Earl Stewart on Cars - 10.31.2020 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Arrigo West Palm Beach

Episode Date: October 31, 2020

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning visits Arrigo Chrysler Dodge Jeep RAM in West Palm Beach to see what kind of deal she can get on a 2020 Dodge Challenger. 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. The Rick can't answer about the mechanics or electronics of your car. Also with us is my son, Stu Stewart, our LinkedIn. space through Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Periscope. Stu is also the Spymaster Director of our Mystery Shopping Report. He dispatches our secret shopper weekly to an unsuspecting South Florida dealership. And now, on with the show.

It just seems to get more and more exciting as time goes by for a lot of reasons. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that we have an election coming up. presidential election coming up. We have a COVID virus exploding in Florida and other states around the country. We have well, I guess you could call it somewhat of an interesting economy, a bifurcated economy. We've got some companies doing extremely well and other people are just absolutely

destitute. These are interesting times. I could say the best of times and the worst of times because it sounded poetic, but it's not really too many bests out there. I think the worst override everything. Earl Stewart on Cars, interestingly enough, this show that was kind of mundane, I suppose, in a lot of respects. It's now becoming interesting to more and more people because cars have become something special to a lot of people. Cars, trucks, fans, personal transportation.

as a word I'm searching for. We feel safer in our vehicle. We don't like Uber, we don't like Lyft, we don't like taxi cabs, we don't like Palm Trend, we don't like buses, we don't like planes or trains. We're worried about that because we're in a capsule of some description and we're afraid of a contract of the virus. So those industries are really hurting,

but the retail automobile industry, and manufacturing is setting new records. And where I'm going with this is car dealers are making a ton of money. And I'm a car dealer. I'm making a lot of money. I'm not ashamed to admit it, but I'm a little ashamed.

I somehow feel bad that I have a lot of friends on the restaurant business that are literally teetering and we're very worried. So it's a very, it is best of times and worse of times in that sense. The demand to buy that personal transportation is very, very high. People feel if, well, if I'm not going to fly to New York for vacation, or I'm not going to take a cruise ship to, you know, wherever, Aruba, for vacation.

Why don't we just get in the family vehicle and we'll drive to North Carolina? But that's a long drive. Maybe we should be sure. Maybe the old bucket we're driving is not quite right. Maybe we ought to buy another one. And that's what's happening. buying whether or model used cars and buying brand new cars, supply and demand are a little out of whack and the prices are going way up. So here I've come Pearl Circle.

Why are we here, Earl Strow and cars, is to help you avoid being taken advantage of by your car dealer, whether you're maintaining or repairing your car or buying or leasing a car. Prices are very high. As I said, the margins are up, largely because demand is up because of the personal car surge in demand. And then the supplies off because the manufacturers can't keep up with the demand. There's still a little residual from the fact that demand, you know, manufacturing stopped briefly when this COVID thing first hit. And now they're struggling to catch up

for demand. Same thing applies for new cars and used cars. But there's still bargains to be had out there. And you can still buy a car at the right price. And I know. a lot of you're thinking about it. And we're going to try to help you do that in this show. Erlaude Cars. Before I go on too much further on my rant, I've got to

give you some numbers here, because you really tell us what we should be talking about. And that is, your questions, your comments, your suggestions. Our telephone number, old-fashioned telephone. Remember those? 877,

960-99-6. That's 877-960-99-60. You might want to write that down because you could be thinking of nothing at all now, but somebody will say something, a caller or a texter, or maybe one of us will say something, you'll say, oh, I've got to ask a question about that, but you don't have the number. So if you write it down, you'll have it, 877-9-69-99-60-877-960-9-960-99-60. So text 772, 4976530, text us at 772, 4976530, and our very special, unique number that very few people give out. Companies, I don't know why they don't do it, it's really cool.

It's an anonymous source of commentary, and people love anonymity. And I'm so proud I just said that word without stumbling of it. Anonymity. That's the first time, I think. With a mask. Your AnonymousFeedback.com. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Go to that URL.

You get a little screen there. You have a little box. You put your comments or questions in. It comes to us. And we don't know who you are. I mean, if we wanted to find out who you are, we can't find out. There's a company called Incognito that came up with this idea a few years ago.

And a lot of the blue chip companies out there, like Adobe and, you know, Facebook, I'm not sure of which ones, but for their employees, they get feedback from their employees. We do the same thing in our dealership, by the way. We get feedback from anybody in our dealership that wants to tell us, hey, here's an idea, or I think that's the dumbest thing you just ever did. You can say anything you want when you're anonymous. So, Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Well, the phone's not ringing yet, but we hope it will be ringing soon. And I'm going to introduce Nancy Stewart, my co-host, co-founder of the show many, many, many years ago, and the female advocate that has built our audience up to a respectable 50-50, 50 female callers on the average.

Nancy? Thank you. First, I want to mention George, who was holding. for a moment and he had a maintenance question. George, give us a call back at 877-960-90-60. And I have a few things to share with the ladies and this amazing journey that we've been on that you've helped me with to build this platform.

I want to thank you. And you know that traditionally, well, this has been a male territory, but all that has changed and you are an important part of the show. and I have $50 for the first two new lady callers. So give me a call, give us a call, say hello, or you can share with us your experience of, well, a negotiating skill

that you may have utilized, and it really helped you to, well, complete that transaction. Again, $50 for the first two new lady callers, and you can give us a call at 877-960-99-60, or if you're a little shy, Texas. 772-4976530, and don't forget www.W.W. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Now back to the recovering car dealer. See, I should mention Rick Kearney sitting to my right here in the studio.

He's a stable fixture of the show in the most important parts of the show because he can answer most of your technical questions and cars are complicated. Rick Kearney, if you have a drivability problem, if you have a strange noise, a lot of you out there just don't feel like going into a car dealership or an independent garage and having your car repair because you've got to go in there, you've got to wear a mask, or maybe you don't have to wear a mask. Either way, it's a problem, right? and then you go into the customer waiting lounge and you're sitting around too close to some other people and when you're in the service drive you've got people out there that might be wearing your mask kind of haphazardly or as I said not wearing on so you just want to go in so you got this little squeak normally you take it and say check it out

Charlie but you don't want to do that so for the little problems that you're just thinking may become serious problems call Rick Kearney right here the show call and say look my my car's going doodle doodle do do do and it never did that before and he will ask you to send him a recording maybe I I don't know what we're going to say that's the reason we got Rick here so call Rick Kearney at 877 960 9960 he's our YouTube monitor too so YouTube and I forgot to mention Facebook Stu monitors Facebook Rick monitors YouTube and I guess somebody's monitored Twitter so you can get us any way way, any shape, form. If you want to see how handsome and beautiful we are, you can look on your Facebook, stream it at Facebook.com forward slash Erlan Cars. Facebook.com ford slash Erlan Cars. So please let Rick know what you would like to know about your car and how important is it to service. A lot of folks who are saying, gosh, I know I'm supposed

to maintain my car and I'm supposed to do what the owner's manual tells me to do. And I've been afraid to take it in for almost a year now. What's going to happen to my warranty if I have a problem? That's a question for you, right? I mean, there's some things to be thinking about, servicing, maintaining, and repairing your car. Hey, excuse me, just for a second. I have to take advantage of this moment you're introducing Rick.

Rick, how long would the list be if you were to make one of the customers who come in and they impersonate the noise that that problem? problem is. I mean, would it be a long list? How many impersonations have you heard? I've heard a few interesting sound effects that the human voice can recreate. There's been a few. Do a valve tick for me. How about a valve? Shicky valve. Oh, but you didn't do it. That was from your skull, right? You just tapped your head there. Well, that's how it reverberates. It's got a nice empty space. up there to bounce around you know that's funny we should do a video like that of you

actually doing impressions of various things if you hear this sound we'll practice up on all the all the ones I mean I'm amazed that was really good that that's going viral yeah that's gonna be your steering wheel video I have no doubt I could just see you sitting there laughing anyway okay moving along yeah we got Sue Stewart we got Sue Stewart over here cyber chief a spy master general and he's the Hands on guy. If you call up and ask a question about a late model Toyota, does it have Bluetooth in this model? I'll Google that faster than anybody else. But you know what I'm talking about. He's on top of everything. And he's also in charge of our covert operation,

the mystery shopping report. Listen, we can have a lot of new listeners do. So why don't you kick off and tell them why it's so interesting and unique? Absolutely. First of all, I can't the how long we've been doing it. So we started doing these mystery shopping reports right when you and Nancy started the show 15, 16, I think 17 years ago now. And when this happened, I thought, well, how long can this go on? How many car dealerships are there in, well, in our area? Well, we've expanded it. And the answer is it doesn't matter how many car dealerships there are because it changes daily. We'll see today in our report that we're shopping a West Palm Beach dealership that's been there for 30 years, I think. But they're under new ownership. So when

something like that happens, all the rules change. Nothing's the same to get new management, a new way of doing business, and it's a whole new experience. Excuse me for interrupting, but I can still remember the first few shopping reports because Stu's heard me say this many times. When you have a great idea, if it doesn't scare the hell of of you, it's probably not as good as you think it is. Oh, yeah. So when we came up with the idea of the mystery shopper report, I was terrified because I thought the radio station's going to fire me, the car dealer's going to sue me, the attorney

general is going to have me assassinated. I mean, I, to go into a car dealership and pretend to buy or at least a car and name the name of the dealership and tell them exactly. what they did. If they broke the law, of all the stupid things that can happen, and just tell it candidly on live radio, it's just going to hit the fan. I am going to be, and so we did one, we did two, we did three, and here we are 17 years later. We were kind of half seriously talking about getting you security, for real, because the radio show and the mystery shopping reports coincided also with you revealing a lot of information. for example, the dealer fee and addendums and other tricks that were maybe were known on some obscure websites, but you really brought it to the forefront, even to the point where a lot of the car dealerships near your dealership dropped their dealer fee in reaction to it.

You had a lot of bad energy coming your way, for sure, yeah. And you were not a like man in the dealer body. But the fact is there's almost a limitless supply of new tricks, tactics, experiences that we go out. Dealers are amazingly smart and creative. Just when we think we got them figured out, they come up with a window. Yeah, a lot of dealers, if maybe, if not most, are all members of what these little think tanks that are called 20 groups.

And they get together a few times a year, and they all powell together and come up with the next gimmick that they can come up with. And if they made a bunch of money on it, sold a bunch of cars, it's copied by the other dealers, and it metastasizes across the country. You know, the phony Monroney, the addendum label on our mystery shopping report today, was a classic. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was probably invented by a guy in Idaho, and next thing I know, it's spread across the country, and it's screwing people in South Florida.

