Earl Stewart on Cars - 10.24.2020 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Johnson Honda

Episode Date: October 24, 2020

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning visits Johnson Honda in Stuart to see if she can best deal possible on a 2020 Honda Accord. 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. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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

And now, on with the show. Good morning, everybody. Well, we're back. My name is Earl. I'm a recovering car dealer. I've been in this business since the late 1960s, over half of the same. century and we're here with a team of automotive experts as you just heard on the recorded announcement to tell you how to avoid being ripped off by a car dealer and ripped off by servicing

and repairing or leasing a huge amount of leasing going on now that's another interesting subject because the car dealers are making a lot more money when they lease your car than when they sell your car but a lot of you didn't know that if you listen to the show you You probably did know that. And we're going to be talking about just about anything that you want to talk about. That's the key to the show, is your participation. We have a large group of regular callers from all over the country now because we're on Facebook and Twitter, YouTube, we're streaming.

And so you can watch us in California or Texas or anywhere you happen to be hanging your hat. Australia. What's that? Australia. Yeah. Australia. And so we're focusing on what you are interested in.

We can't talk about necessarily what we're interested in because in full disclosure we are in the retail automobile business. And we look at the world from a different perspective because we're selling and you're buying. But the

fact that we are in the retail business gives us an inside lane, so to speak, because we know we been there and we've done that and we know how cars are sold. We know how cars are repaired and serviced. And so it gives us that extra added area of expertise. There are a lot of experts out there, but until you've actually done it and lived it, you really don't have that full insider knowledge. And we will share that with you. As I say, I'm a recovering car

dealer. We're all recovering in this room here. And we've been in the business a long time. We evolved. We evolved with you, the car buyer, and we happen to hang our hat on the fact that if you take care of your customers, if you're totally honest and transparent, what is the old saying, the better mousetrap? The world will be the path to your door. We tried that avenue. It's kind of the road less taken, unfortunately, by car dealers. And people in the retail automobile business are still doing business the way they did, mid-20. century. You know, when I say mid-20th century, it doesn't sound that long ago to me, but it's a long time ago. And there's even a groundswell effort now legislatively and otherwise

to eliminate us car dealers. And that could happen. I mean, it's being talked about. There's an op-ed article, editorial in today's automotive news. We were talking about it just before the show and it says time has come for a grand bargain on direct vehicle sales to customers and it's written by a man, Dr. Crane, who is a professor of law at the University of Michigan. And it's shocking if for no other reason it appears in the auto trade journal. This is every manufacturer in the world, every car dealer in the world reads the automotive news. I mean, it's an Asian edition, a European edition, and a North America. American edition. And this is

pretty startling. But this kind of insider stuff in a way but not if you think about it because where will you be buying your next car? And what are the reasons for this? It's interesting. So whatever you want to talk about, 877 960-9960

and we do on an answer? So that leads me to this question for our listeners. Okay. If you could choose to purchase today your next car, who would you choose manufacturer or a dealer if you have the right that's a great question if right now you don't have a right to choice there is no choice you have to buy vehicles

from car dealers that's the law in all 50 states so the nancy just asks this question if right now you're maybe you're thinking about buying a car or truck or SUV and uh you'll or leasing if you had the choice. Would you rather buy it directly from the manufacturer? If you love Ford's and you like F-150 pickup trucks, the most popular vehicle in the world. We saw a beauty when we came in. If you had the choice to buy that Ford F-150 pickup, would you buy it from your local Ford dealer? Or would you rather buy it from Ford Motor Company? And that's being discussed, by the way, right now. Ford Motor Company, and this is a radical, this was in this

an op-ed article in the automotive news, Ford and General Motors have both come out against the dealers for the first time. Ford Motor Company and General Motors are actively pushing legislatively to be able to sell vehicles directly. So if you had your choice, where would you rather buy your next Ford, Chevrolet, Toyota, Honda, from the manufacturer, from the dealer? Let us know. 877-960-99-60. 877 960, 9960, that's our regular call-in number. And we prioritize voice call-ins, so we only have three lines coming in or four. We ought to be sure we don't people leave them hanging, holding for too long.

And we have a text number, 772-4976530. That's 772-4976530. So let me switch over to Nancy Stewart, the all-knower. She's our ladies' champion, advocate, and she's brought this show up to parody on female participation. We're 50-50, 17 years it took us to get there, but I congratulate Nancy for doing that. Thank you so much. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We have a great show ahead of us, and we hope that you can stick around for all two hours.

And ladies, by now you know that you are in the majority as far as the buying market is, concerned, and especially automobiles. So, this morning, I have $50 for the first two new lady callers. You can give us a call at 877-960-99-60. That's 870-960-99-60. 877-9-60-9-60. So give us a call, and I got $50 for the first two new lady callers. Give us your opinion.

Did you do your homework before you went out to purchase a car? Did you purchase the same day? Did you take your time, anything at all? And also service. You are a big percentage of the service department. There are more ladies coming through the service drive than ever before. $50 for the first two new lady callers. Now back to the recovering car dealer.

And of course, you ladies, you might have. have a different opinion than the men out there. I'd be interested in a female call his opinion. Where would you want to buy your next car if you had a choice? Don't have a choice. Now, you have to buy it from the car dealer. So if you're driving a Hyundai, you have to go to a Hyundai dealer. Would you rather buy it directly from the manufacturer?

It's like you buy your iPhone. You buy your iPhone from the Apple store. You don't have to deal through a dealer. In that case, the Apple store is owned by the manufacturer, but you're dealing directly with the manufacturer. Most products, I won't say that, but a lot of products give you that choice. Okay, let's move around to my son. Yes, Nancy. I'm going to interrupt you.

Sure. John from Palm City is waiting to speak to us. Good morning, John. Good morning to everyone. I'm calling today with a two big thank yous. I want to thank Earl and Nancy and crew for being there every week. during this terrible crisis we're having. Today's New York Times, the headlines,

there's a new peak in K-79,000-plus cases in a single day. And I want to know, Earl and Nancy and crew have never missed during this entire coronavirus problem. Never missed one show. It's unbelievable. And the second thing is the highlight of the show, which is the shopping reports, so very important. and I want to thank them again for that

and I want to talk about last week briefly just to show you the shopping report that was done right here in Martin County the dealer that they want to hopefully the owner was listening and they shape up and change conditions because that location at one time was called Toyota or Stewart and they totally had their franchise revoked

so hopefully the people that own it now even though they have another dealership somewhere, they will listen and shape the place up because it's just ridiculous what people have to go through. And my vote would be, if you take an example like that, I would rather deal with the manufacturer than somebody's individual dealers. So I just want to mention that. And it's a big thank you again for this show, never being missed during this entire crisis. and the great shopping reports, and this week is going to be a little different.

It will be about the shop, you know, mechanical part of the dealerships. So, again, a big thank you for Earl Nancy and the entire crew. I appreciate those kind words, John. You know, we love doing this show, and we have had second thoughts, and we worry it. We talk about it, and we live in the COVID world with all of you, and we think about it and we're very careful we take precautions if you can look at us stream us we're all wearing masks and where the studio is disinfected before we come in we have the Purell we have the disinfectant wipes and we're taking extra precautions and we're all we're all tested

in this studio periodically each of us gets tested and fortunately knock on wood our families and and all of us have been that COVID-free, and thanks for the compliment. But it has been a little bit stressful for us. We think about it, and thanks for the call, John. You're one of our most loyal guys out there. We appreciate it. Thank you so much, John. Again, my thanks for all of you.

Thank you. Have a wonderful weekend. Stay safe. Okay, let's move along to Stu Stewart, my son, the general manager of my dealership, and North Palm Beach. Florida, and been in the business a long, long time. And he has a hands-on. He's there every day, and he deals with the way business is done every single day.

I step back a little bit. I'm more strategic. Stu is more tactical. And so it gives us a complete spectrum of the automotive issue. Stu, I know what you've got on your mind about our unusual shopping report. Very unusual, and it's something that we've been promising and promising to our listeners that we would

a service department shop and before I get started I just wanted to say that it is a lot more difficult to do that sort of shop a sales mystery shop requires a person to walk into a dealership service mystery shop requires a vehicle that can't be detected as a belonging to our dealership and so usually we'll we'll pick a used car I can't say usually because we've only done it a couple of times in the history of the show but then you have to make something appear to go wrong with it that's not obvious. So last week I reported what we did was we took a 2018 Jeep Wrangler, and Rick sabotaged it.

Nothing safety-related. He unhooked a wire, and I don't want to get into the, Rick can address it later when you hear what happened, but he disconnected a wire that would make the check engine light come on. And we're all familiar with that. The check engine light comes on. It's scary. People don't know.

should I stop driving the car? Is the car going to blow up? What's going to happen? And most of you who have experience with this realize that oftentimes it's not a big deal. It just might even be the gas cap. And it wasn't a hidden wire. It was something that was very visible.

Obvious. Yeah, Rick just kind of reached in. Well, he knew what he was doing. He just didn't grab a random wire. But he disconnected a wire, and it caused the check engine light to come on. So we had our older mystery shop extraordinaire, Agent Thunder's wife,

bring the vehicle in to, and I'll tell you the name of the dealership now, it was Napleton's Chrysler Dodge Jeep on North Lake Boulevard in Lake Park, Palm Beach Gardens, somewhere in that vicinity. And so here's the shop. We're not doing it in the same format, and I'm just going to tell you what happened. So she brought the vehicle in, and what she first encountered was an incredibly busy service department with the jeeps and Chrysler's lined up down the service drive.

and when she finally spoke to a service advisor they explained that they were way too busy to see the vehicle and they told her to bring the car back to where she just bought it because she told them that she just purchased the car she said she's really not comfortable driving with the check engine like can you do something now they said no they warned her that they had a very high labor rate and kept trying to get her to bring back to the selling dealer

but what they ended up doing was making an appointment for the following Tuesday. So that was Tuesday of this just a few days ago. On Tuesday, she brings the vehicle back in. A little snaf who occurred. They didn't have a record of an appointment. She kept pushing to get the vehicle seen.

