Earl Stewart on Cars - 11.03.2018 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Hollywood Chrysler Jeep

Episode Date: November 3, 2018

Earl answers various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Agent X visits Hollywood Chrysler Jeep to purchase a car with an identified Takata Airbag Recall. Earl Stewart is one of the most successful car dealers in the nation. This podcast gives you the benefit of his 40+ years as a car dealer and helps you turn the terror of buying, leasing, or servicing a car into a triumphant experience. Listen to the Earl Stewart on Cars radio program every Saturday morning live from 8am to 10 am eastern time, or online on http://www.streamearloncars.com. Call in with your questions during the live show toll free at [phone]. You can also send a text to Earl and his expert team during the live show at [phone]. We are now on Facebook Live every Saturday between 8am and 10am. Go to facebook.com/earloncars to also watch it live or to watch a replay in case you missed it. Uncover additional automotive tips and facts at http://www.earlstewartoncars.com and follow Earl's tweets @EarlonCars. Watch Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars. “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”

Welcome to Earl Stewart on Cars with Earl and Nancy Stewart. Reach them with your questions at 877-960. Here's Earl and Nancy. Good morning, everybody. Another week, and here we are. The automotive team, the group of folks that sit in the studio every Saturday at this time. We don't sing to you, by the way. This is the true oldie station.

Let's get that clear. We're just, I don't want to pat myself. on the back or the rest of the folks in the studio here, but we are experts on automobiles. And we're a specific type of expert because we're telling you not how to build a car or anything like that. We want to tell you how you can buy or lease a car or maintain or repair your car without being ripped off by your car dealer. We have a good following here. We have a good rating on the station. A lot of folks tune us in every Saturday between 8 and 10. We've got to Some new folks out there, so I always have to explain ourselves because we are different.

I know everybody's different, right? Well, we truly are different. We tell it like it is. We pull no punches. We do a mystery shopping report, which you'll hear later in the show. We visit a car dealer somewhere in South Florida. When all the way to Hollywood, Florida, as a matter of fact, South Florida this time, we cover the South Florida area from probably Vero Beach North all the way.

south to, as I say, we're in Hollywood, practically in Miami. We visit these car dealerships. We have an undercover agent, and he goes in, and he pretends to buy or leaves a car, and goes through the whole process. I mean, paperwork, sometimes in the business office, talking to sales managers and salesmen, usually multiple people, and then he reports back in a confidential sort of an undercover way, and we covered on this station. We'll hear it later, as I said, and we name names.

We'll name the dealership. We'll name the people that he encountered, the salespeople, the managers. And we tell you exactly what was that buying or leasing experience like? Was he treated fairly, honestly, transparently, or was he flim flammered? Was the bait and switch advertising? We typically go in on an advertisement. Could he buy the car that was advertised at the price that was advertised? We find out.

And then we have two lists, a recommended dealer list, and they don't want to buy from this dealer list. And those two lists, we keep current. And you can access it online, gooddealer, baddealerlis.com. And that's pretty much how we create this list. So that's a lot of fun. Now, the other thing I encounter when people talk about the show where I tell people about the radio show is, so what's the purpose of your show? Because there are people out there that have found good car dealers.

Typically, they stick with somebody they like. Maybe it's a salesperson or a manager or just a dealership. There are a few people out there that don't have problems buying or leasing cars. But most of you do. And I used my proof of that by the Gallup Annual Poll on Honesty and Ethics and Professions. I quote that over and over again every week. You know, by the way, we've been on the air for 13 years. may be 14. I lose count. But since 1970, the Gallup organization has been running a poll,

honesty and ethics and professions, and they asked the American public, what do you consider the most honorable, most transparent, honest, and ethical businesses in which you consider the least honest and ethical? And every year, since 1977, 40-some-odd years, car dealers have been on the bottom of the list. Not necessarily dead last. but next to last, for example, last year 2017, they were next to last. I think last was a lobbyist or congressman, I think. Congressman, I think. Congressman, yeah.

So the average American perceives car dealers is not too good, not too honest, not too ethical. So that's what we want to help you with. We want to help you navigate yourself through the purchase or the lease or the repair the maintenance of your car without a lot of hassle. And we have a lot of tips. We love to have you call the show, and I'm rather long-winded, so I'm going to give the number out.

You'll hear the number out. You'll hear the number over and over again, because it's important. We'd rather hear from you, actually, than hear from ourselves. Because when you call in, then we can answer questions and respond directly. 877-960-99-60.

I'd like it if you'd write that number down. just take a second grab a pencil scribble down this number 877 960 9960 and you can also post on Facebook we're streaming this live right now on Facebook so if you're anywhere in the world and you have Facebook and you have a smartphone or a PC or a Mac just go to facebook.com forward slash earl on cars Facebook.com forward slash earl on cars Facebook.com forward slash Earl on cars and you can post we have some really good exchange there because we have a lot of folks that that do this post and you can chit-chat among yourselves you can chit-chat with us here at Earl on Earl Stewart on cars and you can post your questions and we'll respond and we also respond to text our texting is area code 772 4976530 grab a pencil we'd appreciate if you'd write that text number down 272

4976530 because your interaction with us is really what makes the show. Now, I could say we have a special guest today, but he's not really special guests. I'm not special at all. Not special at all. Alan Napier, who used to be a

regular on the show, now he's become a special guest. He comes in. Well, let's look at it this way. He's our collision repair expert. We've got Rick Kearney, who was our auto-mechanical expert, All the computer scientists, we call them. We have Nancy Stewart, who is my wife and co-host.

But Alan Napier, you don't hopefully wreck your car very often. And some people never wreck their car. So if you don't have any body repair to do to your car, you might never need an insurance company or an auto repair shop. So the frequency of having problems is less. So Alan comes in once a month or every couple months, usually when we ask him. and he was nice enough to come in today. So Alan Napier knows just about all there is to know about collision repair,

insurance companies, and I'm giving him a big head now, but he is very knowledgeable. I've known it for a long time. He's been in this business for 25 or 30 years. He knows what he's talking about. Knowledge about insurance companies is just about as important as knowledge about repairing a vehicle from a collision perspective because the insurance companies are often.

and difficult to deal with. So we especially like to hear from you if you have some thoughts on auto insurance, if you have some thoughts on how much it costs to get repaired. What about OEM parts, original equipment menu, Pacture Parts versus aftermarket parts, deductibles, you know, all that stuff, insurance premiums, good insurance companies, bad insurance companies. if you're if you just dinged your finger your finger right if you just ding your fender then you probably want to call and ask all some advice 877 960 9960 Texas at 772-4972 4976530 and of course as I say on Facebook Facebook.com 4 slash hurl on cars I think I see Nancy is that a caller we have on the board there?

do have a caller, but first I am going to tell the ladies, as we do every Saturday, we have $50 here for the first two new lady callers. So help us build this platform for the ladies and give us a call. If you have a question, a comment, anything at all. 877960, or you can text us at 772-49765-30. We're going to go to Tina, who is a regular, and welcome to the show, Tina. Good morning, everybody. How you all doing? Great.

Morning, Tina. Good morning. Earl, I have a little bit of bad news for you. You know that beautiful Tesla that you absolutely love. Yeah, love Tesla. Consumer Reports doesn't like it. Consumer Reports doesn't like it. Oh, boy.

Doesn't like it at all. So, you know, it's gorgeous, but Consumer Reports gave it a two thumbs down, so sorry to be the bear of bad news. You know, I did not know that. I knew that initially Consumer Reports really loved it, and then after a while they gave it a bad rap. I didn't know they'd done another. So it's not even on the recommended list?

No, no, it's not as of just recently. Wow. But that's not my subject for the day. day. I was watching some videos on YouTube last night and reading some articles about Jizzy Lou. Now, I know a lot of people love to go to these oil change places because they're quick and they're convenient. But if you go in thinking, oh, I just want a $20 oil change, you could be in way more over your head. There was a case in California where a lady went to one of these Gisilu places and she was really upset because by the time she left, she ended up paying $195.

And then some people have investigated, like independent investigators, have seen people go through just the loop and say, okay, let's examine your car after you get service. And, of course, the customer pays an inflated price because they got upsold. You know what that is. And then they find out afterwards through independent testing that the transmission fluid change or the coolant flush or any of those things have never been performed. Well, that is scary. Jiffyloob's one of those that have come under fire, and I've had the same thing happen to me a few years ago because there's one around the corner from where I live.

And back when I had the Miata, I just wanted an oil change, and by the time I walked out, it paid $150. And I swore to myself, I would never pay that kind of money for an oil change. So from now on, I go to my garage that I use all the time. They don't try to upsell me. They only give me what I need at the specific time. They pay attention to the maintenance schedule because they work on Toyota, so they're familiar with the schedule.

So the moral of the story is if you think that you're going to have convenience by going to one of these oil change places, you may very well end up paying a whole lot more than your bargain for, and you might not even get the services you paid for. Yeah, the quality of the technicians there leaves a little bit of desire, too. A good garage, a good at service repair shop, has skilled, trained people. I brag about Rick all the time. He spends, I'll exaggerate slightly half his time in school, studying, taking a lot of online tests,

maintaining his certifications and all the different categories. But in Jiffy Loob, in a lot of these fast loop places, they hire a kid off the street, really, and train them on the job. It's kind of like getting on an airliner, you know, flying United, finding out the pilot, that's his first flight. I mean, everybody has got to have his first flight, and every Lou Boyle filter guy has got to do his first loop oil filter. You just don't want it to be done on you. So it is a scary out there. Another thing, I'm going to talk, Alan has a point before I say that, another reason why the danger of this bait and switch advertising being taken advantage of in service departments

is so high is the quality of the cars has gone up and the maintenance schedules have been stretched out there's less maintenance required with the modern cars there are less repairs that's the good news our cars today are head and shoulders quality-wise above those of just 10 years ago so it's kind of like a pack of hungry wools out there the repair shops are getting hungry the sales the service advisors are paid on commission the technicians are paid on commission the more service you bring form, more repairs, more maintenance, the more money you make. And the cars are going in the other direction. They don't require the maintenance.