But anyway, it is exciting, and it's been 17 years. We have not run out of subject material, so it's going to keep going. How many mystery shoppers have you put into a protection program? We haven't had to do that yet. We've been pretty careful. I think we've only outed one or two accidentally on the air gave away their identities.

Things are getting a whole lot better. I know for Earl and I we have removed the double locks on the door. Very good. Well, some dealers actually appreciate it and have like applauded you and we see this on the show people come in. They need

a permission structure or somebody else to go first and so some of them are We were using our own salespeople for a while and they get busted because they see their pictures up on our website. So we'd Now we go to outside people that we... That's right.

And one other thing, before I turn it back over to you, we might need to get some help in the studio. Our anonymous feedback and the text line, it gets almost overwhelming. We're struggling. I start to sweat as we get into the second half of the show thinking we're not going to be able to get to them all. We manage to do it most of the time, but keep setting them in. We've got great questions. What a good problem that is.

Let's get started on them. Let's go. Okay. Let's see. We'll start with the first anonymous feedback, unless we've got somebody on the line. We do. All right, let's do that. Thanks, Sue.

We're going to go to Howard, and Howard is giving us a call from, he's calling us from the Jersey Turnbike. Oh, wow. I bet you're on your way into the sunny state of Florida, right, Howard? I am. The traffic is very light here, and this morning, when I got into car to leave 7 in the morning, the windshield was completely frozen. It's a good thing that I added antifreeze windshield fluid. Instead of the fluid that were used outside, I changed it to the anti-freeze fluid, and that cleared the windshield off. If I had left the original fluid in there, it will be frozen.

That's a good tip for people driving up north to make sure your windshield wiper is anti-freeze windshield wiper. Good tip, Howard. You're keeping your eyes on the road. Now, you're making me nervous. I heard someone talking to you was like a command from one of your computers in your car. The navigation system. It's telling me to drive straight onto the Jersey Turnpike. Uh-huh.

It's the navigation system. Thank off for the navigation. Yes. But the problem with the navigation system is that Toyota doesn't, It doesn't update. You have to go into the service to get it update. Is that correct? Yep.

Yes. I believe some people have the automatic downloads, but usually you have to bring it in. With my car, my Lexus, it automatically downloads. And now we're going to Apple CarPlay, Google CarPlay, so you'll be using Apple Maps and the Google Maps, and those automatically update. Yeah, but I have it, 2017.

so I have to bring it into the service to go to... I, I know, sound, he's on the last. We're having a three-way conversation here. The navigator, Howard, and Earl and Cars. Pretty soon I'll be able to talk right to the computer. Howard is driving to Florida. You guys are great. I'll be seeing in the...

and also with Toyota next week. Okay, Howard. Sounds good. Have a good day, and thanks for taking my cold. Stay safe. Thank you, Aaron, for calling. Welcome back to Florida. Enjoy your vacation here.

You know, that computer does drive me crazy in the car, that navigation every now and then. You know, back, I mean, they're still kind of, it's still not as good as they should be, but Nancy will remember this. I was going somewhere south, and I was in Delaware Airboyne or someplace, and the computer didn't realize that there was a, you couldn't make a left turn.

And so it would take me down to a crossover and say, make a legal left turn. And I said, okay, I'd make a legal U-turn, make a legal U-turn. And I would turn around, I'd come back on another ways, and I'd make another, it says, make a legal you turn. And it had me an endless circle. And I can imagine the conversation you had with the computer. Oh, I was saying terrible things. I was saying terrible things.

I think that's my cue. Everybody want to hear that conversation? We already know. The expression on your face. I have a tip, by the way, for Howard and other users of navigation. This applies to Apple CarPlay navigation. You don't have to listen to the voice. You can select ETA only, so it just tells you how long it's going to take,

but there's no voice that interrupts you every single time you reach a turn. And if you glance at the screen, it's still giving you the directions, but you don't have, you know, a computer voice interrupting you. Interesting. Good tip. Okay, folks, before we get to Stu, he's got a lot of text to share with us. Jot that number done, 877-960, or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-3-0. And remember, ladies, we do have $50 for the first two new lady-callerers.

And any question at all or just a call to say hello? Now back to Stu. The first question comes from Facebook, from our live Facebook stream, which is at facebook.com forward slash Earl on Cars. And it's from Bob. And Bob is actually one of our vigilantes. So he's on Facebook right now. He's a good question for Rick. You mentioned a few weeks ago how to clean your wiper blades.

Can you tell us again? Thanks. The absolute best way is just a little bit of windex or other glass cleaner on a paper towel and just wipe those blades. Just as simple as that All right That's it All right Let's jump over to text

We have one from Anne Marie Good morning A little pumpkin Emuji Happy Halloween Thank you for providing a show That helps us

The General Public Avoid the tricks Traps and pitfalls Of buying a vehicle I have two announcements Before I get to my question Number one Don't forget to set your clocks

Back an hour tonight Siri is going to do that For me Tonight or tomorrow I tell you to it Tonight. My phone's, every clock in my house does it automatically, so kind of nice. Number two, Toyota is recalling 5.84 million vehicles for a fuel pump problem.

Please go to safercar.gov or nhtsa.gov. Put in your VIN number to see if your vehicle has a recall. Thank you. Very true. And thank you, Toyota, because as a Toyota dealer, we make a lot of money on that, don't we? And just as an inside thing, I mean, you like this, don't you? Folks, you're talking to a car dealer. recovering car dealer and we can tell you all the inside stuff it's it's what does the words do when something bad happens schadenfreude yeah shot and Freud

you feel shot and Freud German right because here is a problem that is terrible for the consumer all you toilet drivers out there 5.4 million are gonna have their fuel pumps have to be fixed and they have to be inconvenienced and they have to come in to Toyota dealerships and I'm thinking gosh that's too bad but it's not right Shadden Freud is you're actually getting pleasure

at someone else's pain you're not happy that people are going through this you're just happy that there's a silver lining well the fact that we make so much money kind of tends to numb the feeling of the pain I can't feel your pain as much I feel like Rick Toyota's not the only one

oh of course Lexus of course Honda and I think a couple other manufacturers use the same that same fuel pump from that manufacturer. Exactly. And so they're all seeing issues with them. But don't be timid, folks, about bringing your car in when you have a problem because the car dealers make good money.

And Toyota pays and Honda pays and Lexus and Chevrolet. They pay a lot of money. For a medium-sized recall, I'm just going to pull a number out of the year. Three or $400 is about what. the dealer makes, and then, of course, the technician gets a nice fat commission out of that. So we don't say we like these recalls to happen. We say that it's helpful to our economy and to our car dealers. Exactly.

The manufacturers don't like them. No. But the car dealers do like them. Inside scoop. I'm sure that that cost is built into their pricing structure. They've got to assume, you know, they're going to be spending millions of dollars, especially since in the last decade. this has been the golden era of recalls ever since the big sudden acceleration recall

from 2009 and 2010. All right, back to Anne Marie's question. All right, so check here for recalls. I lost my place. Oh, here we go. Now for my pesky question of the week from Anne-Marie. I can't help wondering. Do dealers get put through the proverbial ringer

when they go out to buy a vehicle personally that isn't the same brand as their own dealership? Say, for example, Stu, you wanted to afford F-150, or Chevy Silverado instead of a Toyota Tundra. Do dealers face the phony Monroney's and the dreaded box, or is there a professional

courtesy extended to other dealers that the public can't expect to get? How do dealers get treated when they go out to buy a vehicle? Just wondering, thanks. Well, most car dealers have friends that are car dealers of other makes, and I bought a Lexus, and

I bought it from JM Lexus and Coconut Creek. I have a relationship with that Lexis dealer because Southeast Toyota, which is the distributor for toilets in the Southeast United States, owns that Lexus dealership. So I get a really good price and they don't even charge me a dealer fee. Isn't that nice? And so yeah, most car dealers have relationships and if you sell Chevroletes and you want to buy a Buick or you want to buy Rose Royce. We had a Jimmy Brian. I don't know if

Anybody after remembers the name. Jimmy Brian. He was a Toyota dealer. He was a pioneer, a toilet dealer, and I think he's still around. He drives a Rolls Royce. And it was always kind of a joke. We'd go to a Toyota meeting, and all the toilet dealers would show up, and here'd come Jimmy in his Rolls' Choice.

So people are not shy. Car dealers are not shy. They're kind of flaunt it, if you know what I mean. And also, if you've got a local car dealer coming in, you might be working for this guy one day in the future, so you better know which side of your toes is buttered on. Yeah, the manufacturers, there's another insight. We're probably boring people to death here, but inside scoop is that manufacturers dislike car dealers, but they also envy the car dealers.

They dislike car dealers because car dealers make a lot more money than they do. Even the executives, you know, a car dealer makes a lot of money. And let's say you're a Buick dealer, the general manager of Buick probably doesn't make as much money as the owner of a Buick dealership. And every manufacturer's dream when he retires is to be able to have a car dealership. So it's a love-hate relationship between manufacturers and car dealers. That's a really inside tip. Probably never been stated publicly before. Yeah.

So this leads me to this question. How do you like your Lexus? I love it. I mean, consumer reports. I went to Consumer Reports. I said, what's the best car? And they said the Lexus L.S. 550. So I bought one.

So for comfort, for the ride, for the gas, everything. Everything, yeah. Overall, yeah. Overall. How are you doing over there, Rick? Any comments on YouTube? M. Ave has one coming in, but she hasn't got it typed in yet. Okay. Let's go to Art who sent in a text message. Why do dealers push so hard for consumers to rate them a five on the manufacturer's survey after the purchase?

And is it true when they say, if you rate them anything besides a five, it will be blamed on the salesman, even if it wasn't the salesman's fault. And that comes from art, and that's a great question. Yeah. Well, let's just say something that would be something we can put to use on the subject of ratings. Five star, we're assuming he's talking Google. He's talking about the manufacturer vehicle survey. The manufacturer rating, yeah. Well, the manufacturers rating means nothing, and it's manipulated.