So they plugged in a I guess a diagnostic computer into the port and they read the code that the check engine light was indicating. And they said it could be something very serious and they recommended that she leave the vehicle overnight. So she leaves the vehicle with them.

the following day they call her to let her know that the that the Jeep was ready when she came back in they said no charge to you it's all under warranty and so that was a pleasant surprise but when we inspected the

invoice which explained the work that they did they diagnosed it as a bad engine computer right Rick is the PCM yes so they replaced a fairly expensive part under warranty and they charged

this to Jeep this was a severe misdiagnosis. It's not to say that it couldn't happen, and it was also fortunate that this misdiagnosis, the brunt of it was felt by Jeep warranty and not by the customer. But Rick, I just wanted to ask you, how difficult would it be to have diagnosed the problem that you created?

The plugs that I disconnected were for what's called the oxygen sensor that goes to the exhaust. So it's an emissions-related thing. At the very least, it might have made the vehicle use a little more gasoline than normal driving. Certainly not creating any safety issues. We didn't want to put anybody in any danger. However, for a qualified technician who knows their product even a little bit, it would have been a simple thing to pull the code and shine a flashlight down into the area on that engine.

and they would have seen those plugs. They were literally 18 inches away from the side of the car. And they're very visible right through having the hood open. And I would have done a visual inspection first because my first thought is, suppose a rat had chewed on those wires. I want to see what's going on. So you shine a light on those connectors

and you would see they weren't plugged in properly. Reconnect them, clear the code, and test it. and that would have taken care of it yeah so there's a fairly detailed explanation of the process they took they noticed that there's a problem with the circuit they sought to verify it they inspected then it says finally checked for high resistance in circuit and found to be normal upon following flow chart found issue to be with the PCM and that's that computer that we talked about replace the PCM and programmed it so that's how they solved it like I said in this diagnosis and that's the charitable view of what happens It is possible that they it's possible that they knew exactly what was going on and they were able to sell a very expensive part So if someone had seen the wire which a qualified mechanic would have seen the wire and plugged it back in The the amount of time that would have taken would have been how much five minutes? Five minutes and they charge to Cressler unfortunately when the customer gets a copy of a warranty it just says no charge and it says under warranty so we don't have the internal document to find

out how many hours that they charged or the are the cost of the part that they got for free from when you read the description of what they did what was the description again oh they replaced the said well they checked it so they went through a series of checks finding out where the this circuit was broken and after they said they did an inspection it doesn't give the time and then it says finally they said they followed the float. upon following flow chart, found the issue to be with the PCM. So they didn't find the issue with a wire that wasn't connected. They found a bad part is what they said.

And then they replaced that. So let me finish my train of thought here. So what would be the approximate charge to Crashler's Jeep Dodge Corporation, Chrysler Corporation, to replace the CPM? Going by basing this off my experience with Toyota. The ballpark. I would say maybe a half hour labor. and then the cost of the part, which probably would be anywhere from $800 to $1,200.

And if they were allowed to charge additional time for diagnostic, which some companies will allow extra warranty time for diagnostic, others say no, you cannot charge anything extra. You get paid just that amount, that's it. Well, let's be generous. Let's say that for the five minutes to plug the wire in, charged $1,000 to Chrysler Corporation. You can see the reason that this is a serious situation.

So it was either done through incompetence, or I don't like to use stupidity. Or malfeasance. Yeah, it was an accident, or it was on purpose. If it was an accident, you accidentally charged Chrysler Corporation at least $1,000, under warranty which you should not have done and uh in this case is as a consumer show so we're going to focus on the fact that as far as the consumer's concern the car got fixed the fact that they

charge Chrysler a thousand dollars for five minutes plugging a wire in i guess it's not your concern and it's really not our concern and we don't know if that happened i'm sure they didn't plug the bar i'm sure they actually they did get the part and they made if they're anything like a parts department can retain about 40% of that's profit um then they made a nice little, that was a nice little deal. Nice, sir. Thank you. Did you say the car was left overnight?

Yes. Okay. That's something to say. Well, the reason they said that, yeah, they said it was because they were too busy and so they couldn't honor the appointment that they made. I guess the good news is that it was covered under warranty and it wasn't charged to the customer, but it is definitely an unfortunate mistake. and I do have to say that we talk to consumers every single day,

customers every day about the check engine light. So it is a, you know, it can be very serious, but unfortunately, this is unfortunate. You know, there's a lot of things that go on in service. The next step that we have to do, and this is actually Steve on Facebook asked the question, we sought to inspect the Jeep and determine if they did replace the PC. I suspect that they did, but it is possible, you know, being, having the most pessimistic take on this that they didn't, but most likely I think. Yeah, well, shame on us for not checking it already, but yeah. Well, this came, I do apologize, but I have been out for the last couple of days with an issue, so I wasn't able to.

Yeah, I'm sure. Okay, well, we'll get that information for you. Next week, we'll let you know if we were replaced. Maybe somebody could check it out for us right now. Maybe you could ask somebody in the shop to take a, you know. you know to tell just a flash right if it was a new central processing unit yeah i'm handling that right now yeah that may be difficult to tell because some of them are easy accessible under the hood others are buried up under the dash okay i got you uh before we continue let's get to frank

he's been holding for quite some time he's a regular caller from west palm beach good morning frank Good morning. Good morning. I got a question about a half hour ago on the news before your show started. I heard about a case in Texas. The police were chasing a pickup truck that was stolen. They didn't know it was stolen. They chased it because the headlights were flashing. And they said, some cars, that's a feature, anti-fip feature, one. The car is stolen, the headlights start flashing. Oh, they're darn. On 40, you'll need a teenage girl that stole it. One got killed when they crashed, and the other one, serious condition. Oh. But anyway, the story about the flashing headlights, have you ever heard of that?

I haven't. Rick, Stu, Nancy. Have you heard of it? This is the urban legend that if you flash your headlights or the powers off? A theft deterrent. No. No. Oh, Frank says that this is a theft deterrent the police had, if you someone steals your car, then the lights will flash. I've never heard of that. I've seen lots of aftermarket alarm systems and even factory alarm systems that when the alarm is going off, the lights will flash. Oh, okay. So there are different security systems.

But it also usually immobilizes the engine, so. Well, it disables the starter normally. Okay. But if the vehicle, if you get the vehicle running and disable the sirens for it, then the lights may still flash as part of that theft deterrence system. Thank you very much for that information. Okay. Well, anyway, I was wondering if my RAV-4 has it, but I guess not. I think it's an aftermarket thing, I believe that you add after-market, some after-market theft deterrence do flash the lights when the siren goes off or horn or whatever it is.

right right all right something new that i heard about and you're your case you were just talking about about the jeep that happened to my father back in the 70s with a Cadillac they just unplug the cruise control wanted to charge of 125 dollars to repair it no guarantee and he said no to heck with it and then uh when he went someplace else for service they asked him how come to you improves controls this connection. So there you go. Yeah, things haven't changed in a long time. Thank you. Thank you, Frank.

Thanks, Frank. That phone number is 877-960-9960. And remember earlier, Earl was referring to an article in the automotive news that a law professor wrote. And he asked a question, and so did I, as to whether, what? where you would purchase your vehicle, if you were to purchase your next car, would it be from a manufacturer or a dealer? What would you choose? Give us a call. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us with your answer at 772-497-6530, and don't forget, ladies, $50 for the first two lady callers. Give us a call. Stu? Yeah, I wanted to bring something up. We talked about it last

week. Very surprised you haven't brought it up yet. Last week we talked about Earl's concept to create an army of volunteers across the country to assist car buyers in their area, in their communities, and it's been labeled Earl's Vigilantes. And I... Earl's what? Vigilantes. I said Valantes. I slipped into Italian for a second. If you go to Earlesvigilantes.com, you can sign up. If you want to volunteer, that'll generate a message that comes to me and all I ask you in your in your application to tell me how you think you can help the the consumers in your area and you would just be what you have to be willing to list your email address online and your name and be willing to take some emails and it's up to

you later on if you want to exchange phone numbers to help somebody who is not necessarily equipped to handle a car buying or servicing experience on their own you can also find this on earl on cars.com we do link to it and right now it's the the website is is up. It's still kind of being tweaked, but it's functional, and we have a few volunteers already. So if you go to earlsvigilantes.com or earl-oncars.com, you can link to that. And please, volunteer, because we could use your help. Let me address the word vigilante because, actually, I want to give credit to Jonathan, who's our visual video control guy, and he came up with the whole idea. Let's get a name for Earl's Volunteers. And so we kicked

back and forth and we came up with a name vigilante and here's a here's a vigilante has a negative spent to it and certainly there have been some terrible cases of you know wrongdoing by people that call themselves vigilante but so I looked it up and the definition of a vigilante and there was a time like so many other things in our country it was a time in place and there was a time when vigilanteism was a good thing and vigilantes were born and the name was established for people that took the law into their own hands because the law ignored situations. In other words, crime, bad things were happening, and the law enforcement agencies were doing nothing.

And so vigilantes were born to give stability and peace and safety to the people in their community. So this is the definition of vigilanteism, and Earl's vigilantes are doing this. Why? Because the Attorney General, Ashley Moody in Florida is an example, does nothing. The State Office of Consumer Affairs, car dealers themselves refuse to have a self-policing agency. There is no ethics commission. If you're a lawyer, if you're a doctor, many other professions, they have internal policing, and they have internal sanctions against people in their profession to avoid having the embarrassment that you have

when you are arrested or charged on the outside police or FBI or attorney generals. The problem is the police, the FBI, the attorney generals are ignoring what's going on. So, hence, the birth of Earl's vigilantes. Didn't mean to run on there. Pretty exciting. Really pretty exciting. and you know folks this is proof that you are an important part of the show we're including you in the show as i say every single week not only your opinion your information you share with us but can you imagine earl's vigilantes and this is going to be another exciting part of our show so stick with us we'd love to hear from you

we get some volunteers already don't we stu we do we had a couple from last week's show and they have to be put up on the website and then a gentleman you were speaking with on Facebook he volunteered he's the first one up he's in Maryland and his name's Robert so he's our first official one up there and the rest will get up there

so please visit earlsvigilantes.com and sign up earlsvigilandes.com and we're probably going to have t-shirts and hats maybe we're coming up with some sort of form of identification and if you can think of anything that would be suitable

we will be once you're screen and approved as a vigilante, then we'll give you your identification of badge or a hat or a t-shirt. I can think of something. Ladies, you too, can be part of Earl's Vigilantes. You too. So don't forget, take a look. The website, again, Stu?