They don't require the repairs. And so there are a lot of people out there very hungry on commission. So what happens? You drive your car into the wolf pack and they take advantage of you. Alan, you had a point. Well, I just wonder if Jiffy Loobes are franchised or are they all corporate run stores. And if they're franchised, I would think it would depend on who owns and run. the franchise. Probably both. I think they're probably some of both. But I can't imagine

that all the jiffy loops are terrible. You know, even if they're corporate stores, I would think it depends on a manager. Some people, just their nature, they're going to demand perfection and other guys. It's all about the money. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, I didn't, I didn't, yeah, I'm sorry, I'm sorry if it came across that I painted with a broad brush. I definitely didn't need to, but didn't mean to. I didn't intend that. But I was going to also add that in Canada, I don't know how it is in Florida or the United States in general, but more in Florida. But in Canada, for someone to be employed at an oil change place, they do not have to be ASE certified. They do not have to have any knowledge of even lifting the hood. Some of these guys

come into these places to be employed. They have to be taught how to lift the hood before they even work on the car. Well, that's true. I think it's true. It's a lot of service department. Yeah. Exactly. It's a starting position, it's almost like an apprentice position in car dealerships and service repair. Kids come out of vocational school or anywhere, and they are put typically with a technician that knows what he's doing, and they work with the technician, and they begin to learn. The first thing they learn is how to rotate and balance tires and change oil and oil filters. And unfortunately, that can be one of the most dangerous positions. If you don't tighten the lug nuts properly on a wheel,

or if you forget to put the oil back in after you drain the oil. And that's happened. The drain plug loose. Yeah, that's happened. There's a lot of things that can cause catastrophic problems, and the person doing that is a brand new guy. And, you know, if he can survive a year on the lub rack, then they promote him to technician, and then he can move up the ladder.

My most senior technician is a man named Glenn Ballard. I think Glenn Ballard's been with me probably for 30-plus years. years. 40. 40 plus years. This month makes 40 years for him. And Glenn started back when he was 17 years old doing oil changes. And talking about the lube techs, they can do the most damage just because they are taking your wheels off and your drain plugs out. And in a blink of an eye. Yeah, the mechanic has evolved into a technician. The lube tech is still kind of a mechanic. You know, he's doing that mechanical work. And wouldn't it be something if the if the consumer came in that was having their oil change and said,

well, how long have you been doing this? You know, like you do when you go to a doctor, well, how long have you been doing, you know, so that you would know. You might be afraid to know. Young doctors scare me. Well, Tina, thanks. That's really a heads-up. We should pass along to everybody.

It is something people don't think about. You really want to find somebody who can change your oil and rotate your balance your tires. that has had some experience and you can rely on. I mean, I've had personal experiences. I've been the car dealer for 50 years, and I wouldn't be honest with you. I didn't tell you I had some scary experiences

with young people that worked for me that just didn't get the lug nuts tight and right in some cases the oil chain. So speaking from personal experience, it is a red flag. You have to be careful. And there isn't really a perfect answer. Is there, Rick, I mean,

that's just, the way the industry is. It's a starting position. You basically just have to learn through experience and build habits, good habits, and double-check your work on everything. That's the main mark of the best mechanics are the ones that will go back and double-check everything they did.

Even though they know they did it right the first time, they double-check it every single time because all of us can make mistakes. Tina, thanks for that heads up. appreciate it. We missed you last week, by the way. I'm sure glad you called this week. Yeah. Thanks so much, Dana. Yeah, I did. I missed. I might schedule this and allow for it, but I'm glad to be on this morning. Yes, we're glad to hear from you. We'll call again next week. We look forward to your calls. Thank you. Yes, sir.

Bye-bye. Keep listening. Keep joining us. 877960. Or you can text us at 772-497-60. And remember ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers. And ladies, fortunately, in today's world, women have no reason to dread going to the car dealership. Absolutely not. Things are getting a whole lot better. And knowledge is power. So I'd love to hear from you.

Be part of the show. We're going to go to Rod, who's been holding, and he's calling us from West Palm Beach. Good morning. Morning, girl. Morning, Nancy. Good morning, Row. I just want to, since we're on the subject of what you call heads up, this is something that I think you want to, want to, you know,

grab a pen and paper or pencil and paper or whatever. A lot of people don't know this. I did not. That if you drive on a flat tire, a flat rim, boy, can they spank you good for that one. I didn't know that. There's a penalty? It's a violation of the law.

It is the law. It is the law. What they wound up doing was hitting me to the point of somewhere around $500. Wow. Mandatory tow, three miles. That was $189, et cetera, et cetera. Gave me all kind of tickets, et cetera, et cetera. Got out of there because they were having some snafu problems there at P.

PDA, they wound up, you know, just going court costs, so I was very lucky there. But they almost left me, somebody who's semi-handicapped, I have my legs wrapped, I have a handicap sticker, et cetera, et cetera. I'm almost 70 years old. I've been doing car repair stuff since 1967. Wow. Raised my family here, raised and ran my business here and everything, retired. from it. And basically, once they took my driver's license, it's the last time I saw it.

This is the real important thing. A lot of people don't know this. According to DMV, if on your, when they look you up, if there's what they call a gold star, I've had to learn all this, the very hard way since October 2nd. If there's a gold star by your name, then you do not have to come up with your birth certificate, certified birth certificate. Wow. I was born on the other side of the world, Maui, Hawaii. Wow. Now, that being said, it was a territory back in 1951.

It was not a state. can you imagine how difficult this is going to be to look up wow i'll tell you i have going to be anywhere from six weeks to 12 weeks pay your pay your extra money with vital statistics it's still six weeks to 12 weeks now i would suggest that anybody and everybody out there this is more important than

anything i believe i believe that you all have been saying except for the proper oil in the vehicles and you know and all that stuff. Make sure that you have your gold star

by you because if they take it, here's what happens with me. I'm on pain meds. Can't get them. The the drugs that I have, the

medicines that I have, the medicines that I have can't get them. The voting coming up can't vote. Nothing. Nothing. They rate me good. And I'm not a happy camper.

This is all because you lost your driver's license. They just didn't hand it back to you. You physically lost possession of your license. Right? They took it. They said that two days earlier I was driving on a

suspended uh suspended license because of a license for license tag problem my license tag on the back there because i've been clobbered three times imagine that in florida and uh all three all three did not did not carry insurance they tell you they lie through their teeth that they did et cetera et cetera the third one that got me pretty much totaled up my blue S-10. Now, I was sitting at Quadrille in West Palm Beach, stopped at a light. They were working at the time on the northern bridge to get over there to Palm Beach. Somebody comes around everybody else.

Right there, there's the pencil right there that you need to write down. Don't be on the kamikaze end where they can go around everybody. make sure that you're in the long line so that the kamikaze will come around you and unfortunately if they hit somebody at about 50 miles an hour at a stoplight in the afternoon of beautiful West Palm that you're not going to be the one that they hit.

I've got back on it. I took my tag. I took my tag. I put it on the dash of the truck. I couldn't physically get in the neat and take off the three nuts that I had on my license. Right. Right. Oh, license. Yes.

I'm going to have to interrupt you here. We've got a lot of folks holding. And I've got a, you've given us some excellent points to research. If you'd like to call me after the show, you do that. But we've got a lot of people backing up now on calls. But you've given us a lot to think about. And as you said earlier, a good head. up. We've learned a lot about

what we need to be concerned about with driver's licenses and driving on a rim. And I thank you very much for the call. But I've got to, we've got to go now and we've got somebody else on hold. Please call back next week and we'll follow up on

some of these other issues that you raise. But thank you very much, Rod, for calling. Thank you, Rod. We're going to go to David. He's been holding from West Palm Beach. Welcome to the show, David. morning guys nice to talk to you again um many many moons ago back in california our family had a vehicle service franchise it was a tune-up uh oil change franchise that atlantic richfield

arco um tried to launch uh unsuccessfully i might add uh oh back in the 80s where they called mp and g tune up but here's a point when particularly enfranchise automotive service stores. I think, like, when people have the wrong expectations,

let me put this way, I don't go to my tire shop to get a valve job. I don't go, you know, by the same token, to the jiffy lube to have them perform a bunch of extemporaneous services.

I expect that that guy is just there to change oil. So what happens oftentimes in these franchises? The untrained guy gets stuck in there with perhaps a trained certified individual

and they but that guy might not always be there. So they kind of say, all right, here, go ahead, go ahead, and perform this service. I see. Without really knowing how to operate this equipment.

Yeah. And the other part of this is the upsell, yeah, they kind of have to because whether all their technicians can use them or not, these places have hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment. Yeah. And they have to pay for this stuff. So, again, I go back to your customer expectation. Are they on commission, David?

Most of the technicians? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, they probably pay a minimum wage, but they can't make a living there. So they have to upsell. And as you say, if the trained technicians on vacation, and you've got some of these apprentices trying to do fairly technical work, it's just trouble waiting to happen.

