed of the slowest car in the pack and when a car needs to move out all the computers would say okay close the gap

boom but I just made I just thought as I'm thinking, why isn't it blinded by trucks and higher vehicles when I'm in a small car? I think what they do, there is one distortion, and the lens of the Tesla cameras around the car are catch things far back. and so it can tell you that that big truck is there

but it distorts its distance from you so there's still a distortion that's a work in progress all right this is a nameless text says hi Earl they do have separate roads for trucks it's called a railroad

but um but you know I'm starting to love railroad railroads now because maybe they all be on railroads I mean, I just, either that or they have to regulate the height of trucks. I mean, these tandem giant trucks. The trucks are getting bigger.

Yeah. There are actually, there's YouTube videos because there are certain few bridges in areas that are extremely low. And people will literally just sit and record that bridge as trucks are going under it. And they make videos showing all the various trucks hitting and just ripping the top of the trailer off. Yikes. Here I go to my lobbying thing and big corporations and big, you know, people that affect our laws.

And I think the transportation lobby has got to be huge. And they are important. And so, you know, it's almost like the medical lobby or the banking lobby. The transportation lobby doesn't want restrictions. And then the politicians don't want to have slow down transportation because then you have other problems. So we have a safety issue that everybody ignores. And again, I keep going, you know, you folks out of the area, but in South Florida, there's probably no more, no busier high speed of route than the Sawgrass Expressway in South Florida. Yes.

It is a nightmare. The speed limit, I believe, is 60. and if you go 60, they'll run right over you. You've got to be going 80, and it is gridlock, and it is super populated by large vehicles. And it is a terror to go between the turnpike, the Sawgrass Expressway, in the middle of the state. It's crazy.

I'm amazed that there's not more accidents out there. And, of course, with rail travel, the problem that you have there is there's very limited amount of railroad tracks in those areas so trying to move all that stuff by rail most of the trucks you see are these came out of the rail sources

that's right they came though rail cars sitting on a truck exactly you know I don't know whether you heard me laughing or not whenever you were talking about the expressway but it's almost ladies and gentlemen I wasn't laughing at my husband I'm laughing with them

because God is he right I want to tell you what sometimes in our vehicles whether it's my Avalon hers Tesla, I say to myself, are we on candid camera? Because it's just absolutely crazy. And Earl said, 80 miles an hour? Mm-mm. I don't think so.

I think they're going 100 miles an hour. Oh, 80 is like, if you're doing 80, they pass you like you're standing still. It's just crazy. That's on the right lane, 80. Exactly. All right. Okay, we got a text from Jim in Riviera Beach. I've been retired from, oh-oh.

I've been retired from driving a truck for 12 years. Most of my driving was in the northeastern United States. I've always said that the far left lane should be for trucks only, the far left lane, should be for trucks only, especially during rush hours. Most trucks are going straight through to the next state. By doing this, the exiting vehicles will not slow a truck down, causing huge backups. I won't argue with it. There's a point there, yeah.

I think, you know, segregating the trucks, I think it would enhance. To me, the truck danger. and I think you have a very good point. I'm thinking about it. You're going on the expressway, wherever it is, and a bunch of trucks are all around you. Now, you've got to exit. The exits are on the right.

If all the trucks are pushed to the right because they're deprived of the left-hand lane, I see your point exactly. Absolutely. I have actually missed, knowingly missed exits because I couldn't get over there. And if you put, you talk about accidents happening, that you don't know why.

People that say, I'm going to get off on the exit no matter what, and you've all seen them. Oh, yeah. And they pass three lanes of traffic to get to that exit. And if he isn't lucky, he creates an accident. So I love the idea. Thanks. Yeah, I think that's a great idea. Thank you for that.