Earlsvigilantes.com, and if that's too much of a mouthful, just go to Earleoncars.com. Right there at the top of the page, there's a link. And, by the way, if you need help, you go to the same place. You go to Earlsvigilantes.com, and it says, find a vigilante, and it's listed by state. So you go down, find your state, and you'll find your vigilantes. I was just thinking that one of the important duties is a vigilante, if you choose to volunteer, is to file the complaint because card dealers have been getting away with what they've done for so long

since at least the mid-20th century, and certainly well before that, Because they've been getting away with it because of the lack of enforcement, people just don't complain. When I was testifying before the Florida Senate to try to make the dealer fee illegal, I was told by the Florida Automobile Dealers Association attorneys and the Attorney General, well, Mr. Stewart, one of the reasons that we don't take action against dealers is we don't get that many complaints. So people are just, what is they, they're numb from the abuse of the rules and the laws. You know, complacent. So we want you vigilantes to file complaints with the Attorney General, file complaints for the county office consumer affairs with the Florida Department of Motor Vehicles,

or I keep forgetting we're international, with the Department of Motor Vehicles, wherever you may be. And you can go to our own cars and download those forms as well. So vigilantes, if we can have you filing complaints all over the country, we can bring attention to the sad state of affairs. Yes, it can be a big help. We're going to go to Marty, who has been holding. Thank you so much for your patience, Marty. You can see or hear that we're having a great time here,

and there's a lot to get involved with. Marty's calling us from West Pone Beach. Good morning. Hi. Hi, how are you? We're well, thank you. What I want to ask, Earl, and everybody else, when you see a car ad for a lease, you'll see $99 a month, $129 a month. And obviously, when you look at it, you see there's a down payment of $3,000, $5,000.

Do you think that it should be a state law or a government law that the down payment is added to the price? So you see the true cost of the lease versus these fictitious prices. Well, Marty, you're right. You're absolutely right. There happens to be a federal law. It's a law from the Federal Trade Commission. And I can't cite you the page and statute exactly, but I almost know it verbatim.

the law says that when you advertise a price, any disqualifications of that price, anything that changes that price must be displayed as prominently and conspicuously as the price itself. So you set a $99 or $129 a month lease. If you're advertising that online, the newspaper, television, and the letters of that, as you look at it,

let's say they're two inches high, $129 a month. Let's say the down payment is $10,000. Well, what's happening right now is they're putting it in fine print, if at all, in the fine print. The flash on the screen so quickly and so small, you can't read it. The Federal Trade Commission says that $10,000 down payment has to be right beside the $129 per month,

lease and it has to be as big print as dark print as the other. That is a federal law and it's being violated every day. And that's one of the reasons, another reason we're forming Earl's vigilantes to complain to the Federal Trade Commission. Yeah, another thing, Marty, we've discovered on the last several mystery shops we've done, not only are, is the giant down payment hidden buried deep down in fine print that's almost impossible to read. It's the payment appears next to a statement that says no money down. So it's not just a disqualifying detail in the fine print, it's the ad is, they're blatantly deceptive. Yeah, it's a science. They even make the color of the disclaimer, not only is it microscopic, but they will have something like red on blue,

which apparently they've done some scientific testing. The most difficult color combination to read is red on blue. They've got it down to a science, and it's illegal. Right, and some of the ads are actually the manufacturer's ads and some of the national ads. Also, you can't tell what it is. Now, I happen to be, I consider myself a good consumer, so I never take their ad as being what the price is, and so you check everything out. But a lot of people think, I mean, I had a friend of mine once and said to me, oh, we got a great deal on a Hyundai.

And then he tells me the rest of the story. He said, well, that was only with $5,000 down. So I said, well, I said, you better divide the $5,000 by $36. And now you know what you're really paying. So he said, oh, you got to do that. I said, yeah. I said, you don't, you have to pay, you know, what do you have to pay? I got to ask you one other question.

Yeah. This is going back years and years ago. We bought an Oldsmobile, which we finally got rid of. But this is years ago. And my wife couldn't see very well out of it. It had bucket seats. These were the first car we had with bucket seats. And the dealer also had a car that had a bench seat in the front.

Those are the days of a bench seat. So I went back to the dealer and said, I had the car for a week. I said to the dealer, listen, we've had this car for a week. We put on 100 miles, and my wife can't see very good, and she's afraid she's going to have an accident. I said, you've got a bench seat, can I just, you know, trade it back into it? There's only, like I said, 100 miles on the car. The guy said, oh, well, we titled the car already. So now it's a used car, and I had to pay, I think it was $800 and trade it after a week.

The car really sticker for 4,200 or something in those days. So I said, well, okay, about a week or two weeks later, I see. I never got the title in the mail. This is in New York State. So I figured the dealer lied to me. He really never titled the car. Usually you don't title it that fast. Exactly.

So anyways, I went to Small Claims Court, and that's the story I told the judge. I lost the case because the judge said, well, you made the deal, and it doesn't make any difference if he titled or he didn't. But I really think that he, obviously, his dealership, made $800 on me. I never bought another car from there again. But, you know, consumers have been taken for a ride in a lot of these car deals. Absolutely. Now, that's common practice, and you're right, the titling, unfortunately. takes too long and when you buy a car the title process can take weeks or even

months we sell a lot of vehicles we if we sell a car that's that we put a temporary tag on it and oftentimes we have customers complaining because the titling isn't done in a reasonable amount of time so you buy a car and come back three or four days later and change your mind the processing has not happened they could stop it. They could refund your money. They would have to sell the car for a little bit less. They should report to the next buyer that this car was sold to a man that didn't like bucket seats and we changed it for a bench seat. It's only got 100 miles. It's a real value. You can buy it for almost, you can buy it for less than you charge for a new car, but not $800, not

a ridiculous amount. So it's the mentality and the ethics of car dealers. They don't exist. well fortunately this guy went out of business yeah yeah there's another one right behind him okay well thank you thank you marty you stay safe and be well thanks for the call marty give us a call uh you're a very important part of the show 877 960 960 or you can text us at 772499000 don't forget ladies $50 for the first two new lady callers. Yeah, well, Brick's got a YouTube over here. Well, let's get to some of the questions.

Well, it's interesting because I've actually got four of them based on your question about where would you buy your car. Oh, great. Mark Ryan says, although purchasing directly through the manufacturer would save money, what about the service element? I'd prefer the dealership for all of the after-sale support. Wayne says, if I knew I was getting a flat price, same as everyone else, I would be good dealing with the manufacturer. Guy Larrabee says, I would like to buy my car from Amazon, good price, no flim-flam, good service, easy return policy, home delivery, who could ask for more? And Kit Kat comes in with, how would you test drive a car from the manufacturer before buying?

So basically just two questions there is how would you test drive it? And what about servicing the car afterwards where, you know, if there were no dealerships, where would you service your vehicles? Well, let me go back and back up a little bit as far as the servicing and the test driving. Those questions are very, very revealing because they were well thought out, and those are two things that would have to be addressed. Tesla has already addressed that as an example, and Tesla has locations all over the country where you can test drive a car. In some states, they cannot sell direct, but in many states they can. And those states where they cannot, you can still test drive the car, and of course you can have your car maintain and repaired.

So that's something that the manufacturer would have to deal with setting up satellite locations all over the country to take care of those people that would buy the cars from them. So yeah, yeah, that something has to be addressed. Now bear in mind, part of this whole discussion, Part of this whole discussion about buying direct from manufacturer evolved with the electric car. Now, the electric car is a whole new ballgame. The combustion engine requires far more maintenance than an electric vehicle.

And some say an electric vehicle really requires no maintenance. Well, there's not such thing as no maintenance, but it's so minimal compared to a combustion engine. The size of the dealership servicing would be much smaller. A lot of it would be done by computer, by flashing, and even in the customer's garage, a lot of software fixes would be possible. And the car of the future, which is not too far in the future, just a few years.

So maintenance and repair is not such an issue, but driving the car is, and it's easy to have satellite locations where one of each model is available for a test drive. So that's the way to, but I'm impressed. If I'm counting so far, everybody has said, given some caveats about service and test drive, I'd rather buy directly from the manufacturer. You had four of those, right? That's all four, basically. That's what I'm seeing.

And I think we had somebody else that was maybe five. What do you have? Over there? Any answers? Let's see you here. Well, we had a couple on Facebook that we would rather buy from you, Earl. They're very sweet. Here's another one.

This is another compliment on anonymous feedback to you. It just popped in, but it does address an issue. It says, I couldn't imagine getting better service from Toyota than what you provide with your personal touch. I can imagine car manufacturers sticking to a rigid set of policies that will hurt consumers who rely on dealers like you. Of course, I realize there aren't many dealers like you. You know, one thing, this question, now that it's reaching the heights it has, not being understanding car dealers, the fact that Ford and General Motors have come out in favor of direct sales, that is huge. Most of the other manufacturers are remaining silent, but I know it's in the backs of the minds of many of the manufacturers.

this thing is going to catch fire and it's going to move quickly and it's going to be a huge watershed moment in the automobile retail dealers have millions and tens of millions of dollars investing invested in buildings and facilities and there's a huge economic impact on the on the economy by the fact that it's moving in this direction. Very good point. We are going to go to a guy who's been holding, and he's calling us from Ottawa, Canada. Wow.

Good morning. Good morning, Earl. Welcome. I have to say that I thoroughly enjoy your show. I watch it every Saturday morning. Oh, thank you. We have something today that will warm your heart. In Ontario, a card.

dealer has been charged $17,000 this week for false advertising. There was a dealer in Windsor, Ontario, which is the hub of auto manufacturing in Ontario, who was advertising Dodge Rams at a very low price. However, when people went in, they said, well, you can't have it at that price because that's for employees only. So the consumer branch did an investigation and found him guilty of false advertising. and find them $17,000. Now, this is a third offense for this dealer, Windsor Chrysler,

and the first time they were charged $4,000 fine wasn't enough to change their ways. The second time they were charged $8,000 fine, still wasn't enough to change their ways. Now they charge them $17,000, and the next time will be $35,000 until they change their ways. So this is a type of thing I guess you would like to have in Florida Just like your comments on that Well, Guy, you're right, it brings a big smile on my face Although you can't see it

I love Canada Canada's great And yeah, it's nice to see that In Ottawa That they have They have the courage to enforce the law And usually the lobbyists from the Auto Association and from the dealers themselves and from the manufacturers,

the lobbying, and they support through PACs, people get elected like Attorney General's. I'm not familiar with the consumer enforcement groups in Canada, but it's nice to see that someone can stand up against the money, follow the money. That's the reason you don't see it in the United States. There is so much money. The Attorney General of Florida is elected

with support from the Florida Automobile Dealers Association and from the manufacturers and from the individual dealers and Attorney General in Florida if they had the auto lobby against them could never get elected. So that's the reason, a lot of silence on the part of those. So congratulations.