Yeah, the franchise has a lot of additional expense that you don't necessarily get in a corporate run. Now, they have advertising fees and franchise fees and maybe even rent and or property payments. It's really, and it's one of the reasons that the MP&G tune-up experiment in California failed. It just, they couldn't sustain it simply doing tunups and oil changes. Sure, just think what happened to all the jiffy looms when they decide they're going to come out with the synthetic oil. suddenly instead of changing your oil two or three times a year, it's once or twice a year. And so that just cut the revenue to all these fast lube shops and a half.

Now they've got to come up with some way to supplement the income. And the only way they can do that is to get into other areas that may not be very expert in. So I like your idea. You go into a jiffy lube or to a quick loop place for one thing to get your oil change. You don't want to have something else done. If they say they find something else on your... your car, then take it to somebody that you trust, somebody that has done your maintenance and repairs before.

And oil change is fine. Yeah, exactly. Well, I appreciate that very much. Listen, I get one more thing I want to throw out, because I do this a little bit myself anymore. When I go in to get an oil change at like a jiffy lube or someplace like that, I go in and immediately ask for not just an oil change, but incidental stuff that you do. know you have more control over.

For instance, I mean, and it should be recommended on every oil change that you get an air filter element, windshield wipers. You know, maybe you've got a light bulb out. If you go ahead and give them something else to fiddle with, oftentimes, yeah, you see what I mean? And oftentimes they just go, okay, oh, let's get this guy out of here. He knows what he wants. That's a great idea.

Don't be vulnerable. Be kind of assertive. Yeah, you go in and say, this is what I want you to do, A, B, C, D. Instead of going there, check my car out, and you see anything wrong with it, you're asking for a problem there. That's giving them a blank check. David, great advice, and coming from a guy that was in the business earlier, so you know what you're talking about.

Thank you very much for the call. Thanks, Earl. We'll talk to you guys, and we'll keep listening. Please call again, David. Thank you. Yes, please call again. That number is 877-960-99-60, and you can tell you. access. Head 772-4976530. We're going to go to Tom in North Palm Beach. Good morning, Tom.

Good morning. When I heard that Alan Napier was on the show, I had to call. Good. Oh, good. Wow. Yeah, you know, about eight months ago, I was in a serious accident. Well, I wasn't hurt, but, you know, my little Corolla IM suffered $10,000 in damage. And the good thing about it was I was close to your dealership, Earl. Uh-huh. I had never dealt with, I had never dealt with you, I listened to you on the radio. Mm-hmm. But the car got towed in there.

I have progressive insurance, by the way, who was very good. Very good. I never had a problem with them throughout the process. Mm-hmm. But your body shop is like first class, number one. Thank you. You know, Alan, you know, I remember asking him, I said, Alan, how is the car going to run after, you know, this?

He said perfect. But he didn't think about it. He just said it immediately. So that was, that was, I said, you know, really, that's what he means. It's going to run perfect. And I've had the car back for four or five months, and the car runs probably better than it did when I got it from the dealer new. Well, that's very nice to say, Tom. Yeah.

You find somebody that you can count on, it really answers almost every question we cover on the show because, you know, It's the unknown. Anytime you go into a new business, whether it's a car dealer or anybody, if you've never done business with them before, boy, you've got to be eyes wide open. And nothing beats personal experience with whatever business you're dealing with. Thank you very much for the kind words. Had you ever met my brother, Tom, Earl. Well, you know what, the guy Marlon there is very good, too. You know, the whole, and, you know, the facility, when you go in there and you're repairing the car, it's like they're working in their living room.

It's so clean, and it's their condition. You're embarrassing me now, Tom. I mean, this is not an infomercial, and I swear to you, this is, Tom is not Alan's brother. No, no, no, that's why I was afraid. When I call up, people are going to say, well, I know, I met you, but I know Alan Napier. I don't, I've never met your guys before, but, you know, you. hear all the bad stuff everybody calls up and complains you know this you know you know and we're in south floor i've lived here my whole life and it's like you know what you got a first

class facility there thank you i mean and believe me i don't know you i i mean except meeting you one time and uh i learned a lot there you know like like okay all in that beer told me about the miniature value where to go for that yeah that's and that's in the process right now Oh, is that all right? Good for you. Are you using Gordon and Donner? That is correct. Oh, good. And, you know, they're working on it.

They're working on it, you know. And so it wasn't a pleasant experience as far as the accident, but I was fortunate that I was close to your facility. That's a good thing. Tom, I have two questions for you. Or actually one question, one statement. I'm proud of you for going through with the diminished. value claim because a lot of people don't have the patience or the stomach for that it's an

ugly process it's a it's a fight and hopefully i told you in the beginning it's it's going to be a fight and it's a long-term thing but it's worth it and they owe it to you and ultimately you'll get it the other thing is we talk about advertising all the time before your accident did you even know that we had a body shop oh yeah well i figure you did because you're you're both i mean Earl Stewart is, I don't know of any Toyota dealership that doesn't have a body shop facility. I won't, I won't mention where I bought the car at, and I'm glad I didn't take it there. I mean, I told Earl the next time I buy a Toyota, which will only be a Toyota, I'm going to buy it from you guys. Well, Tom, thanks very much.

Thank you very much for the endorsement, and now I'm going to have to explain to everybody that this is not an infomercial. Don't pay for this time on the show. This is that. You can pay enough money for that. Now, this is what happened. You're a great guy, and thank you so much for the combo. Yes, Tom, thank you for the call. It's amazing that the number of people that I talk to, maybe a handful, about the conditions

of the service department, you know, where you change your oil, and how terrible it looks. And people just get accustomed to that, you know. They figure that's the way it was supposed to look. And no air conditioning. There was just so much. So it's just great that, you know, there's places out there that have the cleanliness and the air conditioning and a great person like Alan doing the job that he does. Okay, 877-960, or you can text us at 772-49-6530. And speaking of text, we've got a little backlog, don't we?

Rick, we do. Jeff Davis from Facebook was saying he used to work for a jiffy lube and Royal Palm and he says let me tell you I wouldn't tell my worst enemy to go there that's Jeff's words and Andrew is on Facebook also saying to follow up with Tina's comment on consumer reports review on the Tesla there was a Detroit based company that bought a Tesla Model 3 and tore it down basically to inspect it see what they could find They were impressed with some of the tech, but the basics of the car, such as welds and fitment, were subpar. Sandy Monroe, CEO of this company, stated, these are flaws we would expect to see on a Kia in the 90s.

Who did that examination? He doesn't name the company, but he says it's a Detroit-based company, and the CEO of it is Sandy Monroe, that they took this car and basically took it apart to see what sort of quality level they could find on it. I'm surprised to see that. Actually, you know, I think Facebook is kind of, everybody's kind of filing on a Tesla for good reasons. Elon Musk has come out with some crazy tweets and said some things that really embarrassed the board of directors of Tesla. But from what I understood, Tesla is not a bad car. Tesla, it was an overrated car.

And Consumer Reports has come back and taken away their recommendation. but I've never heard anything about bad wells or safety before. I'd want to verify that before I took that as gospel. But we've got some more text here, don't we? We do indeed. We have an anonymous text came in on the phone. CarsDirect.com is telling me that they will facilitate my trade through a national network of priority partners dealerships.

And what does that mean? This is from Frank and Wellington. them? Well, CarsDirect.com and a lot of other online companies make their money from automobile dealers, and they have contractual arrangements with them. They promote purchase, or in this case, this is an appraisal situation? Yep. He says, they will facilitate my trade. Yeah. The online appraising of cars is here with us today. It's hard. It's hard. to believe if you'd ask me 20 years ago if you could ever appraise

a car online and say you're crazy you can't do it. You know, 25, 30 years ago I'd say you'll never be able to sell a car online. The fact is now, the online technology is so sophisticated and Alan will be talking about this later in the show

how you can actually appraise damage online. That's come a long way. So, CarsDirect.com and a number of other, Truecar.com, Cars.com, Edmonds.com, there's a dot-com revolution in automobile-related buying, appraising, leasing, and everything else. So the online process is such now that you can actually, in some cases, there are car dealers, that you can actually buy a car, have your car appraised, finance your car, pay for your car,

and never go in the car dealership, never talk to a car salesman, and they'll actually deliver the car to your door. So it isn't there yet just like autonomous cars, but it's coming in slowly. And slowly and slowly, the franchise dealer setup that we have now, the old-fashioned way of selling cars is slowly going to disappear. It makes me a little bit nervous because I've been a car dealer for 50 years, and I have a car dealership today. But I'd be kidding if I said I thought my car dealership,

10 years from now is going to look like it did today. It won't. It'll be totally different. And maybe 20 years from now, maybe there won't be any car dealerships as we know them today. But that's right. You can get a car appraised online and you obviously can never firm up an appraisal of an online estimate

until you actually physically see the car because you're relying on photographs and information input into a computer. But once you bring that car in for verification, it's a done deal. Yep. Let's see. Next one is from Anne Marie, and she says,

I'm glad you have your body shop expert today. I've got a question for them. I've got a white 2013 Camry XLE, and I've noticed that the paint is chipping along the edge of the trunk. At first, I thought the people detailing my car were a little too enthusiastic when buffing, but I noticed that the paint appears to chip down to primer slash metal, even when the car hasn't been detailed recently.

What's up with the white paint? And I believe she's saying that possibly if she's dragging stuff over the side of the trunk, what can I do to avoid this? Thanks for your help. The condition you're talking about when the paint is not adhering to the primer sealer is delamination. That's a defect. Now, you paint on a Toyota, which you have, is three years, 36,000 miles. Toyota does recognize they've got an issue with that.