They will tell you that if you don't give me a good rating, I might lose my job, and please, please, please, I'll give you a free tank of gas, they'll make all sorts of promises. But the dealer rating that you get is manipulated so much that it's really not worth your time. But it can be true when they said they'll be blamed on them, because most of the people. dealerships have in their pay plan for their salespeople have it set up where they don't hit bonuses unless they get a certain score and in many cases I can speak for Toyota the their rating was based on a whole lot of factors besides just the salesperson and if you got a bad score because the finance manager

did something wrong or the place smelled funny it'd still affect your score and it could affect a bonus so all that did was lead to people manipulating their customers are promising gifts for a good survey so when a dealer bragged about their high customer satisfaction scores you could just throw that in the garbage because it was all the manufacturers that have intelligence and care about their customers have gone away from the rating on a email survey like a simple a simple fact did that customer come back and buy another car from you did that customer come back and service his car with you if you sell a car or service a car and the customer keeps coming back, that's a good dealer.

It's a real simple measurement, and you can't manipulate it. It's called retention. Excuse me, Sue. I want to reach out to what George you called earlier, and your question was about maintenance. Give us a call back. Sorry, you had to wait so long. That's 877960.

And we're going to go to Guy who's been holding, and I believe that he is from Canada. Good morning, Guy. Good morning. How are you people this morning? We're well, thank you. My reflection is that last week, Ford, Volkswagen, and GM just announced multi-billion dollars electric initiatives. By 2023-24, tons of...

of electric vehicles are going to come on stream by all mainline manufacturers. Tesla may be facing some pretty stiff competition. My concern is that the electrical grid is going to be overwhelmed and is not set up to power all of these cars. Are we heading for brownhouse all the time? I'd like to get your opinion on that. Well, I think it's a legitimate concern, but there are ways you can get around that.

And storing electricity is one way. The thing that always stuck in my mind is that a lot more people drive during the day than a night. And you can store electricity that is generated during the day and it can be used at night or you can carry it over. It isn't a matter of consuming all the energy that's generated and you don't have enough generators going. You have a storage backlog. I think Rick has got an answer. I think with most of them charging at night, you're not going to see that big of a difference. I think the electrical grid will handle it fine.

And then you'll have a lot of other places where people with electric cars will charge during the day when they're at work. I know there's a lot of parking places now, different parking garages, that already have spots for electric cars. Rick, do you think there will ever be a wireless charger for a car like they have for an iPhone? that's excuse me that's actually something that they've been working on i believe in sweden they worked out a test road where trucks that could drive on this test road would actually get an inductive charge into the electric system of the truck while it was on the road then when they moved on to surface trees that didn't have that charging system they ran off the battery power they had stored up so guys yes they are working on that as well

So I think the answer is I think it is a legitimate concern, but I think technology will take care of the issue. There'll probably be some problems. There'll be some brownouts, there'll be some problems, but technology will rise to solve the problem, in our opinion. We always do. You still there, guy? My concern is that it takes, you know, years to build electrical facilities. And I think we'll be pumping cars out faster than we've. can build the facilities.

Well, you know, there's a lot of other sources now coming online, and, you know, people don't talk about nuclear anymore because they've got a bad, they got a bad reputation with some accidents that occurred, but you can't rule it out as an option. I think safety and control of nuclear generation is something that will also advance, solar, wind, all of these other reusable sources are getting more and more sophisticated now. And oil is so cheap and gas is so cheap that it's probably the best situation for energy production we've ever had with all the other sources. And the fact that oil and other sources that normally were expensive and become much

cheaper. So I don't know. You could be right. it's certainly going to be a challenge. Yeah, as the preponderance of electric cars get on the streets, I think there's going to be less demand for gas, and gas may drop in value. Well, that's true.

Of course, we have hybrids now, and remember, it's not going to be a black and white shift. We only wake up one day, and all the cars on the road are going to be electric. You're going to have a lot of hybrids out there, and they use gas. and until we really, really have a battery that will give you a million miles like Tesla says they have, you're probably not going to have all electric everywhere.

So it's going to be everything moves in a gradual transition. And I wouldn't want to wake up tomorrow and have to drive an electric car, and I don't think you would either. And that would certainly put a huge challenge on our energy supply for electricity. I guess the only thing we can do is wait and see. Yeah, it's exciting. I don't know what your age is, but I'm a senior citizen. I'll be 80 in December, and I'm so excited to be able to see the change in technology

from the time when I was a kid to the day. It's just exciting. I can't wake up tomorrow morning and to find out what's new, and it's always something exciting. So I love it. Yeah, well, I'm a senior as well, so I agree with you 100%. Anyways, I'll let you go, let other calls come in, but I always enjoy listening to your show from up north here.

And I will be in Florida in two weeks. Oh, great. Thanks so much, God. Give us a call. All right, bye-bye. And enjoy the sunny weather when you get here. YouTube over here. Look at the first YouTube.

We've actually got a couple of come in. First one from Marco. He says, I stay on top of technical service. bulletins that are issued for my car and I've recently found one that has to do with updating the software for the transmission I've learned that the TSB is different from a recall and he's asking our customers proactively contacted about a TSB similar to a recall and one of the differences between a TSB and a manufacturer's recall well a technical service bulletin is actually a used to be

paper now they're just sent digitally it's information sent out to the dealers and to the mechanics to tell us about an issue that has been seen with certain cars and a common problem that they've been having and how to repair it. These are normally things that are only covered under the normal factory warranty, and once that warranty runs out, then it would be up to the customer to pay for the repair. A recall is when a problem has been found with the car in such great numbers that they are issued a recall, and basically the customers are all notified of the recall. They are brought in, and the vehicle is repaired at no charge, and generally it's no matter what the mileage or age of the car is, that recall

still gets done at no charge to the customer. And, Marco, the important thing to remember is that you will not be notified about a technical service bulletin. The manufacturers, which I think is a terrible thing, require their dealers not to tell you about technical service bulletins. You are, dealerships are instructed only when a customer comes in and complains about a symptom, then we are allowed to fix it onto the technical service bullet. So you might have a squeaker, a rattle, or a condition with your car, and you're liable to hear from somebody, well, that's completely normal. They all do that, and you just never ask to get it fixed.

I always recommend that you ask if there's a technical service bulletin if there's a condition of your car that you feel it shouldn't be acting that way. There's something wrong with it. There's an odor or a smell, I mean a rattle, whatever it may be, vibration, something bad about the car. Here's a technical service bullet, and you can go online, and if you're driving a 2019 Honda Accord, You just go 2019 on their cord, technical service bulletins, and you will find out if there is one, and then you take it in.

But as I say, some people call the technical service bulletins hidden warranties, and they are hidden, because they don't send a notice out to all the people that have that model, because the manufacturers rationalize that, say, your car might not be doing that. They don't all do that, so they don't want to have to spend the money and pay the dealer. to fix it if they don't have to. And if you don't complain, they don't have to. Okay. And Gregory Tonell is asking,

there's a used 2012 Toyota Tacoma I've been looking at with mileage 134,000. Do you think 10K is a reasonable price for it? That seems to be right up your alley. Yeah, you had to surprise me with that one. Let me look it up and I'll, before the end of the share, I'll come with a good price on it. Okay.

And one last one, Boston Maw, is asking, is it true that subprime dealers make 5 to 10 grand on a sale of a car? I know there's a lot of profit in subprime more than prime. Okay, subprime means dealers that sell cars to people with bad credit, real bad credit. And I used to be, we call it buy here, pay here. I used to have a buy here pay dealer dealership called Stewart Select Cars on Okentrobe Boulevard. and it was one of the worst experiences of my life. It's not fun.

What you have to do is you have to charge extremely high interest rates. It is true that they, on paper, have to make a lot of money. And the reason they have to make a lot of money when they sell you the car in terms of interest is because most people that have bad credit don't make their payments. And so then you have to go find the car and you have to repossess the car. That's always a nasty thing. I remember I had a repossession guy. He was about six foot eight, and it's just terrible things.

He was very good. I never knew exactly how he got so many cars back, but he would bring the cars back, which is a dirty business. It's refined now. There are more controls, and the buy-here, pay-here lots for the subprime dealers. There are sophisticated, honest dealers in that business.

We did a Mr. Shopping report on a Bill Wallace, easy-pay cars. Great place. And we gave them a high rating, extremely honest. But it didn't always use to be that way. But if you buy because the bank won't finance you or the credit union won't finance you, if you go to a buy-your-pay-here, a subprime dealer, they're going to charge you probably the legal maximum. And the legal maximum in Florida on a used car is like 30% or,

35%? Before it becomes usury, it's really high. Really high. Yeah, I think it's in the 30s. Yeah. And state by state, but yeah, the Florida user loan in that. Okay. Wow. You all caught up there, Rick? We are caught up. Okay. Bob on, it has a follow-up question.

We were talking about the manufacturer, the sales surveys, and Bob want to know, do Google and Yelp reviews help? And I can jump into that. Not very much. Lately in the last few years, that's been a big push. manufacturers getting their dealers to put in programs literally computer programs and you know sales programs where they push their salespeople to try and get online reviews podium we use a software called podium right now we use it differently we have it set up to in our computer system that anybody buys a car anybody who serves as a car automatically gets an invite to write a review

there's no suggestion on how to do it and we don't pick and choose who gets it it's 100% of the customers get it so if they fail out a review that's great but the same thing that happened with the vehicle surveys, the manufacturer surveys, they've built them into their pay plan. So if you don't get X number of good reviews, then you might not get a bonus. So what we do recommend on Google reviews and Yelp reviews is read them because it'll give you an idea because we see a big disparity. Not all dealers have great online reviews.

Some are pretty terrible. Look at the three-star reviews. Usually the five-star reviews, someone's either just over-the-moon happy with their dealer. one star you might get somebody could be a crank but the three-star reviews kind of tells it like it is so we recommend let me jump in there on that subject I have a job of phone call

we're reading each other's minds we're going to the same thing here yeah we have a supplementary blog on Earl and the blog is nominate your favorite car dealership for the best of the best in 2021 awards now this only applies to

the folks that are in the Palm Beach county area maybe spill over to Broward and spill up to Martin but South Florida the Palm Beach Post for the past, this is the third year they've been running this contest for it's all businesses

but you can nominate your favorite car dealership and we've got a website you could go to it's called nominate Miskarduellor.com nominate best cardealer.com And folks

So what better way to find out, excuse me, what better way to find out the best and the safest place to either buy or service your car? So you definitely want to take a look. Earle's holding it up to the camera. Nominate your favorite car dealership, the best of the best for 2021 award. You know, there's nothing better for a decision on where you buy or makes your refrigerator or television. or car than your friends and neighbors and people that have dealt with these people. So it's a really good idea to be able to have a list every year. You can go to the best of the best in Palm Beach Post poll for 2019 and 2020. And this is the one for 2021.