You should be proud of being a Canadian and I'm proud of your enforcement agencies. And I hope you can call the show again with the $35,000 a dollar fine. gums okay i'll do that for sure thank you very much great great call thank you guy amazing amazing okay i hope ashley moody was listening uh that's our attorney general you think you can do something about all this deception by all these dealers uh give her a call folks uh she is at 850 414 3300 ashley moody our attorney general

who should be helping us. Back to the recovering car dealer. Okay, let's, we don't have YouTube over here? I've actually got a couple. Yeah. First one, Robert Profit, is asking, how can a person tell if a car has safety sensors built inside the windshield?

I understand that some windshields will cost way higher to replace and install. And that's actually very true, because first off, we started with windshields that just had a rain sensor that could automatically turn on your windshield wipers. But now you've got such systems as the heads-up display. Oh, yeah.

The cameras. That's in the windshield. Well, there's actually a special sheet on the windshield that reflects the transmission. It's a little projector that transmits that onto the windshield. If you broke your windshield, you wouldn't have to do anything other than put that sheet back on that. Well, the new windshield would come with it, but it does increase the cost of the windshield. Of course, yeah. However, such systems as the cameras for the automatic braking and lane keep assist, lane departure assist, the ones that are watching out the front of the car and helping drive your car for you, when you replace the windshield, a lot of those cameras must be recalibrated properly.

And we have found also that if the windshield installed is an aftermarket windshield, quite often those cameras cannot see through it. properly because the glass is not designed right. And we've actually had customers who've had to go back and have a new windshield installed again to get a factory windshield in order to recalibrate those cameras properly. That's a heads up, folks. What Richard said, if you have an accident and replace your windshield, be sure your insurance company gives you an up to code, up to a specification, windshield that will accommodate your, what was it, with the proximity kind of a exactly the

for the automatic braking systems for lane keep assist and the easiest way to tell if your car has any of these systems course is you know read through what features your car has but also look up next to your rear view mirror and if you have any sort

of a camera or other device up there that you can see from the outside then you know you've got those sensors and it'll have to be specially installed that way great question thank you right There's a follow-up question. Somebody just texted. It says, if you replace your windshield using a company like Safe Flight,

you know, Safe Light Repair, Safe Light Replacement. Yep. Will they replace the windshield with the proper windshield like Rick talked about? The well-known companies, yes. They are very well aware of these new systems, and they watch for them and make sure they get them done properly. And they will also recommend for you if you have an issue with those cameras, they'll tell you you'll need to go to the dealership to get that recalibrated properly.

What about some of those local windshield companies? I know there are several in our area. We use some in our collision repair center. They come in as a sublet thing. Yep. They're equipped to do the proper replacement and repair? Yes, they are. Okay, great.

Okay, we are going to give you that number and the text number. As I said earlier, you're an important part of the show. Hey, 77-960, or you can text us at 772-49-7-6. 530. Don't forget ladies. $50. First two new lady callers. And we've got one more here, actually, if I can just slip it in. Paul is asking, I'm looking to buy a Canary XLE. At the dealership I'm looking at, they're offering zero per net, zero percent financing. Is this a ploy or are there special qualifications you have to meet? It's probably legitimate because a manufacturer has a lot of zero. and low interest rate. So if it said Toyota captive, in other words, Toyota Financial Corporation or Southeast Toyota Financial Corporation,

the 0% is legitimate. And you also have an either or probably that you can take a cash rebate. I don't know what it is. It could be $1,000 cash rebate or 0%. In which case, you just have to do the arithmetic. There are qualifications,

but they're not prohibitive. The 0% is usually for the better credit, not necessarily like stellar 800 Beacon score credit, but 500. Yeah, so it might be, yeah, it could be 700, even maybe in the high sixes, and then it'll go for, worst credit, it might go down to 0.9% or go up to 0.9%. So, but it is legitimate, 0% when you see that, it's for real. Awesome.

Let me mention one thing that I didn't earlier. www. You're anonymous feedback.com. Take advantage of it. but www. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. As you're new to the show, we don't know who you are. That goes through a special company called Incognito.

If you're interesting, you could Google it. Incognito, spelled, I-N-C-O-N-E-A-T-O.com. And they offer this amazing service that you can buy into your company or an individual or anybody, and people can just send to you a message and you'll never, no matter how much you'd, try to beat it out of anybody. They never

know who's at the message. So you want an anonymity? Youranonymousfeedback.com. www. www.youranonymous feedback.com. And here's some breaking news. I believe that Jessica from Sebring is going to join Earl's Vigilantes. She will be the first female.

I am getting applications. They're coming in as we're doing the show. So that's awesome. Fantastic. And then we'll come up with we need a good logo, Stu. There's something with a... Stu's the artistic member of the family. Come up with something cool and good taste and something people would be proud of.

What are the Giuliani's wear a mask that I don't think we want to? I'll have fun with it. I promise you'll love it. Okay. It's going to be great. It's going to be exciting. Okay, we have a text message from Andreas in South Carolina.

This is good morning, Earl. I like to report that my wife's peeling wheels were replaced by the dealer without hesitation and question. The service manager to whom I reported the issue tasked a very nice service writer to handle the issue, and it was a very pleasant experience. New wheels were ordered and installed. Kudos to Dick Smith Hyundai in Greenville, South Carolina, and Brittany in the service department. I'd also like to share that I'm afraid for another dealer's life here in South Carolina.

I saw that a dealer posted a sign now open Sundays. I think this is viewed as sacrilegious, as I've heard. stories of dealers' businesses being vandalized by other dealers in the past for being open on Sundays. Some supposedly received threats against their lives. Putting the blue laws aside for a moment, if Florida has those, would you entertain the idea of being open on Sundays? Would other dealers be upset? Well, we got news for you. Every dealer down here is open on Sunday, but that wasn't always the case, and Earl can tell you about what that transition was like. Were you ever threatened by another dealer for uh because i think you were among the first i was threatened by my employees

yeah that was a i was the first dealer in florida to open on sundays even back when i was evil i had the understanding that if you're going to be successful in retail you have to make yourself easily accessible to your customers i mean i think of that is a no-brainer but it took car dealers a long time to figure it out and in detroit it was really interesting. I don't slap me if I get carried away here, but believe it or not, if you're from Detroit area of Michigan, in Detroit, the dealers used to be open nine to five, five days a week. They were closed Saturdays and Sundays. And I could never, I could never fathom that. I had a lot of friends that were dealers in Detroit. Anyway, yes, I opened first in Sunday back in the 70s,

and service was closed. I opened service. Now, we're totally free and open to our customers. My employees didn't like it, and I don't blame them. Retail is a tough business. If you're going to be in retail, you have to be open. You have to be available to your customers. And who likes to work Sunday? I don't.

Nobody likes to work Sunday, but we work shifts. And if you work Sunday, you get Tuesday off, and it's tough on the families. Retail is a tough business. It definitely is. And, you know, I got a telephone call from a young lady in Colorado, and she had just made the transition from Florida to Colorado because of a job. And she said to me, can you believe that I can't get my car serviced on Sunday? And I said, oh, you're kidding.

I did not know that. So the customer comes first, obviously. 877960, 9960, where you can text us at 772-490. 976530, and Frank, thank you for waiting. Frank's calling us from Jupiter Farms. Well, good morning, Earl and Nancy. Hello, Vigilante. Oh, yes, there you go.

Thank you. I hope I get number seven. That way I feel like James Bond, 007. Ooh, numbers. That's a great idea. Yeah, think about that. There you go. As always, your show triggers so many different emotions that I experienced either back in my past

recently. First off, with a dealership that charge the Jeep and Chrysler for a part they didn't need, I feel is like robbery. And yes, it was under warranty, and yes, the consumer didn't pay for it, but ultimately we will because they're going to be passing on those costs to us in feature models. Yeah, true. So that's the way of looking at that. And it actually happened to me when I purchased a certified use Mercedes-Benz up in Melbourne.

They said, oh, yeah, look, you need this, you need that. And they put in all these things for wood trims and stuff that was fading, that didn't look bad at all. It turned out to be over $1,000. They charged Mercedes-Benz for these parts. And I was a little disturbed by that. I mean, that was five years ago. But anyway, so the long thing, we will eventually all pay for it. Right.

Now, on another note, yesterday Amory and I were out looking at different cars, and we went by Audi just to see what that was all about because she was to eventually replace her Lexus 2008 RX-350 she's had since new. And you guys have serviced it in the car that looks great, and I think Randy thinks she should never get rid of it, but that's Randy. Anyway, an interesting point at the Audi dealership in Palm Beach on Okishovie, they have a box of masks. When you come through the door, if you need a mask, they have a mask. So I thought that would be interesting for your mask wearers. And we also saw that the other day when went Best Buy. They have a box of masks right by the doors. So if you don't have a mask, a lot of these places are providing masks for you all.

We do that, Frank. We don't have a box by the front door because I just were concerned about them disappearing quickly. But anybody, that's the policy, if anybody is not wearing a mask, we open the conversation by offering them a mask. and that's, I think, a little softer approach than, hey, put your mask on. Yeah, no, that's actually very nice. And then afterwards, we would stop by the Mercedes dealership on Locke Chobie. And I guess they're on a big renovation. I mean, they're working out of a trailer and you have a porta potty to stay.

And, I mean, it's really quite a unique experience, to say at least. But there was a young gentleman there by the name of Ryan. It looked very young. But I had a very good attitude. And he's been around Mercedes, both in college and after college. he was very, very knowledgeable. We were speaking about cars, and you could tell that he knew the cars. And the ironic thing, when I asked him, I said, where do you drive?

He has like a 1989 Toyota. He says, I'm around all these fancy cars. I want something good and reliable that I can enjoy and work on myself. So I thought that was kind of unique, too. And he didn't hear about you guys yet. The manager, of course, know you. Like I said, when we mentioned Earl's name in a car dealership, It's like a lightning rod.