So you can take your car to a Toyota dealer and ask them to submit a goodwill request. If it's out of the three or 36,000. They're under no obligation to take care of it because obviously it's not a safety item or anything. But in the spirit of goodwill, Toyota does try to help if a car is maintained well. Well, all manufacturers do do a greater or lesser degree. Sometimes there's an argument that has to be made. Now, there's no, there aren't any problems that I'm aware of of sealer coming off of the metal. So those are probably rubs or chips or scratches, which would be considered normal wear and tear.

But if you've got the paint coming off of the primer, bring it in, let somebody look at it. You can also, we used to do a tape test back in the 80s and early 90s, All the cars had a delamination problem. We put a 24-inch piece of masking tape across the hood, push it down, and just rip it off. And if paint came off, then it was a delamination car. I don't recommend you do that because then you're kind of committed if it does pull the paint off. Well, be sure it's in warranty if you do that. Yeah.

But, yeah, there is a problem with the solid whites, and it's not just Toyota. But it's pretty much all the manufacturers with solid white. And if you're going to push for goodwill, try to get up the ladder in the service department, at least a service manager. Maybe you want to talk to a general manager. And you also want to, if at all possible, have a factory representative involved. You have to push for the goodwill. Understand that warranty they're committed to contractually, legally.

Goodwill is just what it says, just because they're nice people. If you bought a lot of cars of their make, they probably tend to look at you with more reverence than if you have never bought one before or even if you bought the car second hand. If you're a good customer of a particular dealership of a particular brand of car and you talk to the top guy and you go to the manufacturer, your odds of getting goodwill are greatly enhanced. And remember, polite persistence. Exactly. Be nice, but don't give up. Exactly. Okay, we've got a caller, or we've got a couple more texts yet.

What would you like to do? Let's go with a caller. Okay, Doug. Thank you for calling. How are you? Hi, this is Doug, and Ollie and Sim. Hope you guys are having a great morning. Good morning to all.

Meow to Ollie. So, yeah, I know a lot about oil changes. I actually used to produce commercials for a oil change. and tire and tune-up place that was in Boca and Boynton. And for 17 years, I produced their commercials, and they were very successful because we used to do, like, testimonials to the customers would say how great they are and all this. But as the years went by, I noticed that, you know, they weren't as good as they were in the

beginning and it all had to do with the employees that they trained and you know some were good and some weren't but they had this one guy that just retired there working there for 18 years wow and all he did was change oil and his name was Jeff and he was really good at it and really nice guy and so my experience with oil changes I found out all about the different kinds of oils and what you should check and mistakes that they made like they didn't tighten the bolts on the bottom and the oil would leak out and the customers would come back. Yeah. Just things like that.

Doug, do they buy good oil? Did you advertise or when you were doing the advertisements, do they use higher quality brand oil or do they buy a bulk oil that was less expensive? See, someone, someone is talking about how some of these massive nationwide will use actually filtered oil. In other words, reprocessed oil, which would be. Oh, no, wow. No, they used really good oil. It did.

And, but they weren't cheap because, you know, you're in Boca, and I think an oil change, even as little as five years ago, was like $52. which to me is kind of expensive, I don't know. It is. That is pretty high for an oil change. And now they're open, and if you get synthetic oil from there, it's $85. Still, wow. Yeah, still. And they're still in business.

Unfortunately, the owner passed away. He was really nice, and I was kind of close to him. And so, you know, now the wife is right. the company and kind of sad, but, you know, basically 17 years doing commercials from like... Yeah. Well, 50 bucks for an oil change. That speaks for Boca Raton, I guess, that everything's a little higher price. Boko Rootone, you know, Boca Raton won't allow car dealers.

Did you know that? There are no car dealers in Bocca Raton. Did you know that? Yeah, why is that? That's weird. They don't like car dealers. They're very wise. they have them zoned out

they don't allow gambling they don't allow prostitution and they don't allow car dealers well they do allow Ollie at least oh that's good that's good Doug that's a great call

you know Doug was watching my sunrise this morning he's a member of the International Sunrise Club and his kitty cat Ollie watches the sunrise literally on Doug's Mac computer computer, and I've actually seen a video of Ollie watching me on Watch the Sunrise. So anyway, thanks very much, Doug. You're a great caller, and you're a great guy, and I hope you can call again. Yeah, we love hearing from that, Doug, and tell Sim we said hello, and

Ollie. Give us a call next week. Thank you. I think we're going to go to the text that you have. Okay. Steve Ward is asking diminished value claim. That's a new one on me. Can you talk about how that works? Yes, diminished value is anytime that you've had an accident and it's repaired, it doesn't matter if the car is repaired perfectly or not. The value has been diminished simply because it's been in an accident. By a lot, by a lot, yeah. Yeah, it's become branded. so insurance companies you know this has been in and out of courts for years well before i came along and bob from lake park you know just stay on the line as soon as Alan gets through the

diminished value explanation will be right with you thanks for holding yeah diminished value is something insurance companies do not like to pay they uh initially when you first asked for it you're most likely going to be lied to and told that uh uh uh We don't pay that. And you've got to elevate it up the chain of command with insurance companies. And usually it's the third or fourth person up the ladder that actually starts helping you with it. We recommend that you get an attorney if you get past a second or third person because it is so time-consuming. They do that strictly on contingency.

I don't mind endorsing Gordon and Donner. We get nothing from Gordon and Donner. We mentioned Gordon and Donner because they've worked with a lot of our customers, and they're an expert on this. I mean, everybody's got their opinion of attorneys. I can only tell you that Gordon Donner is effective. They get the job done, and it doesn't cost you a nickel as long as they are successful, and they usually are successful.

They won't take the diminished value case, right, unless they feel like they can get results. Right. That's the whole thing about contingency is they analyze and see if you have a case, it's winnable. If you do, they take it. You don't pay. They get a percentage. You get a percentage. If it's not winnable, they just don't take the case. But Gordon and Donner does have an automotive division that's very good. And a lot of law firms do. We're just very familiar with Gordon and Donner because they've helped us out. But diminished value, some states have a minimum requirement. Georgia, I don't know if the insurance company's got it overturned yet or not,

because insurance companies litigate everything. But at one point, they were paying 15% of the damage amount. So as soon as you had a claim, say it was a $1,000 claim, the insurance company had to write two checks, a check for $1,000 for your property damage and a check for $150 for your diminished value. And the reason they did that is to unclutter the courts and, you know, it's advantageous a little bit for the insurance companies

because they don't have to have a whole department handling diminished value anymore. Let's talk about diminished value in a minute. Let's get a look at Mr. Bob's been holding for a while. We'll get back to Alan in just a second. Bob has been holding and he's calling from Lake Park. Good morning, Bob. Hi, Bob. Hi.

It's a scorched daughter anymore. Bob, you were breaking up there. I believe. Yeah, we're... Bob, we have a bad connection right now. Would you like to hang up and give us a call back, please? Yeah. That number is 877-960, or you can text us at 772-497-9-7-6-5-30.

While we're waiting for Bob to call back in, I want to say something. You mentioned this 15% of the damage. That strikes me on diminished value extremely low because when you have a car that's been damaged as an appraisal value goes, it drops at least $1,000. So 15% of a $2,000 repair would be peanuts

compared to the true diminished value. Yeah, they're placating people. And like I say, they're keeping it out of the court. You know, anything you can litigate and get out of the courts, it's good for the courts. All the courts have a backlog. I understand. And it depends on the kind of car.

You know, a Corvette, the diminished value on. Who wants to buy a Corvette that's been wrecked versus a Corvora? Excuse me, Alan. We have Bob back on the line. Good morning, Bob. Good morning. We still have a problem. I'm not sure if it's your location.

but give us a call back, Bob, now back to Allen, on diminished value. No, but it makes a, you know, Earl was talking about 15% doesn't seem fair, and I don't think it seems fair either, but it's something. So at least the people are getting something. This is a state that did that, or a... That was Georgia that did that. Yeah, well, in Florida, there's no such law. In Florida...

It's wild, wild west. It's wild west, and if you get yourself a good attorney, they'll do it on... Contingency, bear in mind that when you wreck your car, you have a significant decrease in value. The insurance company will not reimburse you for unless you fight for it, and that is called diminished value. So, best thing to remember, anytime you wreck your car, you ask for the compensation for diminished value. Your insurance company will tell you no. You call an attorney that will do it for you on contingency. We say Gordon and Honor, because we've had experience with them in multiple cases.

They are victorious every time they say they can be. If they say there's a case, there is a case, they will get to the money for you and you get paid and it won't cost your nickel. And typically it just takes that first letter from the attorney's office. Then the insurance company is like, okay, this guy's serious. He knows the law. He knows we owe it. Exactly. And they pay it and they move on.

Or get some letterhead with an attorney. Yeah, do your own letter. Bob's Law There you go Are we still struggling with Bob here today? I'm still trying Is Bob back on, John? Okay

Okay I have a quick question for you Alan and it's from Brianna She's in a bit of a dilemma She has to get her car painted And she asked me yesterday Why she, the insured, can't choose the paint

that she wants for her car she said that she went to three different shops and it seems like as if that they use one particular brand why can't she decide what she wants

she said that some of the paint is that she looked up she googled is much more superior than what they're offering her is it true that she is not in charge of deciding Well, body shops make their own decision on what brand of paint they use.