So if you want to go to nominate your best cardealer.com, nominate best cardealer.com. nominate best car dealer.com you can vote right there and when this thing is completed you actually have to choose from the nominations in December and then if you if you had a great experience at Easy Pay car in Martin County nominate them if you had a great experience with Schumacher Chevrolet nominate them find out nominate the car dealer that you know of with personal experience or other otherwise that you trust and nominate them for the best of the best award in 2021 nominate best cardealer.com yeah and so Palm Beach Post they introduced the award in 20 2019 I think it was

yeah 20 and also I want to tell you that you have until November of the 11th to you know you know get the nomination then yeah okay okay I haven't given out that phone number for a while. Lines are quiet. Give us a call. 877-960-99-60. As I always say, folks, you make the show. We appreciate you, your information, your opinion, and just being with us. 877-960, or you can text us at 772-497-6-530. And I'd love to hear from you at www. your anonymous feedback.com. Now back to Stu. Jumping back over to Facebook. We have a follow-up question. We were talking about the electric vehicles from the color. Yes. We have Frank on the line, and Frank is calling us from

Jupiter Farms. Hi, Frank. Well, good morning to you all. Good morning. Everyone saying hi. I appreciate it. Let me tell you what's going on here. I decided to did an oil change for my girlfriend's Lexus and we went to a local tire kingdom and

how'd it go? Oh no no, hello. I was trying to call Earl Stewart. I think we got a bleed over on the lines. I think Frank just got dropped and got somebody else in line. Who are we talking to? Okay, my name is Walter. I just heard

I just heard Earl's wife said she didn't have any callers, but I wanted to, I'm a first-time caller, I just wanted to call into the radio program. Oh, great. Thank you. You're on air now, Walter. Okay, great. Hi, listen, I bought a car from you in the past, and it didn't work out. This was several years ago, and Terry was his sales manager.

Terry Chapman, sure. Oh, yeah. Right. He drove a blue person. pickup truck and they had a golf club's in the back. Anyway, he was a good guy. He said, look, go to the back lot, pick out any car you want, we'll make a deal. So that worked out great.

But here's my question. I live in Stewart, and the Toyota dealer up here told me we will not put a car used on the lot, excuse me, that has over 100,000 miles. We're going to take it to the auction. Why are all these high mileage cars appearing on dealers' lots? And what about timing belts and serpentine belts? Are these dangerous cars? Walter, what's a dangerous car mileage-wise today is entirely different than it was 25, 30, 40 years ago?

Today, a car with 100,000 miles is just getting warmed up. if you take a well-maintained car with 100,000 miles on it's had all the manufacturers recommended maintenance done it's a good car and you've got another two or three hundred thousand miles to go yeah and Treasure Coast has 14 of them on their inventory right now yeah Treasure Coast Toyota as Stoge's Googled and went to the website

for Treasure Coast Toyota they have four I'm sorry yeah they have four cars with over 100,000 miles off whoever you're talking to there either didn't know what he was talking about or was stretching the truth. Well, okay, here's the deal. I had a 96 Toyota Corolla. The wish bolt, you know, the front suspension,

the wheels fell off on me, practically on 95. And the dealer said it was due to stress on the parts. Now, the car had 170,000 miles, but there is stress when you go over bumps, et cetera, that it's hard to predict that. But my main question is, why did Toyota Stewart, and I knew you're not Toyota Stewart, why did they tell me a year ago they would send these cars to the Orlando Auto Auction?

Well, there was a salesman's talk to try to make you feel more secure about buying a car, and he was probably trying to make you believe that anything, he was going to say something you probably, he thought you'd understand by making it simple. A good salesperson picks up on someone's wants and needs, and you're clearly very concerned about that sort of thing, and so he emphasized it. But if I were to buy a car from you or AutoNation or these other companies that are listing these cars, do any of these cars have available warranties? There are extended warranties that are available, and you can purchase those. Some certified cars are quite common, and that is a manufacturer's extended warranty that they put on their particular. to make car. It says you're buying a Toyota at Treasure Coast Toyota, and you buy a certified

car there, it will be a warranty by Toyota. But in other words, if I'm buying a car that has 150,000 miles, it's as is, no warranty. In most cases, yeah. And also, whether a warranty is available, it depends on the vehicle. If you had a 100,000 mile DeWU, you probably wouldn't be able to get a warranty on it versus 100,000-mile Honda. So it depends on the vehicle. And then also the cost, the bigger the risk to the insurer, the higher the cost of that warranty. So if you get a much cheaper warranty on a brand new car than you would on a car with a lot of miles on it.

But I mean, I don't mean to go on about this. But where I'm getting at is there are very serious issues regarding, say, timing belts or a timing chain. Once you head up into that high mileage zone, some of these cars could be dangerous. Well, you want to look at the maintenance record if you could get it. You can go to a Carfax report, and oftentimes you can get a good maintenance record. You can talk to the previous owner. But the one thing that you always have to do, if you're going to buy a car, if you're going to be cautious, which you should be any used car,

take it to your own mechanic. Take it to an independent mechanic, not a mechanic at the cartel of a ship you're buying the car for him. Go to a third party and have him check the car out. So that way, you can get yourself a real bargain by buying a car. a higher mileage car because it can be an excellent condition or you can be warned off that hey i know this car looks good but apparently it hasn't been maintained well and the timing chain you mentioned the timing bill or any other issue uh they will detect this when they check the car out carefully you have to pay for it might have to pay 150 to have them go over it

and that's not to fix it just to diagnose it and then you can say it needs this done this done this done or sometimes you'll say stay away from that car it's your it's in trouble waiting to happen but before you would put a used car on your lot you would do your own inspection sure yeah we do a um any reputable car dealer has a check sheet uh whether it's a certified or not certified there'd be a dealership check sheet that it goes through if it can't pass a check sheet then you take it to the auction uh but you don't take it on any car to the auction anymore based on mileage only. You know, we'll sell a car with 200,000 miles on it if the car has been maintained well and it can be a real bargain because you can drive it for another couple

hundred thousand miles if you take care of it and if it's a good brand. I mean, Stu said earlier, DiWu, I'm not sure whether it's a good or bad brand. I could tell you a bad brand would be a Fiat. I wouldn't buy a Fiat that had 20,000 miles on it, but I would buy an Accura that had 200,000 miles on it, and a heartbeat. In other words, so what you're saying in lack of a warranty, your protection as a consumer is to take the car to a garage and have it checked out yourself? Yeah, you want to have an independent third party, check it out, pay him for it for his work, and then he'll have a recommendation, either buy it, buy it, that's a great car,

or if you want to buy it and have this and this and this fixed before you buy it, then you can negotiate that into the price you. pay. But you would not offer per se any warranty on the vehicle. Anything over 100,000 miles warranties are rare, but I'm not a big advocate of warranties anyway. I think that if you buy a good quality brand car, make your model checked out, then you don't need a warranty. And if you buy the warranty, it's like an insurance policy. I look at mainly as peace of mind. very much. Are you a first time caller? We appreciate it. I hope you can call back again. Okay. Thanks for your time.

Thank you. Take care. Okay. Okay. Let's move along here. Okay. We jump over some anonymous feedback. Treasure Coast Toyota, here I come. Thank you for shopping Treasure Coast Toyota, Earl. Now we know what to expect when shopping there. I love Toyotas, and I love it even more when I know what to expect at the Steelership. Stealership. That's a thing. They pointed for visit the Steelership. That's great. I saw this one came in this last week, and I will start by saying I'm skeptical, but who knows? Last December, I negotiated $27,000 off a $96,000 MSRP on a 2019 Audi A8L.

I can tell you that the Audi 8ALs do, their MSRP is up in $85,000 to $97,000, depending on equipment and trim level. It says Audi was holding the 2020 models at the dock in New York and wouldn't release until they cleared the 2019 inventory. Offered a crazy price to four dealers and one finally accepted $9.99 a month for four to two months, $3,000 down. I was a professional negotiator for a major company for 35 years before I retired. You read that one too, right? Yeah, I read that. I had the same feeling. I mean, it could be legitimate, it might not be.

I mean, if you're a good negotiator and, you know, I can. We all know a good, most of them are lawyers for some reason, and you get a good negotiator. They can go in there, and they can beat a dealer to death and get a great price on a car. But if you're not, then the dealer gets a great profit on you. So I don't like the system. You know, it's designed for professional negotiators, and they can get a good deal. I can, Lloyd. I'm just not familiar with any vehicle luxury that has a markup anywhere near that.

Oh, sure. I mean, our land cruisers, the Toyota Land Cruises. About 8,000. Yeah, I know, but that's not a, you know, the high-priced car. Okay, folks, we have Frank giving us a call back. Sorry about that, Frank. Glad you called back to Franks from Jupiter Farms. Well, good morning, guys.

Hi, Frank. Okay. And for Stu, thank you the other day for that call. You're welcome, for Ms. Adams. I did try to call. I had a feeling since that hurricane was head. getting down her way. Yeah.

I'll be able to get in touch over next week. Thank you for that. Thank you for that. Yeah, exactly. I took an Amory's car over to a tire kingdom near where she lived for a convenience factor. And my goodness, it's amazing how they scam for shop repair stuff. They advertise a 49-95 oil change and filter and everything. And I said, that's the price, right?

That's the price. Well, until you pick it up, and then it's like in the 80s. Because they got labor charge, they got disposal fee, they got this, they got that. And, of course, the guy who told me the price in the morning was not there when we got the car. And the attitude of the guy had tried to pick it up because we didn't buy a battery. He said, we needed a battery, and it was $159 or something. Anyway, it was a unique situation. How's the best way to handle that?

Try and go back and see the guy originally told me. or just go ahead and speed the credit card? Yeah, Frank, I tell you what I can do. I can get you the contact information for the President of Tire Kingdom. I wrote a blog on Tire Kingdom, similar to what you're talking about a few years back, and I got a letter from threatening litigation from the President of Tire Kingdom.

So we went out and did another mystery shop on another Tire Kingdom outlet, and it wasn't perfect but it wasn't nearly as bad as the first one so we dropped it there but if you really got flimplam I'll have to check do a little search in my PC I get you his contact information and call him that's always the best way if you get to the top of the organization oftentimes they don't know what's going on in the trenches and this particular tire king of outlet they probably got some people in there they're all they're all they're all

on commission and they're out there to make as much money as they can, everybody comes in, and it's a fun for them. So maybe they're right in line some of the policies that tire kingdom has in place. I'll try to get that for you, and I'll email it to you. I would thank you very much for that. I appreciate it

very much. You're very welcome. You know, shop fees at $25 or something I mean, go, hello. Yeah, yeah. It's a, the tire industry in general, they're a lot like the car retailers. They've turned into a bait and switch masters. And when they tell you

a tire cost this, it doesn't cost that. Oil change costs this, it doesn't cost that. They give you a low ball price. You come in, they slam you, you pay up sometimes twice as much as the advertised price. And because everybody does it, you take it and you go home. And that's the way it is. And we have very little enforcement of our laws.