It's just, I enjoy seeing their reactions. But anyway, yeah, it was an interesting day. And I look forward to seeing how this works out about that. And then, of course, it's good to have spell check for when you spell vigilantes because it took about four tries. I'm glad I had that when I did the website. Yeah, there you go. But anyway, yeah, thank you again, guys.

There was something else I was going to talk about. night. That's okay. I'm getting old and seen off. Text me if you remember. Just send me a text. I'll read it out left. Okay. Thanks so much. You guys have a good weekend. Appreciate you being here. Great hearing from you, Frank. You know, one of the things that Frank mentioned about the warranty going on, costing you more in the long run, even though, you know, was it Hyundai or Chrysler paid for this and customer didn't have to pay for it.

Now, because there is so much warranty fraud, and we're presuming it's fraud, it could have been incompetence, but because the manufacturers are afraid of their dealers, and the manufacturers audit dealers all the time, I just read the other day that Nissan is doing a massive audit of all their dealers. They're increasing the frequency of the audits, just like the IRS come in audit for taxes. car manufacturers go into dealers all the time, and they do surprise audits. They walk in the door, say, hi, I'm from Honda, and I want to see all your books. And they go through there, and they find out there's been warranty fraud, or warranty stupidity, or whatever you want, call it.

And they say, now you owe us $185,000. And when dealers call in warranty claims, if a dealer has a history of cheating or submitting claims that are not valid, then they are less like you to approve a claim. So we have a lot of situations where a dealer will turn down a warranty repair and the customer will come into us and we get it approved, mainly because we are strictly honest and transparent about what we do under warranty. And we don't get audited by the manufacturer because We're trusted, and our warranty claims are in line. So, yeah, get mad about this thing that happened at Hyundai Chrysler Jeep Dodge,

because that is one of the reasons that you people that have the Jeep that go in there, they say, I'm sorry, we can't help you. We can't submit that warranty claim because we can't get it approved. Where it really affects a lot of buyers practically is a manufacturer will stretch, and they'll go a few months or a few thousand miles out of warranty and fix something and call it goodwill, which is accepted if the dealer has a reputation for being honest with the manufacturer.

But when the dealer's been cheating the manufacturer, they are very rigid, and if you're just a few hundred miles out, they say no dice, no deal. We don't believe that you're telling me the truth about the odometer or about, you know, whatever else the claim is about. So there.

There you go. Okay, let's do some texts. I think that, Rick's got something for us? Just a thought on that. Isn't it true that eventually that small drop in the bucket, eventually that's going to wind up being paid for by the people that buy the next Jeep's in line

because Jeep is eventually going to have to raise their price on the Jeep a little bit in order to cover any of those... Frank mentioned that. Messed up things. That's very true, yes. Okay, I'll tell you this Earl's Vigilantes is a very interesting concept and if you consider yourself

an educated consumer and there sure are a lot of them out there and experienced in purchasing a car, we all are. You can really help us out and you can join Earl's Vigilantes and it's easy

to do. Just go to Earlsvigilantes.com. We have a text from Anne-Marie. Oh. That's a good one. It's a good one. I was waiting Sometimes she gets in early. Sometimes she comes in mid-show, but she's always there. I already talked to Mary on the sunrise. I was just going to say, you know, she was up early this morning.

She may have had to have taken a little nap. Or she drank a lot of coffee. My observation for today is about buying a car from the manufacturer. Volvo has a European vacation program. I understand that the way it works is that you go to your local Volvo dealer, design your custom Volvo, place your order, and confirm your order with a $3,000 deposit. it. The program includes discounts from MSRP, round-trip airfare, including lounge privileges, ooh, hotel, chore of the plant, and then you pick up your customized car complete with temporary

European insurance and registration. You drive it around, then they ship it back to your local dealer. The Volvo plan blends buying the car through the dealer and picking it up at the factory. That sounds like a fabulous vacation for those who can afford it. It would be very tempting if I wanted to buy a Volvo. Direct sales is quite appealing because it sounds like you avoid the excess bogus fees and hassles that most dealers dish out to their customers.

Perhaps competition for manufacturers would help clean up the worst offenses that dealers inflict on their customers. Ideally, I'd like to see a domestic program where a customer could go to a dealer, design their car, put in an order knowing that the manufacturer has special pricing, and the dealer can't add extra

bogus fees, then travel up to the manufacturer and pick up the vehicle. It would be a two for vacation and a new vehicle included. Thanks, Anne-Marie. Brilliant, as always, Anne-Marie. And other than Volvo, I think Mercedes, a number of the European manufacturers have the program where you can fly to Europe, pick your car up, and have a shipback.

And that's kind of cool, as you can afford it. As far as having your car built a spec, that's just a few years away. They can almost do it today. When we get into electric cars, it'll be SOP, and you just have, Tesla does it right now. Tesla has one of each in their satellite service and display areas. You go into a Tesla dealership, all the cars they make are there, and then you walk over the computer, and you're the color you want online.

You can't buy it in Florida. You can't buy the one that's over in Florida. In other states, you can, but not in Florida. And then you have to wait, and you take delivery. the turnaround time and electric cars is going to be very quick because it's going to be all software

they need to get away from I think one of the reasons why it's difficult to custom build a car now is the immense number of different models, trim levels, equipment packages too many parts it's just too many things to put together it needs to be

that's the reason Tesla is simplified there's not a whole lot of options and I understand that's probably why since it's all standard why they're expensive vehicles but they need to figure that part out because if they just simplify you have three trim levels, a couple of options, then ordering a card of spec would be pretty simple.

Great points to really simplicity. Folks, give us a call at 877-960-960, or you can take advantage of the text number 772-497-6530, and we are now going to go out to the Bronx and talk to Howard. Good morning, Howard. Good morning. Thanks for taking my call. next Friday I'm leaving for Jupiter, so I'll be seeing you in the dealership.

Great. Thank you. Yeah, so the weather here is pleasant, but you know it's going to turn, and I don't want to be here when it's cold. Not for the turn. Okay, here's my question. I want to know exactly what is covered on the drive train, and one specific item is the axle boot front axle boot covered on the drive train warranty. Okay, I'll let Rick answer that.

I'm going to give you a rule of thumb because I'm a rule of thumb guy. And a rule of thumb is the fire train warranty covers all the parts on your vehicle that are lubricated with the oil. You've got oil, if it lubricates it, it's covered by the power train warranty. Now I'll get the detailed answer from Rick. Axle boots are covered under the Toyota 5-year 60,000 mile warranty, and interestingly enough, the wheel bearings for the drive wheels are covered as well under 5-year 60,000 miles. So if your vehicle is a front wheel drive, then the front wheel bearings are 560, the rear wheel bearings are 336. If it's a rear-wheel drive, it's opposite of that. And if it's all-wheel-drive, they're all covered, five-year-60,000.

What Toyota has a rear-wheel drive? Tacoma, Tundra, Four-Runner, Sequoia. Supra? Super. Oh, really? Yeah. I didn't know that. All our trucks and the big SUVs, and, of course, all of our all-wheel-drive vehicles. So why do they go to front-wheel drive to begin with? Why not stick with all rear wheel drive?

What is the advantage of the front wheel drive? Cost, probably. It's a matter of how much can you charge the customer. And also stability. Yeah, plus front wheel drive actually is a much more stable vehicle in the snow and in the rain. And I can tell you from my own experience with my truck, when the roads get wet and I go to take off from a traffic light and the tires hit those painted white lines on the road, those tires slip. very easily.

Front-wheel-drive cars? Not so much. I haven't lost control of my car since high school. Very good. I know my old Pontiac, I had a real-wheel drive. I had any service done on it. It really, real-wheel drive, it was no problem as far as the axel is concerned. You had the only Pontiac that didn't require service because I was a Pontiac dealer, and we made a fortune in the service department.

I remember that when you were a punta. I'm older than you, so I know. Yeah. Okay. One other question. A first one. The Marai is in California. Do you ever think that it would be in, come to Florida?

No, the Toyota, it was more like an experiment. It was only in California. And it's a pretty cool car. I actually got to drive one once when I went out to a meeting. And really neat concept. That was actually Toyota initially. that was their first foray into like, you know, all-electric car, and it was the hydrogen fuel cell. And they've abandoned that pretty much.

They're still marized, but they're abandoned going to, like, the battery power electric, more like Tesla. But it's a pretty cool car. Clean, pure water dripped out of the tailpipe. That was the only byproduct. One of the biggest issues with a hydrogen-driven car like that is the infrastructure does not exist in the United States for refueling it. I mean, people talk about... Only California, it does. I believe it does in California.

There are limited places in California, but we talk about electric cars and where are you going to recharge your electric car. Well, now there's places everywhere to recharge an electric car, but where are you going to buy hydrogen? Right. No interest. Right. Exactly. That's the problem. Okay, but the hydrogen is the cleanest, I believe.

Oh, yes. Yeah. Okay, great. Thanks for taking my coal. appreciate you guys. I'll talk to you from Jupiter next week. How about a Bronx chair before you leave?

Okay. You got it. Bye. Thank you, Howard. I'm sure you're looking forward to the weather. You know, Rick, one of my horrible experiences as far as losing control of your car was back in Pittsburgh, and we

had a horrific snowstorm. And I was in my car, and I came down, lost control of my car, and I came down the hill backwards. I had a similar experience. And that was shocking. I had my mother in the car with me,

which was even worse. I think she beat me over the head. I'm not sure or something like that, but I did get control of the car quite quickly, and at that point I became a seasoned driver. There you go. Just a little walked-on memory lane, folks. Especially the ladies. I got $50 for

you. We're running out of time. Two new lady callers $50, give me a call $877-960-99-60 Call to say hello One of Texas 772-497-6530 And don't forget to sign up

For Earl's vigilantes And also I know I'm giving you a lot of information WWW Your Anonymous Feedback.com Okay, Rick, you too We do. E.C. Olson is saying, I park my car outside all the time, and I make sure it's waxed a lot, but the clear coat on my 2014 Kia Soul is bad on the hood and roof. I'll have to take it to a body shop in Port St. Lucie to get it fixed. Interesting. You know, a Toyota had a severe clear coat problem. In fact, they had no clear coat. That's a real problem on the white cars.

you might try some sort of you might check with Kia maybe go to a chat room maybe go online see if there are other people with the Kia issue on that model that have the paint problem and you might even be able to get some assistance from Kia we don't know sometimes they do sometimes they don't you go to a dealership and you say can you check and give me some help on painting this car your warrant is probably only three years

36,000 miles on the paint and you're probably well out of warranty, but if there's an acknowledged problem, then they might even have some sort of a secret warranty, some sort of a recall or a service bulletin that would fix it for you, or give you some assistance. One of the things that I've noticed,

I look at cars a lot as I'm driving down the road, and it seems here in Florida we have a real issue with clear coat delamination, and I'm guessing it's got to be the sun and the UV radiation. They call the sunbelt. They've got Arizona, California, in Florida, any place we've got a lot of sun, especially sold, just a very, very negative environment for an automobile.