Some of them it's purely an economic decision and some of them it's a quality decision. Paint is, I used to say paint is paint, but there are superior paints. You know, glass you're at is probably better than Sherwin Williams, we'll be honest. but the shop, especially an independent shop that doesn't have a whole lot of cash flow and a whole lot of money in the bank, they're going to, or a new shop, they're usually going to start out with a lower grade of paint because of the cash investment that's involved there. Just having a paint mixing bank in your mixing room, not to mention a mixing room,

but just the paint, you're looking at $12,000 to $15,000, you know, on an average like B-A-S-F or DuPont. So she can choose her brand to paint by her choice of shop. So if she goes in and she says, Bill's body shop, what can of paint do you use? And he says, Diomont, and she says, I didn't like that. I read about it online. I want you to use Glacierate. She's got to go find a shop that uses Glacierate.

Okay, Brianna, I hope that that helped you out a whole lot. We are trying to connect with Bob, and he's back on the line. Good morning, Bob. Good morning. How's the night connection? Good. Sounds pretty good right now. Thanks for being patient with us.

Thank you. No problem. Oh, by the way, it's not Gordon and Donner anymore. Oh, what is it? Well, I saw them on TV. It's Gordon and Partners. I think Donna is out of the picture. Oh, I didn't know that.

Maybe Adam retired. Good for him. Maybe. I wanted to talk a little bit about the real ID on the driver. license, and I wanted to move on to something else. Okay. I'm due to have that done myself, and, you know, I've known about it for a long time.

I mean, that was a function of the law, the federal law that was changed because of 9-11. And because those people that came in that flew those planes into the buildings and killed all those people, all had driver's licenses, a lot of them from Florida, by the way. And so that legislation was passed a long time ago, and what they did was they all. allowed the states, different states

are all on different time frames to get it, you know, settled with the people that have their driver's licenses. And you do need your original birth certificate with your race, with the race seal and your original Social Security card

with your name on it. Yes. But you can use a passport in lieu of the birth certificate, I believe. Oh, you can. Oh, good. It's much more copy pick. Yeah, go ahead. No, no, I'm glad. I didn't know about the birth certificate. I forget it, because I don't know, I'm going to have to renew mine shortly, and I don't have the star, and I was wondering where my birth certificate was, but I do have a passport,

so thanks for that information. Yeah, yeah, well, they allowed me to do mine last time online, but they said the next time you come in, and you're going to have to come into the office and show all the paperwork. I see. So, but I've known about it for a long time. They send out a notice. If you pay property taxes, they send out a, they send out a, they send out a, they send out a, printed a real ID brochure,

it comes with your property tax bill every year. I've been getting it for six or seven years. So it's not something that you couldn't, not something that you wouldn't be prepared for. And as far as that fellow was concerned about he'd not be able to get, be able to vote and all that. He can go get it. He doesn't need a driver's license to vote.

He can get a state ID, and I'm not quite sure what's involved with that, but I don't think it would be as stringent as the driver's license requirement. Sure. So he could go get a state ID. and then he could still get his prescriptions, and he could get his, be able to vote and so forth and so on.

But I wanted to ask you a question. There's an appendix to the automobile that's going to eventually disappear. You know what it is? The fact that we're going to have autonomous cars that will be ride-sharing, is that what you're referring to, that the automobile is when...

No, there's something that's attached to the car now that's going to disappear, probably within the next five years. Matter of fact, it's already started. I was born in New York. What is it? Yeah, the side view mirror. Alan got it.

Cameras, okay. It's got to be, yeah. Yeah, the side view mirrors. And as a matter of fact, Lexus is already done away with them in Japan. So they don't have them. And I guess what they're using, I would imagine they're probably using cameras. Sensors, exactly, yeah. Censors.

Yeah, that's exactly right. The cars now have sensors. mounted on the side view mirror, so they just do away the mirror. I don't use my side view mirrors hardly at all now. I just use the sensors, which is kind of scary because what happens if someone turns the sensor switch off, which I think they have a switch on the dashboard. But I believe that's true. We won't recognize a car 10 years from now compared to what they look like today.

Hey, Bob. Have you been in one of the new cars that, gives you a bird's-eye view of your car, like when you're backing up, because it's got so many cameras on it, a computer then generates an overhead view, and you see your car backing up into the space with all the surrounding grounds. It's kind of disconcerting the first time. I love it.

I love it. I've got it on my car. But was it kind of weird the first time? The first time, I thought, I said, some of the satellite was filming my car. Yeah, we were in the car together, and it was just, it just caught me. Oh, guard. Yeah, it's like there's a drone over you or something. Yeah, exactly.

It's a trained pigeon with a camera on its belly. Thank you, Rick. I knew you'd know that the technical explanation of us. The terminology. We have Rick here to inform us. I wanted to ask, Earl, did you hear that, you know, Cadillac is ending their subscription service? I just read that in the Palm Beach Post this morning, or maybe it was a Wall Street Journal. But, yeah, it didn't last long.

I didn't like the idea. I thought it was going to be. short-lived, but Mercedes and Audi and a few of the other manufacturers are still doing it, you know, where you pay $1,800 a month, and you get to drive any Cadillac every month, you switch it out, Escalade, DeVille, or whatever the Cadillacs are. It just didn't make sense to me, and I don't think that the manufacturers will be continuing that. They're just, they're struggling to come up with something because the love affair with the cars starting to die with the millennials.

Guys like me, we love cars, guys like you love cars. But, you know, the kids, 25, 30 years old, all they want to do is get from point A to point B, and they don't care what it is. It gets them there. They don't want to deal with a hassle of owning a car. It's expensive to own a car. Exactly. Yeah.

Low over here. You think that was a function of they were losing money on that? I believe so. Cadillac is struggling as a division. General Motors is doing fine, but not because of Cadillac. And they're trying to find their niche. You know, Cadillac sells more cars in China than they do in the USA. That's good for them because the Chinese love the Cadillacs.

Americans don't. So Mercedes and Audi and Lexus and their other luxury cars are just stompinged Cadillac right into the ground. And I think they were just losing money on the whole idea. Yeah, well, you know, General Motors doesn't release quarterly numbers anymore on sale. They did away with that. They had a pretty good quarter of them. Or monthly numbers. Yeah.

They surprised. They had a good profit. Go ahead. Don, I'm going to say that in the short run, they're doing pretty well. They surprised Wall Street. General Motors' stock went up when they came out with their earning report and their guidance. So they've got Chevrolet and they got the other models that they're selling that are doing well. They're making a ton of money on silver autos and some of the big trucks and SUVs.

Escalates they're making money on, but they just can't sell very many of them. The bigger the vehicle, the more. money they make. The problem is what happens when we don't have those big vehicles on the road anymore? And they are dying out there. Eventually, they won't be out there. And if you can't make money by selling a Silverado, they're losing money on the cars. All the manufacturers are losing money on cars, and they make it up on trucks, vans, and SUVs. Right. I saw something else that was pretty interesting about how, you know, nowadays everybody's getting bigger, bigger vehicles. Everybody has SUVs and these pickup and everything. And, you know,

a lot of the parking lots, the lines that are drawn in there were originally drawn for autum, or sedans in smaller cars. And now that you have everybody with these bigger cars, you pull into these spots, when you go to open your door, you're going to whack the person next to you because you don't have as much space. So they're going to have to probably redo all the parking lots are going to probably have to be redesigned to accommodate everybody driving these big, wide vehicles. Things are changing so fast. It's mind-boggling.

I can't stay up with it, Bob. Hey, listen, great call. You are an extremely knowledgeable guy. I love your calls. You always inform us on something we didn't know. Please call again next week. Okay, have a great day. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, I just want to take a moment to thank all of you for tuning in Earl Stewart on Cars.

And, you know, what a great panel we have this morning. As Earl told you earlier, Alan is back for this show, Rick and myself. And we're here to inform you, and guess what? It's all free, and we sure have covered a number of topics. And I want to remind you, youranonymous Feedback.com. Very important. Go there and tell us how you feel about the show, how we can improve. And another very important site is safercar.org.

Gov. Safercar. gov. And with all the recalls out there, I want to tell you what, You want to stay up on all of this. Mercedes is under investigation right now, and the reason for that is because they are lacking on notifying their customers about the recalls out there. So they're having problems. And also Subaru and Toyota, there's 165,000 cars that have defects and recalls.

So give us a call, 877-960. 9960 with your questions and if you'd like to text us 772-49760 and we're going to go to john who is a regular caller from palm city good morning john good morning to everybody and welcome back to allan thanks john comment i'm going to mention a product that's fantastic it's this is the 65th anniversary when this product came out uh was originally used for the aerospace industry to protect My friend had his car on Halloween. Lucky it wasn't many marks, crayon marks, on his car. And this product is just fantastic.

It took it off with ease. And the product is WD40. WD40, people should have everybody in their garage. It removes bumper stickers. It takes bugs off cars. It has hundreds and hundreds of uses. I mean, gum from sneakers, even if you're up north, dirt and snow that sticks to your shovel and door locks i mean i keep you could get a list from

the company they're going their website and it's it's probably run into thousands of uses but uh it worked perfectly and i don't think it damages paint but i'd like allen's uh alian napier's opinion about wd40 to use any automobiles uh especially like in door locks but as far as uh spring on the paint to remove a bumper sticker or, you know, the crayon marks. What does Alan think of that product? John, first, I want to tell you, I thought you were going to make me guess what the product was, and I had this nail. And I'm a huge fan of WD40.

And before I get to the paint, WD40, they have a product. They came out with a couple years ago, the gel WD40. If you bought two WD-40s, you got one gel one for free to try out. That stuff is awesome as well. It sticks really good. It's not as liquidy. And my log splitter, that doesn't always get put back in a shed, sometimes I put it under the lane two.