And, gosh, Daddy, I wish you were here right now. My father was a trucker. He was a truck driver. He drove across country, and he would always come home, and he'd always say the same. thing. Why are those people over in the left-hand lane? The truckers belong in the left-hand lane, and he'd go on and on and on. Don't they respect us? We're doing an important job. They're vital. And that was in the 50s. Yeah, it's even in the same as true today. All right, I got one for Rick. Good morning. My question

is, why resurfaced the discs when replacing disc pads if the discs are still running true? Being an old DIYer, I used to just put on the new pads and didn't have any problems. best regards Bruce in some cases yeah you can get away with that but if you've ever seen a break disk and you looked at it closely after it's been run for a while with the pads on there they start developing little grooves little bridges and when you put simply put a new set of pads on there those pads are going to wear in matching up to those grooves and it's going to wear funny and it can make noise and just as a dealership mechanic one of the first

that a customer is looking for as soon as they get new brakes, is there any noise from those brakes? And if there's the least little bit of squeak, they're right back in and the mechanics doing the job again. So we take care to make sure that we clean, relubricate everything needs to be done properly and resurface those rotors properly so that there are no noises when we put those brakes back together. Is it just as safe, even though it might make some noise if you didn't replace the discs? There can be some safety issues. If those pads are grabbing at the wrong spot, it can make those breaks feel funny when you step on them. They can shudder and vibrate at times. There you go. Good stuff, Rick. And folks, I failed to mention earlier that because we're

getting ready for the mystery shop report, our lines are frozen, but you are a big part of the voting system for the mystery shop. And that text number is 772-497-6530. All right. Mark chimed in real quick. He says, I just spoke with Enterprise Rent a Car. Base rate, comparison, $67 a day plus taxes, insurance, add-ons. You know the business. Do the math. It sounds like about $80 a day to me. So

maybe we've got to raise our prices. Getting close to $95. Didn't realize how high the prices were. Goodness. And if you go to the airport, forget about it. No, yeah, don't even. For sure. Okay, I got a couple more for Rick here. This person asks, can I use

ethanol gas in my 2020 Camry? Maybe he's referring to E85, I guess. No. We need to make them fast because we're getting... Big N-O. And then I got one more. It says, not even a question. Well, it's about time.

Toyota's building a multi-billion battery plant in the United States. I heard about that, so... It's happening. It's happening. They're going to spend about $3 or $4 billion on it and hopefully make a lot of jobs. It used to be a billion that was a lot of money. I know.

It's like chump change nowadays. Trillion. If you're, you know, we don't... A billionaire, pretty soon we'll have trillionaires. Do we have any trillionaires? I think Elon might be the first. He's in his own display. Been close, yeah.

All right, and that is it. Do you want to go to the Mystery Shopper report? Millionaires will be on welfare. I know. There'll be a safety net for them. We'll figure out something. Okay, Mystery Shop, Beth Smith, Kia. Last week we talked about how nearly two years of pandemic

and ongoing economic turbulence really brought out the, call it, creativity in car dealer advertising. We're being kind. That's a nice way to put it. Of course, by creative, I mean shameless, unethical, unprincipled, cheesy. I have a much better adjective than that, but I can't use it on the air. Oh, boy. And in many cases, illegal.

In fact, I've got here the Florida Code statutes on car dealer advertising, the regulation of trade commerce, investments, and slow stations, actionable, unfair, or deceptive acts or practices, which I will quote from during this mystery shopping report. So in some cases, we really have illegal activity, and you're about ready to hear some of it right here on this stage. We referenced the worst of the worst, an ad from Beth Smith, Kia, in Fort Pierce, Florida. This was the one that used an incentive for health care workers and first responders to allure in an unqualified buyer. I went back to read it again at the show, and it's just bad.

Here it is. Now, this is the worst we've seen. The worst, what is the word? It's just cruel. Yes. Cruel than unusual. Agreedious. Headline, Beth Smith Toyota Stemulus, we want to help.

It went on to proclaim, just announced, 0% APR financing for $804 months. Get a check for up to $5,000 back when you buy. Nobody ever gets a check. They always apply it against the car. So the dealer gets it back. You think you're getting a check. Make no payments for six months when you buy our lease.