So that's the reason if you're a Floridian, you just can't fight the fact that you're going to have problems. Rust is a thing of the past in many states of the union. But in Florida, if you live on the coast, your car's going to rust. I don't care what they do to it. Your car's going to rust internally, really, and you don't even see it until it's too late. And the brakes, one of the big ones. You live near the ocean.

Boy, the elements really play havoc, don't they? But we certainly enjoy the sun all year round. I know I do, being from Pittsburgh. Ladies and gentlemen, 877-960, 9960, you're an important part of the show. We'd love to hear from you. and the Texas 772-4976530, and we're going to go to Bobby, who's waiting. He is from West Palm Beach. Good morning, Bobby.

Good morning. Nice to speak to you. I have a number of things I'd like to get to. You were talking about the manufacturers being cheated by the dealers on warranty issues. I would say that is sauce for the goose, as they say, because if they think that the dealers who cheat their customers aren't going to cheat the manufacturer, then they're storily mistaken. The manufacturers could do something about it if they wanted to.

They could say, don't go to Earl Stewart for warranty work because we've found that they're not honest about it, but they won't do that. No. You're right. That's one thing. They can end that if they wanted to, but they'll do it internally and not, let the customer know. And by the way, you were talking about the man dying directly from the

manufacturers, we, we know that they're, they're not in the customer's best interest either as evidenced by, remember when I think Toyota cracked down on the dealers, um, advertising better prices than was it, I mean, they're not looking out for the customer. So I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't think they would suddenly start looking out for the customer. So that was the second thing. A third thing I wanted to talk about was shop fees in service. People need to notice, and I noticed on your advertisements, Mr. Stewart, you don't charge shop fees. Is that correct?

That's correct. Yes. Well, it's about 10% at the dealers now, and that adds up quite quickly on routine maintenance. And people need to pay attention. I don't know what they can do about it except look for people who don't charge it. They won't take it off. A lot of people don't. I'm glad you brought that up because there are a lot of people don't even know they're paying it.

We pay a lot of attention to hidden fees, and we call them dealer fees, and we talk about thousands of dollars. We don't talk about the service hidden fee, which is the bottom of the invoice. And they name it something that sounds official. They'll call it hazardous waste. Klova, sundry supplies, miscellaneous, anything you can imagine, they call it that. And as you say, it's a percentage of the invoice. It could be 5%, 10%, and you bring a car in a lot more for service than you when you buy a car. So you're paying that hidden fee in your service department.

Every dealer I know charges it. I don't know a service department by dealership or independent. They all charge it. It's bogus, it's not fair, and it should be against the law. The only people that stand up against that is the American Automobile Association, and if you're approved by the American Automobile Association dealer for service, the requirement, I'm not saying that they check it as much as they should, but the requirement of the AAA is you cannot charge an extra fee on your service invoice.

You just charge for what you did, and you can't add anything else. I'm glad you brought that up. don't talk about it as often we should, but it's probably average as $25 on the average service bill, which is terrible. Right. Yeah. Would you say most dealers are part of the American automobile dealer? No. Whatever you.

The American Automobile Association only has a few dealers. If you have in Palm Beach County, they might have six or eight, and they're not all dealers. and some of them are independents, but that's the rule. And the AAA, they don't enforce it the way they should, and I don't blame them. It's expensive to have to shop and mystery shop and forth. By the way, we should start doing that, too, if we're going to be doing more mystery shops or service departments,

we need to start measuring the miscellaneous sundry supply fee that is at the bottom of the invoice track. By the way, as a tip, I don't want to use up your time, Bobby, but as a tip, if you're paying your invoice in a car dealership or independent garage, and you look at the bottom, you'll find it. It'll be nuts, bolts, fasteners, miscellaneous, sundry supplies, hazardous waste disposal. It'll be something you don't understand because you didn't have it done. If you question the cashier and if you make a point of saying, listen, that's not fair,

I didn't come in here to buy that and I'm not going to pay it, they usually instruct the cashiers to take it off the bill. And you'd be surprised if you object more than half the time, they'll take it off. That's interesting. I will give that a try. Now, I want to call you in on the carpet for something. You say you like complaints, and I've got a complaint for you. And I don't give you an F because you do advertise that you don't charge service fees, which I think is good.

But your service specials are still advertised mostly as 12% off, 15% off. off, 30,000 mile checkup, 12% off, oil change, 15% off. I think those are right for being wrong. Yeah, yeah, I hear you. So I think you need to advertise what price you're selling a four-cylinder synthetic oil change for, whatever that may be. I do get to interject, and maybe it's not as clear. we do list all the major service pricings on the website, and I

think we should do... He's talking about the coupons. I understand. We need to put that price on the coupons because it's on a different set. So there's a list of service pricing, and that percentage off comes off that those prices. I believe we use a service, Bobby, that Toyota provides,

and we're limited as to how we can customize these. It's a template. We plug it in. And there are other things on our coupons. I don't like either. They have certain consumer disclosure. We don't like fine print.

But your point is well taken. We will certainly look into it and make a change if we can. I was going to, if I have another minute, I was going to ask you about how much Toyota controls those coupons because it's oddly different. Every dealer in the area is sort of different

sort of specifically. You know, each one they allow the dealers to choose the amount of the discount, but like Earl said, there is like a template that's offered and like some of the fine print that's in there is can't be changed. But I think you gave me a good idea, though. I think if we can't change the coupons, certainly on the page where the coupons are, we can have a link back to the pricing page so it's easier to find what that 12% is being taken off. The reason we use Toyota to use this and don't do it ourselves, I'd much prefer to do it. ourselves. Toyota has a database. They have the list of all customers that have come into our

service department, how long it's been since they've been in, those that bought the car and never came back, those that bought the car came back once. They also know all the dealers in our what they call the primary market area. So they hold us blackmail by if you want to use our database and our information on your customers, then you have to use. our mail service. I don't like it, but our hands are tied. Right. Yet another reason why I don't know

that trusting the manufacturers to do a better job is a good idea, because I don't think they will. I think they'll continue to hoodwink us if they can. Maybe. Anyhow, thanks very much. I enjoy the show. Thank you, Bobby. A great call. You brought a lot to our

attention, and please give us a call again. 877-960. You can text us at 772-497-6-530. Don't forget, www., your anonymous feedback.com. And again, ladies, please give us a call. You can win yourself $50 first two new lady callers. Boy, the time has really passed by quickly this morning. I know.

I have a YouTube over here. Frank Hall is asking, Retail prices of used cars have been crazy. this year. Have you seen them starting to drop yet? Yes, they're dropping and fairly quickly. It's a great question and it prompts me for another point I wanted to make. There was an article in the Detroit Free Press recently, the USA Today, yesterday, reminding you if you're leasing a car to please consider the fact that the market value of your car might be higher than the residual option to buy. The odds against that happening are high

it probably won't be but they give a great example of a one of these big expensive GMC Yukon that was actually worth far more than the residual value and a lessee was able to get out of a lease this happened to be the wife of swamplease dot com which is a company that will find someone to take over your lease for you but anyway she was able to get out of her Yukon and actually pay off the remaining value of the lease and come out $2,000 ahead. So if you have an expensive SUV luxury truck kind of a thing, it's worth a look to be sure that you might be able to buy the car with the option, flip it, as we say, and actually

make a profit on it. Don't have to keep the car, but you could accept the right, sell it back to the dealer that you lease the car from. That's really a great article, and there may be more, there may be some hidden cash parked right in your driveway. So take a look at that article. It's in the USA Today, and it's in the weekend edition. I think that Stu has a whole lot of tests. 47.

47. No, I'm kidding. There's a bunch. Real quick, Earl, love your woodland setting. Lovely fall colors. Just be careful. I think I saw a marmot. Oh, a marmot.

I saw a skink the other day. Did you really? Yeah. The skink under a rock? Oh, the tree. Okay, here's one for Rick. There's something wrong with my 2003 Camry. I know it's getting old and I've started to spend some money on repairs.

Whenever I go over a bump, there's a crazy loud bang coming from the front of my car. I was hoping Rick could tell me what to expect before I take it in. I'm going to go on a pretty good-sized limb here and say 90% of the time, that's going to be the strep tops. The strut, McPherson strut suspension on the Camrys, the top assembly of it with the bearings start to get loose over age, and they'll rattle and make noise when you hit a bump. They can be rather expensive going to a dealership to have it done. However, one of the really great new features that aftermarket has come up, they have an assembly where it's the entire top, spring, and strut all in one assembly. Give me a round number.

How much to go to fix it? Part-wise, I'm going to say about... This could be a total. $400 total on parts, and labor, you're looking at about another $400. Okay, so 2003. Be careful. Yeah.

Very good. Okay, about six years ago, ABC News did an undercover investigation just like you did, where they loosened a wire, just like you did. Several shops did the right thing and reported to the customer

that it was just a loose wire. Unfortunately, several diagnosed a serious condition and charged hundreds of dollars for the pair, and that's from Bobby in Atlanta. Yeah. Yeah, it's going to happen, and we're going to do more of this. In a way, I feel bad because I'm doing the work the manufacturers should be doing.

I'm surprised that they don't. We're probably going to find out of them. We need to start shopping some cars that are auto warranty because of their end-ordid, we're shopping for the manufacturers, yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, we weren't sure what, route they were going to go. We told the shopper, we said pay whatever they tell you to pay, we'll reimburse

you. All right, here's a tough one. Be honest, and tell me which car maker manufactures on the whole the best vehicles. One answer, don't give a politically correct answer, which car maker? Well, I'm a consumer report's guy, so I say Lexus,

Honda, Toyota, Subaru. They said one. Oh, okay. Well, you can't say one because every manufacturer has a multitude of models and styles, and so everyone is different. You can have a manufacturer that has a car that is on the Do Not Recommend list by Consumer Reports, and they can also have a car that's the best in its class. So you just can't say a manufacturer.