I coat it in that WD-40 gel stuff just to keep the surface rest off of it and keep everything looped up. But as far as WD-40 on paint and door jams and hinges, I've never heard of anybody having a problem with WD40 on their paint. I'm going to guess that I've probably got 14 to 16 cans of WD40 spread about my property because I use it that much. If your shoes squeak and you spray WD40 on your shoe? You can.

My sandals squeak. Alan, you have outdone me. I have Houdini, WD40. It's an amazing product. of them i use it on everything um you can actually use wd 40 to shine up your leather shoes yeah uh wd 40 is like um the the miracle chemical of of the 20th century and uh carrying on into the 21st okay john we got total agreement with you on that one and duct tape john keep lots of duct tape around.

Well, I buy it by the gallon cans in Home Depot, and I put it in aerospray, plastic sprays. When I was in Hawaii, they used that product by the drumfuls. It's unbelievable. I mean, it's so popular, you can't believe it. It's such a preservative, you know, when Hawaii being on the Pacific Ocean, they have their problem, but this really does a job, and I just thought I'd mention it, because Alan, we all agree of the product. But I mention more another thing too. I went to the motor vehicle yesterday with a friend of mine. He sold the car and has no intentions of getting another car because he has

several. So the rule is if you sell your car within 30 days, if you're not going to get another car, you must surrender that license plate. And if you don't surrender that plate, regardless or whatever you did with your insurance or whatever, you get a revoked. You revoked, but they don't even send it to your mail. If you get stopped by a cop once, he shows that your license is revoked. Why? Because you didn't surrender the license plate. So it's very important that people know that.

They say 30 days from when it's sold, they give you information, who was sold to, and what was the date. And if you don't surrender that plate, you know, because you don't intend to use it for another car to get credit, you will get not suspended, but a revoke driver's license. Can't they transfer? And the second thing is I inquired again. When I went over a year ago and I had a hard time to do it, and I put down a note, I fill out a form, they don't do that anymore. You cannot fill out a form where you don't get these notices about these nonsense,

you know, mail orders with keys in the mail and all, and that's been eliminated. So what I mentioned for me doesn't work anymore. You still get notification from all these, like I told you at that time. It was a U.S. Army jacket with police line. It's, you know, crazy. But according to what they told me yesterday, that system does not in effect anymore. John, if you sell out of form to stop from all these mailings. John, if you sell your car to a third party and you don't want to keep it,

can you, can't you transfer that license plate to the new buyer? No, you can. Like in California. The plate stays with the car. In Florida, the plate stays with you. So, according to them, period, no matter, unless you intend to have another car within that, that's why to give you 30 days.

And if you buy another car, according to the girl at the tag agency, then you're transferring you get credit for your plate because you don't have a new impact fee and just transferred, you know, with credit. Good information. You paid up to date on it. Thank you very much. It's a must, she said, that it has to be surrendered.

and if it's not, you get a license that's totally revoked. Well, that would be an unpleasant surprise. Thank you very much. Great information, John. I didn't know that. I didn't know it either. All right, you guys, I look forward to the shopping report. Thank you, John.

We'll be there in a few minutes. Thanks, John. We'll talk to you next week. I hope. Please call again. 877-960. You get a bunch of texts. Or you can text us at 772-49766.

6530. Now back to, we're going to go to Rick with his taxes are backed up. Okay. Cable's asking, how do you feel about prepaid maintenance contracts, which these days are offered by dealers at a time of a new car purchase? Most, I think, are backed by the manufacturer. Seems to me they're a reasonable, if maybe expensive way to keep one's car in tip-top shape. Right now, my dealer is hoping to sell me an extension on the routine maintenance agreement that I bought for a new Audi four years ago. Any thoughts about the value of that?

I'm leaning towards saying yes. The maintenance contracts are not backed by the manufacturers first. They are sold by the dealer and they make a profit on it. The way to evaluate a maintenance contract is simply to get the price menu of the dealer that you'll be taking your vehicle to and paying for with your prepaid maintenance and see what the total would be without the maintenance. So if you can save yourself 20% or 25% on the cost of the maintenance by buying the pre-paying it, then that's a good deal. If you can't, then you're just tying up your money and you just should pay as you go.

So the fact of the matter is that most people that buy the prepaid maintenance do not use all the coupons. And that's the way most of the dealers make their money by unredeemed coupon, kind of like a gift certificate. companies love to sell the gift certificates because people don't redeem a lot of them sometimes as much as 25 or 30 percent are never redeemed. That's the answer there, and we've got a live caller. Okay, we'll go to, I'll give you that telephone number if you didn't jot it down, 877-960, or you can text us at 772-4976530. We're going to go to Bob in West Palm Beach.

Good morning, Bob. good morning guys how you doing well thank you oh that's good I just have a question on the diminished value of the car does that have a time limit or something because I just bought a brand new car

and somebody hit me in the parking lot and it was about a year ago 2017 and I was just wondering if there's a time limit on that nobody told me about a diminished you know value of the car i mean they they fixed it really nice and it's running beautiful but you know that that that extra thing that that you know that i had to buy the uh you know rent cars

and stuff for a week two weeks whatever it was and that cost me money and uh somebody hit me it wasn't my insurance company so it was somebody else's insurance company i don't think all and i really know the answer that. We suspect, my suspect, that a year should not ban you from filing a claim. A quick call to Gordon and Partners or Gordon and Donner would answer that question, but I don't think so. I'm going to guess most business, dispute, contract dispute things are what, four years? I'm going to guess that if you haven't done something in four years, it would be like any other contractual dispute with a company. If you haven't done something about it, then you can't have missed the boat.

Check with an attorney. I think you're good to go, Bob. I think you should positively look into it, and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised if you qualify. You'll get yourself a check in the mail. Yeah, because I can't believe, you know, the front end was really messed up real bad. I mean, and, you know, it costs about $4,000 just for the front end. And, you know, it costs about $4,000 just for the front end. It's a fiat spider. And, you know, I couldn't believe how much the

cost was, you know. Move on that quickly, and call the show next week, if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to hear the answer to the question, but give your attorney or another attorney or Gordon and Donner, Gordon and Partners, whatever the name is

now, and see what they say, and call us next Saturday. So I would deal with her insurance company, not my insurance company. Correct. Well, whoever, yeah, yeah, exactly. You call Gordon and Donor

the attorney, and he'll know exactly how to handle it. Oh, okay. All right, thank you very much. Thank you, Bob. Thank you, Bob. Thanks for tuning in, Bob. I think we have a few texts to get to. Yep, we still got a little bit of backlog here.

Andreas is saying on that earlier company that did the Tesla tear down, it's Sandy Monroe of Monroe and Associates. And Jolopnik's overview of Jolopnik being the online site, their overview of the company quoted, All automakers cheat off each other. They buy their competitors' cars, disassemble them,

and learn precisely how they work and how they're made. This reverse engineering is called competitive benchmarking, and while sometimes it's done in-house, there are also entire companies devoted to the practice. one of them is Monroe and Associates, a firm of manufacturing experts contracted by OEMs and suppliers to tear down cars

and car parts to the very last nut and bolt. Wow. Well, that's very interesting. If you just tuned in, the question came up because we had a poster on Facebook that said that the quality of the welds and the Tesla were inferior. And, of course, that's dangerous and a lot of other things.

and that really surprised me. I thought Tesla was a high-quality car. And Subjected came up because consumer reports no longer recommends Tesla. Now Monroe and Associates, that appears to be a very viable, reliable sort of a company that does work for all the OEMs. So what a surprise to me that Tesla's quality is to diminish like that. That is shocking. Surprising.

Okay. Steve Ward says, Honda also did a repair on an igniter in his Honda Accord when it was out of warranty, whereas Ford told us to go scratch when a coil failed out of warranty. That was part of why I bought an Accura. He says, now, if you guys get a Lexus dealership, I'll make the trip down from Jensen Beach. And Linda is asking, does that mean the white pearl paint does the same thing? I'm guessing for the delaminations.

Have we seen issues with the pearl paints? Yes, and no, it's kind of a different condition. The pearl paint, the only one I've seen an issue on as far as Toyota is concerned, and this is weird, are the pearl white RAV-4s with sunroofs. For whatever reason, from the sunroof forward, they've had a delamination problem. Well, the pearl is a lot more expensive, and it's a lot more paint than the pearl. Yeah, there's clear coat on the pearl because it's a base coat, a mid-coat, and a top, or clear coat, so there's a lot more paint there, so there have not been the issues other

than the one model-specific issue. And I've told people for years now, if you really want a white car, because that's a lot, I think that's number one cell of color, and people prefer it, if your model is available with the pearl, it could cost you three to 500 more because it's considered a special color, get the pearl white and stay away from the solid whites. Unless it's a lace and then you don't care. It's a manufacturer's problem. Another good point.

And fitting right in with that, Andrew is asking, Alan, I've heard that some OEMs do not apply a clear coat to white cars. I've not looked into this if it is true. I do enjoy a white car, but am I safe or safer with a clear coat on a white car? We are of the opinion that most of the manufacturers on our solid whites are not putting clear coat in it.

I think they're doing kind of a what, who was the big paint aftermarket paint body shops? Mako. Mako. They used to have their crystalline process where they would mix the clear with the base to where they could just shoot at one time. You know, paint a lot more cars if you're just one coating them. You don't have to bake the base and then come back with the clear and everything. But, yeah, I believe that's the issue with the solid white cars is they're putting so very little of it on, and plus it's a one-step process over the top of the sealer,

and I think the ultraviolet razor breaking down the primer sealer, and so the paint has no good foundation to hold on. I had a crazy thought. I know the answer is no. Could you buy, if you bought a white car without clear-cote, could you have it clear-coated? Yeah, when I bought my truck, that's the first thing I did was have them take the front bumper off and paint it and put it back on. How much does that cost? Just to clear coat a white car, take all the door handles out, belt moldings, pull the glass.