Ain't going to happen.com. Get a $25 Walmart or Lowe's gift card with any test drive, even at home test drives. Boy, that's sure good. Now, this is a part you can't read, even probably with a magnifying glass. Fine print. Offers on select models with approved credit, example vehicle, new 2019, toilet, Toyota Sequoia Here's the stock number

MDL Hashtag 7919 MSRP 58,88 cash back and little of all incentives and rebates so you forfeit all of the other if you get the cash back

for retail new Toyota contracts first three months deferred through Southeast Toyota finance so you have to have you can't use your bank or anybody else's bank. You've got to go with Toyota's bank. Next, three months paid by Best Smith Toyota up to $1,500. And you know who's really paying that, don't you? It ain't

Ben Smith Toyota. It ain't Frank Gonzalez. Right. Interest accrues during deferrals. For release, new Toyota contract, six months covered by Beth Smith up to $3,000. What's a Jix card? I have no idea. G.I.X cards provided by Bestman Toyota for new and used car test drives. Maybe that's a gift card and some sort of weird, you know, jargon. Yeah. And it goes on. One per household.

Prior test drives excluded. Finance offer available through Space Coast Credit Union. This is where it really, really gets nasty. Can you imagine doing this? Finance offer available through Space Coast Credit Union. for first responders and medical field employees only. That's a legitimate offer that was made by this union that has no affiliation with Best Smith Kia.

And this is meant to reward our heroes out there, the first responders. But it doesn't apply to you. 99.99% of the people that read this ad are not first responders or medical field employees. All offers exclude tax. tax title registration and $898.50 dollar fee. These charges represent cost and profit of the dealer for items such inspecting cleaning, adjusting vehicles, and preparing documents related

for sale. And that's why I brought out this Florida statute. They say that the dealer fee that they're charging you is for inspecting cleaning and adjusting vehicles. And here's what the Florida law says. You cannot charge a customer for any pre-delivery service charges required by the manufacturer distributor or importer for which the dealer is reimbursed by the manufacturer distributor or importer. So this is the law folks, I'm holding it up for the streamers here. It's illegal. So here we have, and this is an ad that was run earlier.

This is not this mystery shopping report, but this is an example of an illegal advertisement that was totally overlooked by all the regulators. I don't know why. You break the law, you should pay the penalty, but it doesn't happen. We went back again in February this year with Ms. Smith Toyota, Ms. Smith, the Kia, teamed up with buyback billy. I love that. That's one of these canned you pay an upfront price for a sale.

They come in from out of town, and they set up a tent, and they take advantage of your customers instead of you. buyback billy to promise $8,000 over Kelly Boobook on all trades. So how have we stayed away from Frank Gonzalez and his crew for so long during this unending inventory crisis? We don't know. There's so many dealers and so much bad behavior. Really, it's hard being warriors consumer justice. I like that phrase.

Agent Lightning returned this week to see what Frank's team's been on cooking up. And here we are. Speaking of the first person is if I were our future. email shopper, Asian Lightning. Before heading up to Fort Pierce, I browse a paltry new car inventory and best with Kia's website. I saw that they had a few tellurized, Kia, so I decided to make that my target vehicle. In case they didn't have them, I chose a sportage as a backup. I arrived at lunchtime, greeted by a salesman named Quentin. He introduced himself as Q, and he asked if I was there for the big sale.

I told Q, you know, we're seeing a pattern with that. Salespeople coming up with cute names, I think it's kind of smart. It's very smart. You remember. Yeah, we have. My name is Freckles. Yeah, we have Magic Mike. We do.

And you remember that. So that's a cool, cool tactic. I told Q that I had not heard of the big sale and asked them to tell me more. He responded by saying, yes, ma'am, we're offering up to $7,000 over Kelly Blue Book for trade ends. I told him that sounded great, but I wasn't trading anything in. Hugh assured me that he would still get me a great deal today. We walked inside. He offered me a seat. Then he said to be right back. I observed several employees, including Q, who were wearing masks, but most were not. He returned with a guest information sheet that had all this standard questions listed in

checklist form. Hugh went down the list asking the questions. The last question was, what is your desired monthly payment. I told him I just wanted an out-the-door cash price. I decided whether or not to finance it after I had seen that. You took my license. I left to make a copy and get the keys for the telleride. I went out front to wait for him. I was a group of nine salespeople gathered near the door. The Wolfpack. I mean, why? Can you imagine walking in the publics and you have a bunch of salesmen waiting for you? Hey, let me show you the bread. I mean, why?