They said on the hole. On the hole, on the hole would be. I'm helping the announcement. On the whole is Lexus. On the whole is Lexus. Very good. What kind of vehicle do you drive? Alexis.

Well, I do. And you're smart. You read consumer reports? And if I was a Chevrolet dealer, I'd still be driving an Alexis. That's intimidating, Stu. Okay. More anonymous feedback. How does Arizona heat affect a hybrid battery?

Same question for cold weather states. Say that again. How does Arizona heat affect a hybrid battery? So this person is from Arizona, and the same question for colder weather states. I don't think there's a big difference, but you go ahead. There's really not that big an issue on it nowadays. Cold weather, actually, is going to be a little more detrimental. It's going to take it a little longer for it to operate and warm up properly. But heat can be a big issue. That's why they have cooling fans built in, really to keep things nice and clear. One of the most important things to remember is look for the vents where the inlet is for the air, for that hybrid battery. In the back seat.

And don't block it. That's why there are no Chevy dealers in the Sahara Desert. Next. Okay. Hey, Earl. Did you see those scumbags at Nissan Motor Acceptance Corp repossessed cars they shouldn't have and then stuck the car owners with an unlawful storage fee? No.

Then the personal belongings in their car were held hostage for more fees. This is why people hate car dealers. You know, I can only say this. Nissan is going to hell in a handbasket. They got the CEO in general. No, he escaped, I forgot. And they're harassing their dealers. The dealers hate them.

The customers hate them. They're going broke. I just have never, I just don't know how one manufacturer can do so many things wrong. Nobody likes Nissan. I mean, we were going to buy a Nissan dealership at one point. Yeah, they told us they were trying a new thing where they wanted to have one dealer, one owner,

own all the Nissan dealerships in the market. How bad would it? I mean, you talk about disincentive towards competition. You got a bad dealer. The entire town is screwed. All right. Good afternoon, Earl. I wanted to comment on your volunteer advocate initiative. I have found through friends and family that most people do not want advice that might keep them from immediate gratification, that dopamine hit of buying a new car. They would rather be abused by the dealership and leave with a new car in a long tail of woe, then hold back, be patient, demand a better deal, and or financing. When you attempt to give advice that might impede the immediate delivery of the vehicle, the new use car buyer gets a little hostile and no longer receives the advice with the good intent for which it was given.

Well, it's the psychology. People, you know, they'd rather get mad at somebody else than themselves. If you don't do your due diligence and you don't do your homework and you go out and get taken advantage of, you can scream and yell at the dealer, and they deserve it, but you deserve some of the blame for not being careful. You know, I don't want to get in the, you know, I think that most people do want to get a good deal. Most people do want to be educated and help and assisted, and that's what the vigilantes are going to do, mainly, is help people. I see a vigilante. I love the picture Stu did for my blog, As I'm for a weekly. He took that Uncle Sam, and he put my face in there.

And I know it's ugly, but. The stern face. Yeah, stern face. But, yeah, you're going to help people that need. help a lot of people out there do not have the wherewithal to negotiate with a car dealer so the vigilantes will help in many ways yeah I think that are not to brag I think our ratings suggest that people are looking for good advice yes good morning Earl this is more anonymous feedback good morning I have a

question for you and Rick I'm looking to purchase a used Corolla hybrid 2012 to 2015 for my daughter I know they didn't make a hybrid I think until until 2019. Right. But Corollas, I want to, I know the cars are solid mechanically, but I'm wondering how much a new battery would cost if the current battery goes bad. I'm talking brand new battery, not a reconditioner, use one.

A hybrid battery, I can answer that. It's around 2000 right now for a new one. But you'd have to go up to a 2019 to get a hybrid corolla. Priuses or other hybrids go back many, many years. Okay. Question for Rick. This is anonymous feedback.

I saw your YouTube video on the Czech airbag system light. My check airbag light is also coming on, but when I go to the dealership, the light goes out. Somebody's got a remote. When you go to the doctor, your headache goes away, too. I mean, it's just Murphy's Long. It is kind of a funny inside joke within the dealership that these, not a joke, but it's frustrating. These intermittent problems are the hardest things to diagnose.

But when I go to the dealership, the light goes out, just as what happened to the caller in your video. Do you know if he figured out the problem? You had requested that he take the car to the dealer and have them hook up a device to see what codes appear. Any idea what could be happening to my car? Like Earl said, intermittent issues can be a real pain in the neck to find, but airbags being a safety issue, they absolutely can pull the codes

and be able to figure out which circuit is having the issue. and a good mechanic would actually start in checking all the connectors, shaking them, unplugging them, and plugging them back together, and looking to find where this, it's got to be a loose connection, so it would have to be one of those by doing what's called a shake test on the wire and unplugging and plugging them back together, they should be able to find it and solve it. Okay. Here's one that came in in all caps.

I think they're displeased with our endorsement of off-lease-only. They said, in all caps, off-lease only buys cars that have been hit. They screwed me and lied. They buy ones that show a clean car fax or other reports, but remember, anyone can have a car fixed if it's not done in a dealership and not report it. I had to learn the hard way. So get a second person to look it over.

Earl is right, buyer-bearware, trust me. Well, we've had Mark Fisher, who is a founder, and he's a big stockholder in the current off-lease only. He's an honest person He means to run his business honestly That is not to say that someone was not taking advantage of at an off-leash-only outlet So you just need to Offleash-only has a great niche

And use the huge car market They sell their cars as is They sell them at a lower price than anybody else And they're honest They have a small dealer fee Not a big dealer fee around $500 you need to take your car

when you buy it to a mechanic get it checked out you need to do a car factory board and you can get a good price it's kind of like the Home Depot I mean the Walmart I'm sorry it's kind of like the Walmart of the car used car dealers

you just have to be careful you're going to get a good price but get the car checked out first okay I want to get to one more because I know we're getting close to the time we have to start the mystery shop report so this is anonymous feedback do you ever take an older insurable Toyotas

beaters as trades that could be used for teenagers to learn how to drive? Most of us don't want to subject our nice cars to teenage mishaps. We get requests for that car every day and everybody wants an old beat-up car that they could give to their daughter, son or there's always a good reason. The problem is safety and if you can find a good safe car I tell people when they call me, first of all, you're not going to be much under $5,000 or $6,000.

You're not going to find anything under $1,000. And as long as you don't care about color, dent it fenders, faded upholstery, stains, if you can have the ugliest car you ever saw and you don't get picky about it, it can be safe. And you can buy a super ugly car maybe for $5,000. is it safe? Yeah, exactly. If you can get a more recent car that was beat to hell, you can save money on it.

But get the safest car that you can afford for your kid. There's so many new features right now. I made a joke about losing my control my car in high school. That's a true story, but that was before the days of tracks and control, vehicle stability, control. The more safety features

you can get, the better. And definitely, Consumer Report, you can always go there. The November edition has the best used cars. under $10,000, ladies and gentlemen, so take advantage of that. Also, my three teenage girls, gosh, I could have made you a great deal back then. Really beat up cars.

Okay, we've got to do this mystery shopping report or else we won't have time. Okay. And ladies and gentlemen, please vote on that mystery shopping report. 772-4976530. We are going to Johnson, Honda, in Stewart. Johnson Honda, Stewart, Florida, and no, our dealership is not in Stewart, Florida. Our dealership is in North Palm Beach. I say that because there's a lot of confusion.

I shouldn't have said that, but I did. Okay. For the last several weeks, our mystery shops have focused on bait-and-switch car dealer advertising. These investigations have taken Agent Lightning and Agent Thunder from Fort Pierce down to Delray Beach, and not to Royal Palm Beach. There's no shortage of this type of scam. Even though it comes in different forms, it's fair to say that most car dealer advertising is bait and switch.

All dealer advertising is bait and switch. Whether it's really low payment, too good to be true price, or hail damaged cars that draw people in, the end result is the same. The customer won't get the deal promised in the ad. The dealer will switch it to something more profitable, bait and switch. They all do it. bait and switch car ads have been around for a long time I just stumbled across a YouTube video

of a vintage local Miami news broadcast from 1957 we should put this on Irwin cars we'll send you the link time it was a classic Ralph Rennick was a news reporter 1957 watching the video transformed me back in time to my senior year in high school when a car dealer came

ad came on I had to laugh it was a vintage bait and switch ad from Louie Chevrolet I know some of you out there remember of Louie Chevrolet. They were big, by the way. Luby Chevrolet. The ad extorted the customer to come in and buy a new 1957 Chevy.

When the 1958 models came in just a short time later, Luby promised to take the 57 Chevrolet on trade and only charged the customer an additional $99. Ooh. Now that is what I call a bait and switch.

So it's been going on forever. That's the mid-20th century and an changed and it's not going to change it's insane that was a half a century ago was it's insane that's more than a half a year oh 60 years yeah www ain't gonna happen dot com you know since we don't have a time time machine we can't send any of lightning into shop them but i'd be willing to bet there's a catch and the customer would be switched to a deal much more favorable to mr luby after all this focus on bait and switch we think we have

thoroughly exhausts the subject for now we decided to try a fresh approach with a car dealer, we haven't visited in five years. Shame on us. Johnson Honda in Stewart, Florida. They were the first Honda dealer in Stewart, and Open Point, and what a goal of mine. Johnson Honda has a pretty good reputation, and they did well enough on our mystery shop from January 2016, and they were put on our recommended dealer list. A website was clean, modern, devoid of any outrageous offers or claims. The specials were the regional the lease offers, everything was reasonable, nothing seemed too good to be true. We thought Johnson and Honda would be the perfect place to let Agent Lightning take control

and just go in without an agenda and just let the process take place. So the only instructions we gave Agent Lightning, our female shopper, by the way, was to go, go to Johnson Honda, pretend to buy a new cord, a new Honda Accord sedan. And here's the report. I'll pretend like I'm Agent Lightning. I pulled into the parking lot, parked around noon. I exited the vehicle, made my way to the front door. Dave walked outside to greet me when he saw me approach.