Just to scuff it and clear-cote it, I'm going to say $3,400 to $3,400. From $300 to $3,400? That's pretty wide range. He's, I think, 3,000 to 3,000. Oh, 3,000 and 3,400 and a retail. So, in other words, it's almost the same price as painting the car. Well, no, it's a couple more grand to actually do the whole paint process on a car. But just scuffing and clear-court.

We can rule that out. Yeah, it's not. It's expensive. Moving right along. Edlin says, here in Georgia, and hello, Edlin, up in Georgia, we're reaching right out. you don't have to accept the diminished value you can get your own appraisal you can fight it

instead of accepting the minimum and let's see here okay andres also making a comment it says I use my side view mirrors every time I drive they make me a better driver and Linda comes back with a comment of

pray that the sunlight does not block your view on the screen when you're using those camera views on your car so good point Watch for that sun glare. Good point. And let's see. Steve Ward stating, I would think that WD40 would remove wax, meaning automobile wax,

and therefore not be so great for the paint. There's petroleum products in WD40. I had a guy that was a window installer, and he told me not to spray the locks with the WD40, but to use silicone for lubrication because the WT40 had petroleum in it. When I used to build locks, it was always graphite that you used. Maybe that's what was right. Pencil lead, because it had no moisture in it. It didn't, because when you put tumblers in a lock, everything is such a close tolerance.

Either if you were going to use a lubricant, I would think like machine oil. But even that, I was always told when I built locks, graphite, a dry lubricant. Graphite's the best for a lock. That's that I know for sure. But the question was, does the W.D.40 take anything of the wax off? I don't think so. Okay. I don't believe so.

That's a question for a chemist, but my gut is no. Better Google that. Well, what I would think, if you're going to get a bumper sticker off and you need that adhesive off, I'd use the WD40 and then take a few minutes to rewax that bumper area, and you're good. Well, you wouldn't be able to wax on top of the WD. Yeah, you'd wash that off first. You'd have to use either lacquer, thinner, or dish soap at home to get all the WT-40 off, and it would take some scrubbing because it's such a nice slick.

I could do a whole show on all of these lubricants. Would you agree to that? No. You wouldn't? No. Oh, you know that we use a lot of lubricants at home. Okay. And Edlin has also mentioned that Honda has a recall out for the 2018 Honda Accord,

And I looked that up real quick. The 18 Accord and 19 Insight have bad software that can disable the backup camera. So if you have one of those new Hondas, check your car for recalls and get to the dealership to get that taken care of. I'd like to know a car that doesn't have a recall. You know, I've never, I've been on the business for 50 years. I have never seen so many recalls. My Tacoma pickup has no open recal. recalls, and from 2013, it has not had a single recall on that truck.

Is that right? My goodness. Well, it is, it's a good thing because I think everybody is aware now that NHTSA is going to be on you. Yep. And they're checking these cars now. I saw where Mercedes got in trouble because NHTSA hit them because they had advised them of a recall, and they just sat on their hands for a long, long time. Oh, that's fine, and millions of dollars. So the government's on all the recalls.

That's a good thing. The bad thing is the regulators are not enforcing the rules on getting the recalls taken care of and now is still allowing dealers to sell cars that have dangerous recalls. And we have a mystery shopping report coming up pretty soon. It's going to adjust that particular issue. I got just two more here, and we'll blaze for them real quick. Steve Ward says, printed your good dealer, bad dealer list,

can I suggest that you add the letter grade to each dealer? The grades of A through F, the additional information, would be welcome. Good idea. That's a great idea. Steve Lord, thank you. Jeff Davis says, is the Supra really coming back? The Toyota Supra, and I can answer that one with a definitive, yes it is, and it will have a BMW drive line in it.

BMW and Toyota are working together to make a very incredible, interesting car. It's coming back very, very soon, probably within the next six to eight months we'll see them. So it's not going to be a 19 now. It's going to be a 20 model. Probably. But it might yet make it for 19. It'll probably come in calendar year 2019, but they'll call it at 20. And we are caught up on the text.

Very exciting. Okay. Let me talk about our blog, and I happen to have a copy of Florida Weekly here, and this is our current blog, which is entitled Attorney General, Please Enforce Florida's Law regulating advertised car price. I notice they took the name Pam Bondi off of my headline, but there's our picture right there. happening to do with the fact that we have some very serious laws on the books regulating dealer fees. We don't have enough, but even the few that we do have are not being enforced, namely the fact that you're supposed to include the dealer fee, which has just added profit to the dealer in the advertised price of the car.

Car dealers are not doing that. What they call complying with the law is in the fine print, they will say plus dealer fee. Now, I ask you, what good does that do? a consumer to look at a car price being advertised and then having the fine print plus dealer fee when they don't tell you how much the dealer fee is there's a dealer in the coconut creek florida that has over three thousand dollars in dealer fees now if he's advertising a price in the online or on television and the fine print says plus dealer fees do you know that's going to be three thousand dollars higher no some dealers charge 500 dollars some charge a

thousand, two thousand. There's no cap or regulation on how much you charge for a dealer fee. So we say to the Attorney General of the state of Florida, enforce the law, help the consumers not get ripped off by car dealers. It's a great read. Be sure to pick up that Florida Weekly or the hometown news. I think that we're going to go straight to the mystery shopping report. Well, we've got, yeah, that's right. We've got two more text here. Can we do those quickly and then I'll get to it. okay one of them we're going to probably need to forward this on to Stewart or one of the fellows at the shop back at the dealership let's see Robert and Stewart is asking we're going to purchase a new forerunner for resale value which is best the limited or

the TRD Pro I think that would need to go to one of our sales experts probably I would I would probably say the TRD Pro but I'm guessing and we would have to go online to look that up and Stu who is at a meeting this week will have to check that and we'll get back to you those are some beautiful vehicles though aren't they? Yeah, supply and demand but I would think that

when you're done with it and you're ready to sell it the limit it is going to have a greater audience of potential customers. It's all supply in demand. Anything, that's the reason I don't know the precise answer but if you have a car that has few products, and a lot of the buyers, then the demand goes up.

Look at Jeeps. I mean, come on. Exactly. Okay, and the last one, Jeff from West Palm Beach is asking, is it true if you have a black car that will make the inside of your car hotter? Yes. That's pretty much, yes, it is. Because they just hold the heat.

Yeah, I've read as much as 20 to 30 degrees difference. Is that right? White versus black. That's a lot. I know it was not, but I didn't know it was that high. Wow. Ladies and gentlemen, we give you a lot of sites to go to. I have to remind you, Your Anonymous Feedback.com.

We'd love to hear from you and help us to make changes or keep things the way they are. YouranonymousFeedback.com. And also another great website is Is My Car Recalled.com. And you can check out, you know, all these recalls that are going on. you can enter a VIN number, and it makes it very easy. And another one is safercard.org. So there's a lot of websites. Dotgov.

Gov. Safercard.gov. Gov. Okay. I have it down row. Okay. We're drowning you in websites, and I'm going to give you one that Nancy just gave you again because last week I forgot to do it, and we didn't get any replies.

What we're doing here is something nobody else does, kind of like our mystery shopping report, which I will be looking at just in a second. But anonymous feedback is important, and people will use anonymous feedback. Otherwise, they wouldn't say anything. You can call the show, text the show, post on Facebook. People don't like to be identified sometimes when they're being critical. And some people just like to converse without having to be exposed to invasion of their privacy. I'm not sure the psychological reasons for why people will say things anonymously that they wouldn't otherwise say.

So the website to repeat what Nancy just said is simply Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Y-O-U-R-A-N-O-N-Y-M-O-U-S, Feedback.com. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. If you'll use that website, tell it like it is. Say anything you want. And we will look at it. And we will respond if you provide for it. On the Your Anonymous Feedback, you can ask for a response.

If you ask for a response, we will positively respond. And even if you don't check that, and it's interesting and pertinent, we will talk about it next week. YouranonymousFeedback.com. www. www. Youranonymousfeedback.com. Now let's get in the mystery shopping board, and this is something that sets us apart from every other radio show in the world. Nobody does this.

This is better than 60 minutes. Mystery Shop of Hollywood Chrysler Jeep. That's going pretty far south for us. We're in North Palm Beach. This week we mystery shopped a Chrysler dealership all the way down in the heart of Broward County, Hollywood Chrysler Jeep. Our mystery shopping team was led there during our hunt for the dead. deadly ticata afflicted used cars that are still being sold with zero restrictions from any government agency to unsuspecting consumers.

Every time I read that, I don't believe it. It just is so crazy that our legislators and our regulators allow this to happen. We try to learn a little bit about this fairly large car dealership. About 400 new vehicles and 130 used vehicles in stock, it's a pretty good size dealership. Hollywood Chrysler Jeep, but we couldn't find much. We believe Hollywood Chrysler Jeep is owned by a man named Faisal Ahmed, and it's been in business for 56 years, although we don't know if it's been out of the same ownership for all that time. That's a long time for a car dealership to be in one place. Hollywood Chrysler Jeep has a robust online presence, pretty decent online reviews.

Their website is modern, well designed, and it was easy to find our car. listed for sale. A 2008, that's getting back there, 2008 Honda Civic with an asking price of $5,99. We ran the VIN on safercar.gov and found it was under a safety recall for a defective passenger side to car to cut the air bag inflator. There are parts available, but this vehicle has remained unfixed since June 14, 2016. Now, does it? Does that shake you up as much it does may? This car, 10 years old, with a defective airbag inflator that degrades over time that is in South Florida's high heat and humidity. South Florida, by the way, Florida has the highest number of deaths, injuries, and accidents in general as a result of the Tocati airbag.