Bait and switch is illegal by the Federal Trade Commission. You're not allowed to advertise a price. And in the fine print, add back to the price. The Federal Trade Commission says that's illegal. You must have anything that affects what you pay for the service or the product. Anything that changes that price has to be conspicuously displayed in the same-size font. as the price itself. And nobody does that, including Tahr Kingdom.

Well, thank you. I just put it down there for other people in the listening audience can also like buyer beware. Oh, absolutely. I thought I was pretty savvy, but obviously they slipped one in, so. Yeah. By the way, how's the, what's that thing,

the rodeos, or not the rodeos, what's the, oh, my goodness, where are we called? They can help people out? Oh, the Rico, you're talking about the Takada airbag? No, no, no, no, no, no. The Vigilannis? Talking about the Vigilannis?

Oh, the Vigilantes. We have, what, a half a dozen people on the payroll. Yeah, currently, well, don't say payroll. You're not getting paid. This is a volunteer service, of course. For the goodness of your heart. I think we have five listed online right now. We have Maryland, New Jersey.

We have a few in Florida, and we got some more to put up, because last night I got some applications that came in. So if you're listening, guys, go to Earlsvigilinis.com and volunteer. Yeah, we're pretty excited about that, Frank. Yeah, I thought that would be a great little lead-in for you guys. So there's your free advertisement. Thanks, Ray. Have a good one.

And we're counting on you when you get through all this other stuff, you've got to sign up as soon as you clear your plate. Well, actually, I did sign up a week or two ago. I was just being merciful on you because I know that you had some stuff that you're working out. Lots of stuff. We're probably going to take a drive, Amory and myself. Okay. We'll see.

Hopefully you won't read about me in the newspaper. Good luck. be safe. Thanks, Frank. Take care and Andrew. Give us a call again. Ladies and gentlemen, give us a call. We'd love to hear from you. 877-9-60-99-60, or you can text us at 772-4976530. Don't forget, we have the Mystery Shopping Report coming up. I know you won't forget. And what we usually ask is for you, our listeners, to vote on that Mystery Shopping Report, help us to maintain the good dealer bad dealer list by voting we are going to go to John in Palm City hey John good morning John I think we may have lost John Johnny

you out there radio land in 58 I was still a student and they came out with the law with Monroney MSRP stickers it was a great law I'm glad we did it today. Unfortunately, they take advantage of the dealers by putting a phony one next to it. But at the time, I remember distinctly, I worked with my uncle, and the law just came out, and he was told that only he, that's a federal law, can remove only the consumer, the window sticker that's attached to the car. Only he can do it. The dealer can't do it unless you, you know, designate that he does it.

But today, I see an abuse, especially a friend of mine that lives by Fort Lauderdale, he's looking at some upscale cars. And he notices that the Munrooney or MSRP sticker is not attached directly to the window. Some of them are sitting on the seats. Some of them are the dashboard. One of it, he said, was even, I think it was in Mercedes, was on the rear of the car to seat. isn't it a federal law still today that that Monroney MSRP sticker

must be attached to the window on every new car? Yep, and only the consumer who bought it is allowed to remove it. Even the sales person can do it. Well, it looks like when you do the dealer shopping, especially it seems to some reason on the upscale cars,

it's not attached directly to the window. They're there, but they're not obvious where they're located. it. So I do see a very big violation in that, and people don't notice that today. It's there, but it's not where it's supposed to be.

It's also more and more difficult a lot of cars, especially SUVs that have privacy glass. It's really difficult to read. They stick them on the rear window, and those windows are tinted, and you've got to cup your hands around it and put your face up to the glass to even read the details on it. So I think there's all sorts

of problems with that. But at least it meets the law, and it's a to the window that's true I've seen I think I even saw on the pictures from today's mystery shop where they had a window sticker that was laminated it looks like it was taken off and then laminated to like put on the dash and that's for a vehicle they displayed in the showroom that's that's technically you know violating the the statute there well I hope now that some people are aware when they go shopping that they see this sticker is obvious and

attached to the window second question I have for Rick I was at a station getting gas the other day, and a woman had a use BMW. When she shut it off to get gas next to me, it was running again. It's what I would call dieseling. So I said to her, I see she's using 87, the lowest grade of gas. So I mentioned to her, I think your car has a different grade that you should be using. and inside her gas entry, it said use premium fuel only. Naturally, it didn't put the grade.

And then I noticed it makes it worse. At this station, which is BJ's wholesale club, they only had two grades. They only have 87 and 91. So naturally, she would have to use the 91. But are there some stations that you notice that don't have the middle grade, which is probably 89? and would it be a big difference from the 89 to 91 if it was available in there for how to use in that car she would it use she didn't have any owner's manual

and I said to check with the dealer as to which grade you're supposed to use but naturally I could see that the 87 would not work in it because I shut it off to get gas the engine kept you know I call it diesling is that true when you're using the lower grade and the car core for premium that you've got to switch your greater gas well yeah because if the car is intended to run

premium you really should to get the most out of the vehicle you can run the lower grade fuel but it can cause some drivability issues dieseling is kind of rare anymore because just the way the cars are designed when you shut it off

the injectors should stop firing and there should be no way for it to actually pull fuel in. Deesling was usually with older carbureated cars. If they weren't set up properly, it could actually still suck fuel in from the carburetor. But engine knock or ping is more likely, and then that would cause the engine to retard its timing quite a bit. So... Okay, but could she do any damage to the car at all by using the lower grade? Not really, because the computer should retard the timing to get rid of the ping. It just would cause it not to run as well as

it should, but it shouldn't actually cause any damage to the car. Right, well, I hate it to be nosy, but I just thought I'd let her know when she thanked me because she said, I'm going to stay away from the 87 and try a higher grade.

I haven't seen any... Well, thank you for the information, and people be aware when you're shopping, look for that MSRP and not for the phony-monroney that's next to it, and look for the original manufacturer's sticker placed obviously to the glass.

Thank you, John. Yeah, one good reason it is you should always look at the MSRP, the mononi label on the car, you buy, the new car you buy. It's because it gives you the perfect tool to compare apples and apples when you're shopping for a car. So if you want

to buy a Chevrolet and it's got a sticker price for $26,200, as long as you stick with that general as long as you stick with that MSRP, you can compare discounts. And if you don't, you're going to get switched, and that's what

car dealers try to do all the time. You come in with one car in mind because you've probably done your research, you probably know what the good price is on that particular car. They get you on another car. Now you have to start all over again. You don't know what a good price is.

So stick with the MSRP on the year-make model car you want to buy. In order to do that, you've got to look at the MSRP. And have they taken it off the car, then they're breaking the law. It's a federal violation, I think, a $10,000 fine. Yep. That's why we always note the MSRP on the mystery shopping reports. We tell our shoppers to take a picture of the window sticker, and then that way they can compare when they actually get written up that's on the same vehicle. Yeah. Okay. That's probably the greatest federal law that was ever passed. Yeah. Thank you, John.

Okay, I look forward to the shopping report. Okay, John. Thank you so much. We love hearing from you. Have a great weekend. You're welcome. 877-960-9960, or you can text us at 772-497-3-0. Ladies, you still have time to give us a call. We'd love to hear from you. How was your shopping experience? Did you negotiate? Most of all, when you decided upon a car that you wanted,

were you switched when you went into the dealership, or did they have the car that you wanted $50 for the first two new lady callers? All right, in Facebook, we had Steve, who was listening in on their conversation about the electric cars. He says, what will they do with the batteries when they wear out? And I can tell you that right now, even though we're still in the emphasis of electric cars, they are recycling about 80% of the components in these electric car batteries. Usually when they get down to, when they say their failure, they're like only going down like a 70%

there's still capacity so the components are used for industrial other consumer applications they can actually be used for like when you're talking about electricity storage you know you run the produce the power during the day and store it that's used actually in these home systems that are going to be coming out so

I guess they're going to get more efficient at recycling over time there's still some toxic things that they can't recycle and I think it's the lithium but about 80% is put back to use Cool. I didn't know that. Okay. Let's see. Here's a topical one. With the pandemic accelerating to new levels of crisis, what do you recommend car-wise, like maintenance, to prepare?

Should I even risk it by going to a car dealership this fall and winter? There's a lot of maintenance you can postpone. Some you shouldn't. You should be checking things like oil level. I'd say, if you buy a new car and you've had it for a couple of days, years. You want to be sure that your oil doesn't fall to a dangerously low level. As far as changing it, that's not as important as having oil in the vehicle. Dirty oil probably isn't going to tear your engine apart, but no oil will tear it apart in a hurry. Outside of that, tire pressure, oil, you want to be sure your tires are safe and you want to be sure your oil level is safe

in terms of the engine. Outside of that, I wouldn't worry about it. Rick, what do you think? The only other thing I'd say is, and unfortunately this is something you'd really want to have a mechanic check, make sure your brakes are up to par. Well, what is the first sign of breaks that need to be, you know? The first thing you're going to hear, and unfortunately it doesn't give you a whole lot of warning time, if you start hearing a bit of a squealing sound from your brakes, what they do is on the brake pad there's a little metal tab that's added on the end of it

that just kind of sticks past and when the brake pad gets very thin that metal tab will begin to rub on the rotor and it's a softer metal so it's not going to scratch up the rotor or damage the rotor any but it will start making this very annoying loud-pitched squealing sound high-pitched

yep yeah and let me make a note for the seniors listening and there are a lot of seniors listening, we lose our hearing. I've got the hearing aids, Nancy's got hearing aids, and there are a lot of people who can't hear those things. So let me ask question number two. On the average, I bought a new car, and I put 15,000 miles a year on it,

and I've had the car for two years, I've got 30,000 miles. I don't hear anything. The car's stopping fine. Should I have my brakes checked? I would have them checked at least once a year or every other year, even at your mileage, simply because a lot of people live right in your saltwater. That can cause big issues. If you live on dirt roads, dusty roads, that can cause other issues.

Yeah. And normally we recommend you go by the fact your owner's manual. This is COVID-19. The question had to do with, I'm concerned about exposure to COVID, and so we're saying you can also find a car to your other that will pick up and deliver your car. And that would be the ultimate. You have to pay extra probably for the pickup and delivery. But your safety items, you've got to get checked.