Dave was wearing a mask. That's good. Asked me how he could help. I told him I was interested in buying a new town of 2020 on the cord. I expected him to leave me inside for the usual information gathering thing, but instead he suggested we go explore the inventory of a cord. He led me to an area where a bunch of new cords were parked. Dave advised me that the inventory of 2020 models was running low

and they were beginning to get the 2021s in. We landed on a black one with an MSRP, 27, 935. There was an addendum, phony and monroni, sticker right next to the Monroney label, which added an appearance package for an additional $899. That's BS. Yep. Yes. Dave asked if I'd like to take it for a spin. I said I would. He left me, uh, he let me outside by the car while he ran away to find the key. A little humor here. I heard him repeating the stock number out loud as he walked away. Dave, I had advice. Just take a picture.

Take a picture with your phone. Yeah, take a picture. I wonder how many time they went as it came back said, I forgot the stock number. They used to happen to me. I'm making fun of Dave. That's not right. He was back in under five minutes with a key in his hand. We took the car for a test drive up and down, US1. I talked the whole time. Dave was quiet.

We returned to the dealership and went inside. I observed that about half of the staff wore masks, half. And the other half were not wearing them properly. Or wearing them at all. Or not wearing them at all. Over their chance around their necks, the most visible employee, the front desk receptionist, was not wearing a mask. I'm not going to do another rant.

I did one last week. Shame on Martin County. Shame on the retailers. Shame on the government. You got to make people wear a mask. They recommend you wear a mask. And as you can see, the retailers aren't making their people wear a mask. And the customers aren't wearing masks either.

So you want to get COVID? Go to Martin County and my car. And by the way, Johnson Honda clearly states in their advertisement that they are COVID-19. They have updates. They wear gloves. The salespeople wear gloves. They wear masks. They have plastic on their seats if you want to take a test drive.

And you can believe that just as much as you believe. Did that happen? Nope. Dave led me to a seat, told me he was going to get a write-up on the cord we just drove. He was gone for a couple of minutes before returning with what he said was his invoice. Here we go, folks. The old invoice game. It looked legitimate.

It probably was. He had written plus $500 by the printed, invoice price at $24,700. So they're talking about the factory invoice that Honda sends the dealer. And the biggest scam and the biggest joke and the biggest rip-off is a collusion between manufacturers and dealers is a dealer invoice. The factory invoice to the dealer is not the cause to the car. It's a tool to trick people and to buy in a car for more money. thousands of dollars of profit built in to factory invoices to the dealers and people don't understand that. Dave said the deal was good. Now he's he's told

me I'm gonna buy it for five hundred dollars over invoice. Invoice is too much and now he wants to sell to me for 500 but he thinks I think invoices his cost so that's that's the sum total of the scam here. Only 500 over invoice. I asked him if this was his best deal. He said it was. I asked him if I could have the invoice to take with me. Dave said he wasn't allowed to give it to me. I asked if I could take a picture. As I pulled out my phone and opened my camera,

Dave then said he wasn't supposed to show me this, and he yanked it away. And before I could snap a picture, I mean just, you can't make this stuff up. Right then, the sales manager, Lewis, came over in his hand, he had a sales worksheet. It was almost if he was listening to my conversation with Dave. He was probably looking around the corner, and I assure you he was listening.

The document showed an itemized breakdown of my cost. The market value selling price was EMSRP, 27, 935. There was a discount of 2007-35, which made my adjusted selling price $25,200. There was a $7.99 dock fee, so we've got a $8.99 appearance package, and a $7.99 fee added, sales tax, and $6.50. It doesn't look like they added the appearance package on that, on that worksheet, though. Oh, they didn't, okay. That's good.

They just had it on the window forget about it. That's good. $7.99 and $301 in non-tax fees. My out-the-door price was $27,917. Remember that number. $27,917. I asked Lewis if he had any room in the deal to come down on price. He didn't answer, but He said, if I were to shop around and say, Ed Morris or Brayman, Honda, they might tell me a better price.

But once I was in finance, I would be surprised by upcharges and hidden fees. Now he sounds like us on our own cars. You can count on it at Ed Morris and Brayman. They're going to charge some hidden fees. We don't know what they're going to do at Johnson because we haven't been in the finance department. But I don't know that they don't do the same thing. But I don't know that they do. So there you are.

Lewis reiterated that this was a great deal, and if I truly found a legitimately better price, he told me to buy it. That's a good line. Good line to use. That's a standoff there. I dare you to get a better price. And if you can find a better price, you should buy the car. I mean, that's what I do. That's what my dealership does.

The question is, can we find a better price? Dave jumped in to say it was making only a $150 commission and the dealership wasn't make much more than that. Okay, they call that puffery. Sue likes that. He always laughed when I say puffery. I don't know why. It's okay to

do a little puffing, but you don't want to do a little lion. I mean, there's a fine line between puffin and lion. And I'm not sure that Dave hasn't crossed that line. He said they weren't making anything on the deal. That's

that's nonsense. Well, we know it's nonsense because we haven't finished the report yet. It's rubbish. We'll prove this nonsense, yeah. I said I needed to think about it and both men expressed understanding. It didn't try to pressure me. That's good to buy now. Not like

Treasure Coast Toyota last year, I mean last week. I thanked him for the time and Dave walked me out. Dave apologized for not letting me take a picture of the invoice. He said he would have gotten in trouble if he allowed it. I forgave him. He asked me to let me know when I made a decision I said it would.

You've got to ask yourself, why, if you offer to sell somebody something at $500 over invoice and you show them the invoice, here's the invoice, but they won't let you see it or hold it or take a picture of it, you have to ask, why won't, if my price is $500 over that invoice price, why won't they show, let me have a copy of it? I don't understand that. Anyway, there's something to ponder. Here's the summary. David and Lewis were nice.

They didn't pressure agent licensing, but they did make some bold statements about how good a deal they presented. They tried to convince her that the price was so good other Honda dealers couldn't beat it. They also said they weren't making anything on the deal, and that's nonsense. Keeping them honest, we checked TrueCar.

The best price for the identical accord was from Ed Moore's Honda under True Car. Their out-the-door price, after all taxes and fees, bogus and otherwise, was $2.99, $1,818 lower than Johnson Honda. Now, I have to ask, too. I should have asked it before I went over the report. True car is a minimum advertised price, I mean, Honda does minimum amountized price. How did you get the price from TrueCar on that? The way True Car works right now, you build the car, you put the equipment, and then it'll say, get your two car price. And then a screen comes up and says, here's what's going to happen.

You're going to get information from the dealers. At this point, it's a one-on-one communication with the dealer. So at that point, and it happens instantaneously once you submit it, they get your personal information. Then it becomes a, they don't list it on the True Car site. You get it. You receive it in an email from the dealer. No, I understand. You told me that before, but I forgot.

So I got an email for them. That's a legitimate true car price that you could buy it at Moore's Honda, that same vehicle for $1,818 lower than the Johnson price. Now, remember, the Johnson Honda price was $500 below invoice. Over. I mean, over-invoice, yeah. $500 over-invoice, and $500 over-invoys, they're selling you the car at $1,1818 more than,

and more Sanda. So that shows you how much profit is packed into the invoice. And there we have it. We got a vote. We vote on the curve. We have Honda, Johnson Honda now on the approved vendor list,

approve Honda dealer list, and we have to decide if we want to keep them there. Are they doing things that are worse than the competition? Or should they be considered passing on the curve? You know, after last week's shop at Treasure Coast, it's hard. It's very hard to grade because that was so bad. This is an A-plus. But in reality, I'm going to give two grades.

I'm going to fail them just on the killing with a smile. She liked them. They're so friendly and so nice, but they were dishonest. But if I'm grading on a curb, I'm going to give them a C-minus. I've got Mark from St. Louis with a D-plus. with a D-minus, Derek with a D, Kit Kat D, Mark Ryan with a D. And I'm actually going to go with a C myself. Yeah, because I think they did all right.

Yeah. I'm sorry, guys. You know, do the dealers have to continuously question the intelligence of consumers? It's so humiliating. who out there doesn't know that these dealers make an obscene amount of money, especially this one, on a car deal. I give them an F, and put your masks on guys. You say that you have masks, you've got rubber gloves, you've got disinfectant, you've got your seats are lined with plastic. If you take a test drive, I give them an F.

Okay. I have some more coming in. A D plus from Robert on Facebook, a D from Martha on Facebook, and a C-minus from Mark on Facebook. I'm going to go with a C-plus. I always get carried away when I read it, and then I come back to, you know, the surface, and I realize that this is a curve system. Johnson Honda is so much more honest than most other dealers They went for the jugular They went for the big gross They went for the big profit

And we sent Agent Lightning in and just say I want to go in to buy in a Honda Corps If Our mystery shopper had done Due diligence and shopped Raymond Honda and shopped And gone in there

They would have got a really good price If you don't if you don't shop around you're going to get slam dunked that's another reason also is Agent Lightning went in there and she had a good experience I mean there wasn't pressure there wasn't

fear of her life well maybe she did with the COVID thing but she didn't feel like she was being attacked and the overall experience was positive. Let me say one more thing about this invoice thing. The invoice thing there was a rule that was a text on this the manufacturers come out and made Honda and

Toyota, and a number of other manufacturers, and they have dictated to the dealers what the minimum advertised price can be. And the minimum advertised price they chose, all these different manufacturers, coincidentally, was invoice. The invoice has got thousands of dollars a profit packed in, and so what they're doing is they're setting the price. To me, it's price fixing. The manufacturers are fixing an artificially high price.

by saying you can't advertise below that and the invoice is a trick by the manufacturer in collusion with the dealer to make the consumer pay more money. Rick? I've also got Donovan with a C M Ave with a D minus Michelle with an F for no mask and I've got Matt with a C minus

Guy with a C minus and Kit Kat says Earl is getting soft Well, you know, I could be a hard hardcore kind of a grader and you would look at the recommended list and they would say, go to Georgia or go to Maine. We don't have any dealers down here

so we have to have some kind of I think with your honesty, you know, you're keeping the dealers honest. And I guess I was banned from the club. I gave them an F. and all you guys, I mean, because If you want to buy a Honda

and you don't send them at Johnson, are you going to send them to Bremen? Are you going to send them to Ed Morris? Where are you going to send them? Knowledge is power. Do your homework. Okay, folks. I think that wraps it up

and we are ready to sign off. Another wonderful Saturday with you. Have a safe Saturday. Keep your mask on. And we'll see. See you back here. Don't buy a card, Martin County.