Are you here for the big bread sale? Yeah, yeah. Why don't they hide this salesman? Anyway, I'd be afraid to drive off. Hey, come on back here. I want to show you my Chuck roast. Yeah. Cue back to tell the ride in and open the hood, the doors, and the rear hatch.

He then gave me a comprehensive and quite technical presentation of not just a vehicle, but of the various warranties that come with it. Now, I'm seeing another trend here, not related to what we are talking about, but having to do with expertise in product knowledge and showing things that are, that's good. So, you know, let's give credit where credit is, too. I'm seeing a greater education and familiar of salespeople with the product, and I don't know why, but, hey, it's happening.

The MSRP was 38,145, but there was an addendum, of course, Not just any addendum, I mean, but a doozy, a slam-bang doozy. Best Smith Kia was adding an additional, oh, are you sitting down for this? John, are you sitting down for this? $19,995 to the MSRP. I thought that was it was the MSRP. 19, 995 added to the MSRP for wheel locks, a sunshade, nitrogen, Nancy and I, We're talking about that. The car consumer reports exposing nitrogen for what it is,

nothing in the tires, a pinstripe, a tag bracket. I mean, hey folks, we're talking, 19,995. Where's the value? A detail and delivery, which they got reimbursed for. The factory, Kia, reimburses them for their vehicle to wash it, detail it. first oil change in a car wash, and a partridge in a pair of train, and I, and storage guards.

And red below all the installed junk, limited availability. Now that's the justification for the $19,000, let's call it $20,000. $20,000 added to sticker. I drove on the test drive and Q continued to educate me about the car. I told him that I was impressed. That's how long you'd been selling Kia's. He told me he's only been three months, and he's already their top salesperson. I asked him how many cars he had to sell to be number one, and he told me 18.

We returned to the dealership, Park, and Q asked how I liked it. I said I liked it, but it was a little shocked by the large markup on the sticker price. Q tried to explain about the chip shortage and how the teller rides in stock wouldn't last, which is true. I mean, there is a chip shortage, and there was a shortage of cars. Then he went back to the trial close, asked me to tell him on a scale 1 to 10. I guess this is a role that we knew, I don't know, maybe old. On a scale 1 to 10, how do you like it? I told Q was around an 8.

He asked me, what I need to make it a 10 in my eyes. I said, he needed to take off the extra markups on the sticker. We both laughed. I don't know why he laughed, but he did. Why he laughed? Because he knows he's not going to take it off. He asked me if I want to take it home today. I said, we need to see the numbers before I agreed to anything.

Oh, I'm so happy. Took my mask off so I can lick my fingers when I turned the page. Back at Q's desk, he tried to get me to fill out a credit application. I told him I wouldn't let them run my credit until after I decided whether to finance through the dealership. Boy, they really want to run your credit. I mean, let me write your credit. Sign here. Sign, sign, sign.

I'm begging you. You know, they probably have a spiff, maybe. You know, get the signed credit application, you give an extra $25. It opens up the door for them to make all a bunch more money. Yeah. Q said he needed to run my credit so he could give me accurate figures. B.S. Q relented after I told him he could tell his sales managers.

They had a 800 FICA score. Eight months later, Q returned with a sales manager, Louis. Louis had a Louis and Q. I can't forget that pair. Louis and Q had a worksheet. and LQ had a... Louis had the worksheet in his hand along with a copy of the Menorny label

and the addendum. Louis sat down, began reviewing the numbers. My selling price was $58,145. Hey-oh. Why? Yeah, why? Why? Yeah, why had the...

Why? $8.50. It's like a few more pennies on top of that file there. Right, right. Pre-delivery service here. They had to do that just to make it illegal, right? because if we're going to get all the money, we've got to steal.