You've got to get your tire pressure, tire wear, your oil is got to be at an adequate level, and you also have to have your brakes. Outside of that, you're covered. Yep. Okay. Okay. and also fulfilling our obligations of custodians of the public airways, we have to have equal time, right? There's the fairness doctrine.

This comes in on anonymous feedback. Earl, every week you contribute to the fake panic of the fake pandemic. It's an established fact that more testing equals more cases. I never hear you talk about the 0% death rate or the way Democrat doctors are profiting from the hoax. You're doing everything you can to get the Socialists elected, but you'll. fail. Well, we're not going to debate that. I'm sorry because I think it's sad that's become a political issue. I think that, I think my only partisan comment I'll make is that I'd rather be safe than sorry. I know that's a simplistic, you know, I'm sort of like saying, but let's say

that I don't have to be wearing this mask right now. But I know by wearing this mask, but I know by wearing this mask, it said in 95, 95% of the particles in the air, I'm safe from, everybody in the studio is wearing one. Let's say that I'm wrong, and when this pandemic's all over, I didn't have to be wearing this mask. I don't feel bad because there are a lot of people out there, very smart people that say, I should. Let's say this with smart people that say, I shouldn't. If I got two people telling me if you don't wear it, you're going to die. The other one says you don't need to wear it, and they're both smart people. I'm going to err on the side of safety. Yes, Nancy. Earl, let's put it this way. What about science? That's what I just said,

yeah, science. We have smart scientists that say that it's something that should be done. And we have other, we have other people that say, it's a controversy. I'm just trying to say it isn't a political issue. It's not a personal preference. But you cross the line of personal preference when you come near me without a mask. My personal preference is to wear a mask. So stay away from me if you don't have a mask.

And I won't go near you without a mask either. But that's my personal preference. But I'll continue to listen to the science of this whole pandemic. And I'm not for one president or another president or whatever. I'm interested in what the science have to say. Next.

This one's kind of long. I think I want to, I'll try and read it fast. Anonymous feedback. Dear Earl, I wanted to tell you about a new car sales experience I had with Toyota of Hollywood. While I was waiting for the finance guy, there was a nun and a full habit uniform crying on the show on floor. I felt so bad I went to talk to her and found out of the salesman had taken her out of the service line a couple of weeks previous. I talked to her into trading her old Toyota. Then when the title and paperwork went through, they repossessed her new Toyota after already

sending her old Toyota to some garbage used car broker. They said her old Toyota had a title that was a rebuilt title and she deceived them. The nun advised that she didn't know anything about the title and had previously purchased the Toyota from the very same Toyota organization and Kendall, so they should have known about the titles. The nun was crying and upset and was trying to get her parking pass to the school she was working for when it was repossessed and they said there's nothing they can do to help her. It was a disgusting scene and I felt compelled to say something to the new car manager

on the floor. His response to me was something to the effect of, it's unfortunate when a nun deceived and lied to us. I don't believe her for a second, the nun was lying. I don't believe for a second she even knew what a rebuilt title was. And Toyota of Hollywood humiliated her and left her without a car.

If I hadn't already put down a payment, it wasn't already financed, I would have left the dealership without the new Toyota I was purchasing. The new car manager that did was a skinny little kid with glasses, I think about this often. If you're friends with the odor of Toyota of Hollywood, I hope you will relay this story to him. By the way, this happened a few years ago.

Yeah, that's the kind of thing that we get with anonymous feedback. We don't know whether it's true or not. It sounds almost too bad to be true. You've heard the expression too good to be true. Sounds almost too bad to be true. If it is true, it's a terrible thing. It was an isolated incident. We do know the owner of Hollywood Toyota, and he would never tolerate such a thing. Any retail business, car dealership, or otherwise, You got rotten apples in the barrel. And someone that would do that is a rotten apple by definition. And we all have those rotten apples.

Every retail, even an apple store might even have a rotten apple. Oh. I doubt that. Why'd you look at Jonathan when he said that? Well, that's true. I mean, we're never going to get perfection. And when you have a terrible incident like that, some things you have to write off to those things happen. Anomalies.

It's humans. Humans are humans, and they do terrible things. We have a... Okay. We're going to go to Morty, who's been holding from West Palm Beach. Welcome to the show, Marty. You there, Marty? Yes, how are you doing?

You're doing good. First thing, not to get political, but the guy that called you up, I wonder if he thinks Trump went to Walter Reed Hospital just for a fake disease. Yeah, I hear you. And the thing is this, people don't realize, not everybody, obviously, that gets a disease is going to die, but you don't want to be the one that does. Yeah, well put, Marty, particularly old guys like me, is a big difference between a 13-year-old kid getting COVID and an 80-year-old man getting COVID.

So, yeah, we're more concerned when we have more risk. Right. But the other thing I wanted to say is, now, I bought a lot of cars in my 76 years. The thing that I watch for, usually I consider it a fraudulent dealership. When they put on the sticker, they put a side sticker on that says market adjustment or some other nonsense. And when I negotiate with the salesman, I said, well, you realize, I said, I'm just looking at the real. sticker and that's the price that I'm going to negotiate with you for. Good for you.

And 99% of the salesmen say, yeah, don't worry about that. And thanks to you, the dealerships that I have paid theoretically a dealer fee, I've made sure I've negotiated in the price that amount off. In other words, I'm not going to pay. And then plus the dealer fee. Exactly. So they've got $1,500 extra on there. If I don't get the car for $1,500 less, I walk out.

That's the way to do it. I think that's what people have to do. Yeah, exactly. You're playing their game when you argue with them about the dealer fee. You just let them know that you can have anything you want on there. You can charge me for your grandmother's breakfast. Put it on the bill. I don't care.

As long as your price is competitive, because I'm going to three other dealers. And if you want me to pay for your grandmother's breakfast, add it to the price, and then I'll take it to the other dealer. And if I don't have to pay for his grandmother's breakfast, I'll buy it from him. So give me a bottom line, and I'm out of here, and I'll come back if it's the lowest price. A lot of salesmen are relieved when they don't have to deal with that. Just go straight to the manager.

The guy's not paying a dealer fee because they don't get paid on it. It's just a speed bump in their sale process. Yeah. Yeah. Well, a lot of places, the dealer fee is on their buyer's order. Yep. So what they have to do is when they back into the price, you give them here. This is what I'm going to pay. They can put in the $1,500 dealer fee, but when you get back to the top price, they've got to take it off.

Exactly. Yep. I used to back out Earl's $3.95 dealer fee all the time. Yeah, $4.95. That's right. It was raised at one point. I don't know if you ever heard of Palmyra Motors in New York State. No, but I lived in Elmira for a short period of time when I worked for a Westinghouse. Yeah, well, this guy had a dealership that all the dealers there were against

because he was selling cars theoretically at invoice. And they actually, believe it or not, they got rid of them. Yeah, I believe it. They put enough static in on them. But in New York State, they never had a dealer's fee. I'm not saying they lost any money, but there were no dealers fees where we were located. It was a cardinal send back there to show an invoice. That was back in the day when we made big fat profits on cars and our holdbacks were smaller,

but we still made a profit when we sold a card invoice. So some of these guys, like this guy in Elmira, he says, I got a great idea because it was powerful because that had never been done before. And these dealers would put their invoice on the window sticker next to the marumny label, and he'd actually sell you the car for that. And the volume would be so high, even though the profit was lower,

he was killing the other dealers. And I could see why they got rid of him. Yeah, this was Palmyra, not Elmire. Oh, Telmire, okay, okay. Yeah, but anyways, that was it. He had the volume, you know, even if he was making $3,400,000, I mean, even when you see it, invoice now. If you go on Kelly Blue Book and you look up and they show you the invoice and then you see people are buying it for less than invoice, well, you know, the car dealers would all go out of business if they were selling cars for less than they're paying for them.

Well, I have to correct you on that, Marty. What's happened in the recent years is the invoices have become a playground for the manufacturers and the dealers to deceive the customers. And the average invoice right now, Are you sitting down, Marty? Yes. You've got to sit down for this one. The average invoice has got about $4,000 worth of profit in it. And so when the dealer whips out that invoice and shows it to you and say, I'm going to sell it to you for $500 over, run, don't walk to the nearest exit. Because we had that Johnson Honda tried that trick when we did our last mystery shop,

and they wanted to sell it for $500 over an invoice. And when we check the price, true car, price, with other hundreds, dealers, it was a higher price and the other hot dealers were charging and they weren't selling it for 500 over invoice. They were selling it for under invoice. And go ahead. So that's what I'm saying. When you see that they say this is the invoice and they're selling it for less, you know the dealership's got to make a profit.

Yep. They're entitled to profit. Yep, they do. Well thanks, Marty. It's good to hear from you. All right. You have a good day. Be safe, stay well. Bye-bye. Hey, Marty, did you sign up for Earl's vigilantes? You sound like an educated and a great negotiator. I do negotiate pretty good.

By the time I get out of the dealership, I try to work them over. Oh, that sounds good. Music to me years. I'll tell you what. I do wear a mask. Good for you. Well, you should sign up for Earl's vigilantes and help us to, well, You can do a lot of investigating for us, and you can help other car buyers.

All right. I'll think about it. How ready, Marty? Have a great weekend. You too. Bye. 877-960. Or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30.

And ladies, we're running out of time. $50 for the first two new lady callers. All right. We're going to go to Stu. All right, Mark, who is also one of Earl's vigilantes, has a question on Facebook. He says, why do car sales traditionally not last very long at any one particular dealer? They seem to be on a local merry-go-round, sometimes working at the same dealership a couple of times. Very good observation.

Yeah, it's a sad statement on the whole culture of car dealerships, and I guess people are basically honest, and more so today than before. So you take a clean, we have, I won't mention any names that we know a family member that went to work for a company that has high pressure sales tactics. And he's very unhappy about working there, but he needs a job. And a lot of people need jobs. They suppose you're a waiter, and you were making good money and tips, and now your restaurants close down. So you go to a car dealer and you need a job. And the way the car dealers do business, how long can you take it?

I mean, they run an ad that you know you can't sell the car for. When somebody comes in the front door, you're a young salesperson, you're a car salesman now, and you greet that person, and they say, I want to buy this car with no down payment for $99 a month. And you sit there and your heart's beating, you're sweating, you don't know what to say, you stutter, and you know you have to lie to the person, otherwise he's going to turn. around getting his car and leave. How long would you want to work under those conditions? It's just not easy. And also traditionally, it's a pretty brutal environment. There's a lot of yelling. And then there's also a grass is always greener sort of mentality that goes around.