So that's the violation of the Florida statute unfair and decepty trade practice. So they added that and told you it was for hitting the car ready for delivery, and they were reimbursed for that, and that's against the law. I said, I'll take it. And the cube must have,

your eyes rolled back. He probably almost lost consciousness. He saw that boat he was going to buy. Nobody had ever said that before. And then, and then Adrian Lightning and probably cracked up, but she said, Ah, just kidding. That was cruel.

She is so funny. She's really cruel, yeah, right. I just stared at Louie until he started to talking again, and got his breath back, telling me something about their lifetime power train ority. Now, that's a joke. I mean, that nitrogen will get your cup of coffee. No, it won't get your cup of coffee. A couple of coffee's $3, right?

And then he asked if I was ready to talk to the finance department, I said there was no way. I'd pay $20,000 over a sticker. You heard it. 20,000. That's what they're going for. Benz-Smith Kea. Going for the jugular. That's even higher than the jugular. I don't know what they're going for. Louis asked me what I meant. He was puzzled. He went on and said, tell me, in English, what figure? Tell me in English. Tell me in English, what figure do you mean to be at? I believe that's a grammatical error. exact quote exactly quote you know that should have said what figure out which do you wish to you don't you don't end a sentence with the proposition come on louis come on he asked me if I realized the out-the-door figure of 63,000 2466 including tax and tax oh okay I will

take it where do I sign I asked him but this the best he could do and Louis said maybe I could come down a thousand but that'd be the best I could do I said I wasn't I wasn't keen on paying all that money only to have the car depreciate as soon as I drive away. Louis interrupted, well, loud, not true. Now, Louis, you lie, and told me that they are giving their customers more for the trade-ins. Than what they paid for them. So they should keep their cars, they'd give her some money. And then I would, I mean, if I were aged lightning, I really were Asian lightning, I would have said,

Louis, tell me, when you give me a lot of money more for my trade in than what it's worth, what do you do with that car? You sell it to somebody else, don't you? Anyway, he wouldn't have been a waste of my breath. So there we are. I told Louis I was done here because I would not be willing to agree on their ridiculous price. And I think there we have it. I think that's, yeah, I got some pictures here, but that's a shop.

And we need to get some votes in because I ran a little bit of. longer than I thought. Any votes coming in anywhere? Do we have any votes? We showed it up pretty quick. Let's see. Anne-Marie comes in with a 19,000 over sticker, Big F. Frank. Frank says F, unbelievable, F three times over. It is a egregious one. Anything on YouTube, Rick? I think most of my YouTube family is, they're in shock. They passed out. Mark from St. Louis, due to the F shortage, grade G. And Tom Gillow had somewhere between an F or an F-minus. I got a Bob over here.

Bob says F-4-Q and B-S-T Toyota and the BS sales practices. Jonathan Wellington, illegal activity is all I needed to hear, F. I personally, this is the easiest F I've ever issued. No brain. Yeah, it's not even worth, you know, the grade. First of all, I want to thank our mystery shop. She does. She never ceases to amaze us. And what a job she does weekend and week out. And she is, again, I'll say amazing. And I'm going to vote for Linda. And she gave him a big F. And hey, even with the G.I.X card, what's the G.X card? I mean, is that a gift card that they present you with when you take a test drive on a new car or a used car? who knows and how much is that gift card and it's a rhetorical question unless it's

$20,000 I'm not there so I give him a big fat F Earl I've got to fail them I hate to fail dealers you know I always I always take my heels in because we're great on the curb but this is a no-brainer curve thing they're going to our do not buy from this dealer lives do not buy from best Smith Kia buy your Kia somewhere else and Fort Pierce stay out of And that's our mystery shop, like Earl said, from Beth Smith, Kia. And goodness gracious, we all have enough problems. We don't need any more. Stay out of Beth Smith, Kia.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us here at Earl Stewart on Cars. We so appreciate your company. And have a wonderful weekend. Stay safe. No.