Dealers are always trying to lure away other salespeople from other dealerships with promises of making a ton of money and it doesn't usually pan out and then they try another dealership. Think about every car ad, you know, this is an absolute statement, every car ad you see from the manufacturer and from the dealer is a lie. Okay? You're a car salesperson. How do you deal with explaining that to people that come in the front door? Now, you have to lie again.

If you tell them the truth, they'll slap you in the face and turn around, get in the car and leave. So you have to ease them in by telling little white lies. Don't worry about the price. You're going to love the price. I'll get you a really good deal. And you have to go to the whole charade. It's hard to deal and work in that environment.

So turnover is very high for car salespeople. That's right. All right, we've got a text from John in California. Great question. He says, my question is, why do dealerships block you from using certain websites while you're in the dealership? I noticed that while at a dealership trying to compare prices, sites like KB and others are not working. why is that and should I take this as a red flag and leave your thoughts on that that's a hell of a red flag I haven't heard it I didn't know they did that that's that's that's bizarre well I can tell you this that

manufacturers require the dealers to block the survey site while you're on while you're at the dealership so that prevents well it doesn't prevent anything but it's supposed to prevent salespeople and managers from giving themselves filling out the surveys we have a firewall and most you know large companies with an internet like a server system have the ability to do that and we do block Netflix because if somebody starts watching movies it shuts the whole thing down but in theory you can block any website that you don't want them to go to so if you at car dealership and you can't access consumer sites to help you figure out if you're getting a good deal yeah John leave you know all you dealers out here that's a west coast

trick so all you dealers on the east coast here's a really good one you can really screw your customers, the California dealers figured this out first. So if you go into a Honda dealership in South Florida now, you want to do, listen, you can block that customer from seeing any other Honda dealers website. And you can block it on the Wi-Fi system, they can control that. And they won't let you watch any competitors while you're in the dealership. That's a really good way to screw the customer and sell them a car for too much money. Make a note of that, all you car dealers in South Florida.

I hope you realize I'm being facetious. No, you give us more mystery shopping material. We'll look for that. I haven't even thought about that. See, as old as I am, as long as I've been in the business, just when I think I've heard all the dirty tricks, thank you. That was John from the West Coast of California.

John, West Coast of California? I just learned something new. I mean, you can't teach an old dog new tricks. And you just taught a whole bunch of nothing. You shouldn't have done that. Put it around. How long is the delay can we beeper allow it on the lesson? Here's anonymous feedback, very technical.

Rick, I saw your YouTube video on what that battery indicator light means. How can you tell how much voltage is in the alternator? 130 volts, 150 volts, or 200 volts? Well, actually, you're probably talking about amperage because alternators are all going to put out somewhere between 13 to 15 volts to recharge the battery. The amperage is usually in the specification sheet for the alt-nator itself, and usually you'd find that on the information for your car.

The other easy way to do it is to get an inductive ammeter and just clamp it around the battery cable while the engine is running, and it will show how much amperage the alt-leter is putting out. Now, with that knowledge, how does that affect your life? Really, none. Okay. Well, some people like gauges. You know, you like the RPM.

I mean, you like to see the, you know. The only reason that someone would actually need to know how much amperage the alt-neter can produce is if they plan on towing a trailer or using extra equipment plugged into the system. I withdraw my sarcasm. Okay, here's a great question, anonymous feedback. Did you ever find out of Napleton really put a new computer in that Jeep?

To fill you all in, we did a mystery shop of Napleton Jeep service department, and Rick had loosened the wire and to make it appear like it could have been a big serious problem with the engine they ended fixing it under warranty did not charge or shop or anything but it looked appear that they had charged

Jeep a lot of money to replace the computer and the answer is yes they did replace the computer we checked that out I forgot you asked that question I forgot this so they did the work but we chalked that up

to a misdiagnosis the cause of which remains unknown, whether it was intentional or not. And the worst part about this, if anybody is listening from, what was that, Kia? Napleton Jeep, Chrysler Jeep. So if the manufacturer, if Chrysler-Geeb Dodge is listening, you should go in an audit, Napleton, Chrysler. Yeah, just, I mean, they might be doing it completely honestly, just to find out, because you don't know.

It didn't need to be replaced. It did not need to replace, no. So I'm going to know what's the warranty law say, if you do something because you're stupid or you do something before you dishonest, they charge it back either way, right? Can be, yeah. If they catch it. If you're raised

in a red flag, I mean, they call it the CVR, it's basically your average cost of warranty. If it starts spiking, they come in and look at you. Okay, folks, I think that we are getting close to our little overtime as far as our mystery shopping

report is concerned, and we would love for you to vote on it, us to build that good dealer, bad dealer list, and you can do that at 772-497-6530. Your vote's real important. We have a mystery shopping report from Irrigo in West Palm Beach. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Okay. A few weeks ago, we had a caller from the show that said that the Arrigo dealerships have been sold. I didn't believe it. And then I heard later on about another rumor or somebody else, maybe another caller. And so finally I called

Larry Morgan, who was the alleged purchaser, and text him actually, and found out, yeah. The Morgan Automotive Group, and I didn't know he'd bought this many. I knew Larry Morgan. Way back when he first started in business,

he sold his tire company many, many years ago for a ton of money, got bored, didn't want to retire, decided he'd buy car dealership, and that's how we met. He was on the Florida Automobile Dealers Association. We were on the board of directors together, and he helped me out with some things. And he's an honest, hard-worked, smart guy.

And he bought the Arrigo dealerships. I didn't realize they had five dealerships, but they do. And all five of those have been sold to Larry Morgan. He's sticking under the Arrigo brand, interestingly enough. And he does that with all of his dealerships. he doesn't use Morgan and he also

kind of like Terry Taylor Terry Taylor does this with a whole bunch of stories too but you keep the name the story you borrow you come up with another name you don't use your name

and that's what we're going to do I'm kind of sad about this because I've known the Arrigo's for a long time and I just have to say that we've had our differences I sued them. They sued me. It was resolved. Not satisfactorily for me. It had to do with the Takata Airbag issue. I won't go into that. As far as I'm concerned, we're still friends. That was business. I knew their father, Joe Arrigo, who was the first car dealer in the Arrigo family, and then they expanded considerably from there. And their success has been phenomenal, really. They jumped on this Chrysler-Jee Dodge thing, and they have done extraordinarily well. So we love their commercials.

They're still on the air now, here we go, because they're funny, and they've been on our recommended list, mostly, I think. Have we ever had them on our do-not-recommend list? I think concerning the Takata Airbags. Yeah, maybe. Or before we start grading on a curve. Yeah. So anyway, we'll miss the guys.

I hate to see them retire. Did you know that Stalupi sold out? No. John Stalupi, a lot of you, and I know John from Palm City, know Stalupi. He was a New York dealer. A lot of dealers are selling out now, and there are new groups coming in, and old groups leaving, and public companies coming in. The whole landscape is changing.

But I digress. When there's a change in the ownership of a car dealership, it's guaranteed that there will be a change in the way the new owner does business. Considered the enormous footprint of the five Arrigo dealerships, the Morgan way of doing business will have a big impact on consumers in our area. I think it's going to be positive. From what I've seen, what I know about Larry, and we'll be shopping, and it'll be objective. I mean, I know a lot of dealers.

I know, just because I know the dealer, I talk about Bill Wallace a lot. You can be an honest guy with good intent, but if you don't stay on top of your operations, you can get yourself in trouble. It's Schumacher. I know Chuck Schumacher, but when you get up to, here's Morgan, 42 dealerships all over Florida. I don't know how he does it, but we'll find out how he does it, because we'll be shopping these dealerships. It's a traumatic thing when you sell a dealership. It's going to be interesting.

We'd love to hear from you that you deal with Erigo now because a lot of you might not realize that there's new ownership. So any folks buy Jeep, Chrysler, Fiat, or anybody from a Rigo dealership, let us know how it went. We'd be interested to see how the Larry Morgan way of business affected you. Where am I here? I kind of ad-libbed up to the point. Okay. In August, Agent Lightning and her son paid the Arrigo's visit to see if they could really get $14,000 off a new vehicle. as Agent Lightning is our female shopper.

A long short story, they could not get $14,000 off. For this mission, Agent Lightning reprised her persona from last week's mystery shop of Johnson, Honda Stewart. She'd visit a dealership, no agenda, just go in, I'm going to buy a new vehicle. I mean, it's cold, cold, unprepared, uninformed, I want to buy a new car, and see what happens.

That's the way most people, unfortunately, buy their cars. Here's a report, as if I am, Agent Lightning. I entered the showroom of Regal West Palm Beach on Oklahoma Boulevard at noon. I approached her receptionist, seen behind a plexicon shield, improperly wearing a mask over her chin. I looked around and observed most,

but not all employees I saw wearing masks. I think I'll send this report to Larry Morgan. And why not? Email it, right? I'll bet you the next time we shop them there, wearing mask because I know Larry well enough to know that he cares for his employees and he cares for his customers.

She asked how she could help. I told her I wanted to buy a new Dodge Challenger. She walked over to room that was filled with computer workstations and a few salespeople. She turned and said Chris would be out in a minute. A few minutes later, Chris emerged from the office an approach as he put on his mask.

We introduced ourselves and I told him about the challenger I wanted to buy. So they were together without mask and he came out and put the mask on I think to protect everybody you should wear a mask all the time when you're in a car dealership and if you have a family and you have kids or you don't have kids or whatever you have when you're dealing with a lot of people somebody can be asymptomatic and you can carry a COVID bug from your 10-year-old daughter's school inadvertently into the dealership

and give it to your co-worker and give it to your customer. So if you're going to wear your mask, wear your mask. You know, the biggest protection when you wear a mask is for the other guy. Not for you. If you want to be protected with a mask,

you better be wearing an N95. If you're wearing a cloth mask, you're getting about 10% protection. But I digressed. He led me, this was Chris, to find out where they could kept the challenge. year, Chris told me I picked the best time to buy a new car. It was the end of the month.

Even Chris laughed at that and said, actually, every day is like the end of the month for my customer. I think he was being serious. A truth said and just. I think he was being serious. Maybe. Maybe. But there is no good time to buy a car when you talk to a car settlement. The end of the month is a good time to buy a car, but he's going to tell you, every day is a good day.

So she's probably right. the enormous lot for a while. This is big place. By the way, you know, that used to be, if they're familiar West Palm Beach area, that used to be Auto Nation's used car lot. Auto Nation got big into used cars, and then they foundered, and they sold all the used car lots off, and now they're coming back and doing it all over again. So, but there was a huge lot out there. When Joe Origo, I mean, probably Joe at the time, when they bought that lot, I said they're crazy. There's no way the overhead can support

a Chrysler jeep down dealers dealership out there and it's too far west but it wasn't too far west he's very successful and it's a big lot Chris complained about having to wear the mask saying it should be an individual choice

here we're getting you know here we are the politics probably not a good idea for a salesperson to raise this issue no particularly when you don't know what the person feels and not enforced in any when I said that I thought they were necessary to show this spread the, to slow

the spread of the virus he gave me to each his own. We found a beautiful black new 2020 Challenger XXXT with an MSRP of 29-885. Next to the Maroni label, there was an addendum that matched the real window sticker in appearance. Now listen

to this. Did they have this the last time we shopped them? No. I don't think so. Do you suppose this is a Larry Morgan thing? I don't know. They'll call it the Arrigo Advantage, but I've never seen a more co-case. Listen, the regular listeners to the show will appreciate this. Listen to this addendum label. It's quite masterful and well thought out, and a lot of thought of this.

That's 2,000 to the price. Yeah. $195 to the MSRP for Arrigo Advantage, which consisted of exterior paint protection. I've seen that before. Wax. interior protection that's going to have before spray door edge and cup guards

that's a lot of them right rain repellent highlight UV protection cabin sanitation that's a nice touch there interior anti-microbile staying up with the times

COVID anti-fept then etching nitrogen-filled tires were leaving nothing out of this addendum, $50 tire repair credit. Ooh, that almost sounds like it might have some value to it. Premium roadside assistance, not just regular, but premium. Top of the line.

Top of the line. Stolen vehicle assistance, $2,500. No, no, the $25 was for the next thing. Oh, stolen vehicle assistance. Okay, if you want to steal a bill for, they'll help you steal it. They'll help you steal it. They'll help you steal it. Okay, probably make the keys.

That's a lot of value to that. $2,500 collision credit for 90 days. So if you wreck your car in the first 90 days, it seems to imply that they would pay $2,500. Somehow, I doubt they would, but we don't know. But wait, there's more. Welcome Kit with car care products, and there's even another one.

Customer mobile app. Don't charge for the app. Don't charge for the app. Now, that's the most thorough. I've never seen a denim label with that much stuff on it. Nope. Chris suggested a test drive to get the keys on the plate

on the drive up down Okeechobee Boulevard Chris told me about the complimentary XM radio subscription. I think that kind of goes where the manufacturer gives you that don't think. That is true. He did say you get a year

a complimentary and most manufacturers offer three months and it is true Toyota offers three months, maybe Dodge offers more or maybe Arrigo's paying for it. Well, it's very smart that he remember that. So that is good. He told me how he considers his customers be family and he keeps in touch with them for years after the sale and assists them with a servicing on their

vehicles. I wouldn't buy a car from somebody who told me that. Yeah, well, don't leave me alone. There are a lot of salespeople, well, this is good and bad about this. There are a lot of salespeople that will take care of their customers, drives the dealer crazy many times. They promise some pre-loaners. They promise some pre-car watches. They promise them all sorts of things and if you can find the salesman and you can make him confess he told you that you might get what he promised you the problem is most of the times they promise you when you come back for your free car wash the guy's gone because we talked about turnover we found out later in this report this particular salesperson Chris says he's been with a regal in the next sentence

for 25 years 27 years yeah anyway but he believes the new ownership will be a good thing. He said the new owner was very motivated, sold a lot of cars. Oh, that doesn't hardly set anybody apart. I'm motivated to sell a lot of cars. I think he was taking a shot at the Rigos because he says he's motivated like the Rigo's were 15 years ago. Oh, I thought they were still sold a lot of cars. It's a salesperson perception. Okay, yeah. Back at the lot, Chris, we write this up. I said I'd drive it home today if I agreed to be numbers. But if he's telling the truth about being there, how long is he? been there?

Yeah, for 27 years. If he's been there for 27 years, he is really unique. And he is probably a lot of good things about the man because you can't be there for 27 years. He probably has big clients. We have salespeople like that.

Yeah. John Gormley. Yeah. Tana, Todd. Yeah. All pushing 30 years now. So that speaks highly for Chris. He was there from the beginning.

They opened up in 89. He was there from, I guess, 93. So Chris, we salute you. And as yes, he asked for my driver's license and complained about the new computer system is he tried to enter my info with his keyboard. Oh, he skipped something there. Oh, really? Yeah, he's, he's, he's, uh, let's a second here.

Okay, I'm sorry, you're right, go ahead. All you needed was a pencil and paper. So the old guys, you know, he's the old guy. And I love the old guy. That's because I am an old guy too, so that's why I live old guys. Before he left to get the figures, Chris guaranteed me. I'd be getting an unbelievable deal. Now that's okay to say that's puffery, right?

Puffery. I waited 10 minutes before he returned with a worksheet. Chris asked me to brace myself. You better sit down for this one before you reveal the deal. I mean, I like Chris already. The market value selling price was MSRP, 29885. No addendum. It was a 4,5003.

That addendum, I feel so let down. I read for an hour and a half all the stuff on the addendum and there was no addendum in the rate of. There's a $4,536 discount which made the adjusted price, $25,349. Then he had $6.50, hardly worthy of mention, taxable fees. Can I jump in real quick?

Sure. Because we found it later on, that entire discount that was made up of rebates from Chrysler Dodge. Yeah, yeah. So they didn't offer their own discount at all. Well, it's still a discount. It's a discount all they miss our people.

But they're making all the money. You can't fee. Yeah, exactly. Exactly, exactly. And we found out that he was making all the money. He added a $6.50 in taxable fees, a $998 dock fee, a rose is a rose, a deaver fee, a hidden fee, is a dock fee, is a hidden fee, you know what I'm saying. Next came sales tax, $9303 of non-tax fees. Out the door, I was at $29,181. $29,181. Chris said he was going way below what they shouldn't be selling the car for, more puffery. Then he let me know I was getting the Arrigo Advantage package for free.

So, nationally I talked about that in the car, and she thought that was wrong. And I said, I think that it's puffery, it's salesmanship, and everybody does that. I mean, it's just, I mean, maybe that's not good. But they make you think this addendum label has got a little good stuff on it. So when they say, we're not going to charge you for it, you say, ooh, that's really valuable. Makes you feel good. Yeah. Anyway, I stopped it and say I need to step outside to call on my husband.

Chris said I could stay and make a call at the desk. I said, so I'm walking outside, excuse myself, made a couple phone calls, then went back inside. Chris saw Oh, he was on the phone, sorry Oh yeah, Chris was all the phone So I gestured to him that I would call him back later Making the universal hand sign for a phone I heard back outside left

It was interesting that she was able to get out there As quickly And there was no rush to the car To cut her off, nobody tackled her And so that was You know There's some dealerships where that would happen She'd have never made it to the car

Oh, they got points for that So here's just to use my word puffery in the epilogue at the new van the puffery's okay the 75 item origo advantage for two grand was obnoxious but now the norm for south Florida and so we checked with true car and we found out that the exact same model and the two card representing in this area napleton came in about four hundred dollars higher than origo so it was a good price and uh all right At least, it wasn't a bad price.

And there we are. The first shop of Regal, when we knew they were run by Larry Morgan, and it was time to vote. And it will be interesting to see how the shopping reports compare as the ownership continues, and it'll probably take a year easily before the Larry Morgan ownership is really firmly in place, and we can see how the cars are sold and advertised.

I have two Cs and a D, and I'm going to disagree with these guys, and I'm going to give them a B. A B? A B? Yeah. That's a really good score. I mean, there wasn't really anything terrible going on. I mean, we haven't investigated their advertising. She ran into an old school, a good old guy salesperson who entertained her, and, you know, really, the worst thing really was the addendum in the dealer fees, but like he said, we're on a curve, and they were lower. than the Drew Harbourists.

Yeah. And I think we should give Chris a shout-out. His last name, by the way, is Etter, E-T-T-E-R, Chris E-T-E-R. Chris Eder at a Rego Chrysler Jeep Dodge and Okachovie Willoward

Go see Chris Chris Chris Edder is a he's a straight up stand-up guy and if you're

going to buy a Chrysler Jeep Dodge from a salesperson in a dealership go to Rego and Okachovia and talk to Chris Etter

there we go Rick on YouTube we've got Tim with the B Donovan they get an F for all that

garbage on top of the price When will these dealers learn? It's all useless that no one wants. Stop ripping people off its fee on top of fee. Mark is giving a C. Mark Ryan, a C. And myself, I'm going to agree with Stu and go with a B. I just don't see anything really unusual there.

If you play your cards right and work the system, like you say, I bet you can beat that deal down even lower. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. walked in there and said give me a price so had agent lightning done the three shopping reports i mean the three uh online prices and compared she'd probably got a better price but she didn't get a bad price nancy i like that rick beat them down oh and guy gives him a bee guy larvae

oh great uh i didn't like the remark about the mass and uh that was a pretty hefty $998. I'm going to get them a C. Well, I've got to give them the score, too. I think I'm wavering between a B and a C plus. I'll go with a C plus. I really think that you're going to see an improvement in all the Rigo dealerships with Larry Morgan.

And they weren't bad before. I mean, the Rigo stores were, you know, I think we will see some B pluses, and maybe an A or two. You never know. I'm just so happy to see a guy like Larry Morgan come in. And the fact that we have a relationship in terms of I can text or call him, and he can text or call him.

I'll keep him for him. I'm going to send him the shopping report and tell him what the score was. And I think he'll enjoy that. Okay. Yeah, that's a nice one. Yeah. Okay, we've got some time left here. What do we need to talk about?

I had something that I had in the automotive news, and I should have mentioned this to Nancy before, but, you know, we talk about car dealers just being in the old boys club. Okay. We got three minutes. The graduating class of the National Automobile Dealers Association, car dealer class, is they have the pictures here, and I'll hold it up there. You can't tell on the camera here, but there's, I think, 17, 20 graduates, and there's not one single female. So I just think it's kind of sad, and it's the way it is. You know, I have very, very few female car dealers

and very, very few female employees in car dealerships. You rarely see a female salesperson. Certainly managers are very scarce. It's still an old boys club. What can I tell you? Ladies, I hope that you're still listening to the show right now because there you have it. It's, well, things are getting better, like I said,

but we sure do need you and we miss you today so there's always next week you can give us a call so it's time for us to say goodbye and we will see you right here next week Let's go. Go. Oh. No. Oh. Oh.

Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.

Oh. Oh. Red don't know.