So this time bomb has been around since 2008. Really kind of scary. hadn't been fixed. This on opposes an enormous risk to anyone who rides in it. That explosive accelerant, that's exactly what the accelerant does. It doesn't inflate, it explodes, and it breaks the steel canister, and it flies in your face, the steel fragments, the shrapnel like a hand grenade. And here it is for sale, still not fixed after all these years.

Agent X agreed to go out, and literally risk his life. and limb and check it out. Here's a report speaking in the first person as if I were agent X. We had a hard time finding our target. It was frustrating work but it made me feel good that our efforts are helping to clean up Dodge. I thought it was appropriate when we found our target vehicle at a Dodge dealership. A little humor there. The internet price of the 2008 Honda Civic with 120,000 miles was $5,99, and that was displayed as a discount of the retail price of $7,998.

I just got to throw this in. There's a new sheriff in town in Dodge. Matt Stewart. Sorry, that one had to come in. I was curious, so I booked it out on Kelly Bluebook.com. Fair purchase price was ranged between $4,800 and $5,900.

So this one was just at the upper end of what Kelleck Blue Book considers fair. Not bad so far. I called ahead and asked for a salesperson. I was put on hold and waited for a long, long time. I hung up, called back, same thing. I had to get going, so I decided to risk it and head down without confirming the availability of the target vehicle.

It's a long drive from North Palm Beach to Hollywood. I figured it was hard for the telephone operator to find a salesperson because of the last day of the month, and that's a true urban legend. It is not an urban legend. It's true. You can get a good deal, a better deal. At the end of the month, they were probably extremely busy.

I arrived around noon and wasn't busy at all. So so much for that theory. I saw a big group of salespeople outside near the side of the showroom. Again, if you just tuned in, this is Hollywood, Chrysler Jeep, and Hollywood, Florida. I was aware that the gang of salespeople were washing me, park, and I got out of the car no one approached me i was able to make it inside without anyone making contact with me and i found the receptionist she asked me if i'd been helped i said i hadn't i told her i had seen a used car online want to see about buying it she said she'd get someone to assist me and walked over

to another group of salespeople gathered by the office a lot of salespeople at this dealership and none of them with much to do which it was the end of the month so there you go she came back with Miguel. We introduced ourselves. I showed him the printout of the Honda listing. He would see if the keys were still in the key machine, walked away, returned right away with the keys, said it was available, and told me the following. He led me to the Civic. I'd seen online. It looked a little worse than what I expected. A 10-year-old car should look like. The paint was faded. The interior was worn, smell old. The armrest was torn. And the driver's side window visor

window visor would not stay up. But that was at the upper end of the fair range. Exactly, yeah. Well, that's 10 years old. And what can I tell? Miguel popped the hood for me. The engine compartment was a mess.

Dirty. It looked like old oil everywhere. I asked Miguel of this thing has been through their shop and checked out mechanically. Miguel said, oh yeah. We put every through, every car through our 120 point inspection. Unfortunately, a loose, what is it, the irrest or whatever you call.

The visor. Vizor. I couldn't think of it. It's not on the 120-point inspection and also cleaning the engine. Well, it was inspected. That's just all that. Look at it. Ah.

But when he told me the car was as is, I asked him what that meant. He replied that there may be some minor issues here, and they verify all the safety items were in order. Incidentally enough, the as-is, I'll expound on that a little bit, as-is, as-is, as-as. is a legal term. And as is simply means that when you buy that car and you drive over the curb, that's the end of it.

As is, as a disqualifier for any sort of liability by the dealer when he sold the car. And there's an official sticker on used cars that has to be on the car if it is sold as is. So when you see as is, forget about anything happening to the car

that you're going to be able to have paid for later. It just won't happen. I asked him at the Honda had ever been in an accident. Miguel said that when we get back, he'd check with a manager, look at the Carfax report, and see if there were any prior accidents. We got back to the dealership and got right to the numbers, right off the bed. Miguel told me that the price was, and he saw it already online, $5,99.

Applicable only if financed with them. Now, I've seen that a couple times before. It's outrageous, it's illegal. It's a flagrant violation of the law. It's a violation, I believe, of the Truth in Lending Act. You cannot tie the price of anything together with the financing. You can't advertise a camera, a refrigerator, a car, or anything else, and say, that's the price, and in the fine print, but you have to finance it.

Obviously, the reason being, if you control the financing and the interest rate, you can advertise a product for a very low price, and then hammer them on the interest rate and make more money that way than you did if you sold the car at a higher price. So what they did is strictly illegal, shocking. And when I say Earl Strow and Cars, Mr. Shopping Report is unique, here's one reason, because I'm naming a name

and I'm telling you that this company is breaking the law. And they're not going to sue me because the truth is a perfect defense against libel and slander. I was shocked. I made a big deal out of it. McGill said he was sorry, but the price would be higher unless we financed with Hollywood Chrysler Jeep. I asked him to tell me the price, and he left to ask a manager. He came back with a price that was $1,500, $1,500 higher because I'm not going to finance with Hollywood Chrysler Jeep. It gives you kind of an idea how much they were going to make off the financing, huh?

Yeah, at least. $1,500. The average profit on financing for car dealers is over $2,000. They make more money on the financing than they do on the sale of the car. Miguel said, and I don't know what this means, don't let your head twist around like that. You missed the line where Agent X stood up and said he yelled at him. He had to be kidding.

Exactly. Exactly. So Miguel didn't seem to disturb. And he went back to talk to the sales manager. after he talked to the sales manager, he said they really wanted to sell me the car, they would do the internet price for me, even if I didn't finance with him. So they called the bluff, and they came down, and this is called haggling. I don't have a problem with haggling and negotiating.

Actually, I do, but it's legal. There's nothing illegal about haggling and hassling. Car dealers do it all the time, and there's no law against it. I guess it originated back during the horse trading. days, haggling and hassling. But it is illegal to tie the financing to the price of the car. And that's what they did. And Hollywood Chrysler Jeep did break the law. I said I wasn't sure if I still wanted to buy the car. I told Miguel their pricing game left a bad face in my mouth and I was concerned about the safety of the Honda. I told him considering the broken visor

and dirty engine compartment that I wasn't impressed with her 120-point inspection. I I asked him to tell me what other safety issues this car had. Now, when we do a ticata shop like this, we pressed them over and over three times typically and sometimes more asking them, you know, redeem yourself, tell me the truth. So again, we say, are there any safety issues? He said there were none. So he failed the ticotta test miserably. He showed me the buyer's order in big green sharpie pen.

His boss had written ad price and a line where it could sign indicating my commitment to buy. The price was back to $5,99, but they added an $899.99 and $99 dealer fee. Can we call that $900? A whopping $762 for a license title, Lemon Law, and third-party tag. So they lumped all that together to action tag. and I can assure you, $762 is far more than the actual tax and tag was. So they have a hidden dealer fee within the licensed title, Lemon Law, third party, along with the $900. I objected to the dealer fee.

I said I never pay it. McGill told me that I wouldn't ever be able to buy a car because all dealers charged dealer fees. I told them I knew of a few big dealers like Mullinix and Stewart that do not. I told him he needed to go back to the boss. He left to go see the manager. Miguel came back with another buyer's order. This one had a price of $5,100 plus all the same fees. He said his boss backed out the dealer fee.

Well, he backed out 800 of it. 800 of it. 800 of it or 900 of it. Well, yeah. Nine hundred of it. He said this was a favor and he seemed pretty smug about it. So the lesson to be learned there is yes, you can't argue about the, the dealer fee and yes you can sometimes get them to back it out it's rare that they will do

that but in this case they did and as rick said they didn't back out all of the dealer fees because they have a couple hidden inside with the tax and tag the way to find out of a fee is a dealer fee now remember dealer fee is a generic term because i've seen dealers advertise no dealer fees and they charge something else by a different name which legally is a dealer fee. So the definition, and this was in my blog, by the way, to Pam Bondi, where I said, Pam Bondi, Attorney General,

please enforce Florida laws. In this blog, in Florida Weekly, and the hometown news, and online, I said that there are multiple names that dealers charge for dealer fee, doc fee, documentary fee, administrative fee, electronic filing fee, e-filing fee, limited only by the dealer's imagination.

And this is what Hollywood Chrysler Jeep is doing. They're naming something different than a dealer fee and the saying they took the dealer fee off. They took one dealer fee off. They didn't take them all off. I pick up the buyer's order, stood up, but Miguel stopped me. He said the buyer's order were dealership property. I was trying to take the buyer's order with me.

And I couldn't leave with it. I asked him if I could take a picture. He looked around and said, yeah, hurry up. So we took a picture of his buyer's order. That's something that car dealers typically will not allow you to leave with. Sometimes you have to come up with excuse. Good excuse is I need to show it to my credit union so I can get the check and come back and buy the car from you.

Oftentimes they'll let you have the buyer's order then. In this case here, they let Agent X take a picture of it. Bottom line is Hollywood Chrysler Jeep failed at the Tocata test and also engaged in some pretty slimy old school car taxis. That is the understatement of all time. So here we are at the voting thing. Did we get any text votes? I forgot to.

Not yet. Yes. You can text us or post us a vote on this. ABCDF. Do you pass or do you fail? Hollywood Chrysler Jeep. We have five minutes left, so you have time to get your vote in. And we're going to start posting the votes, by the way,

thanks to Steve Ward's suggestion on our good dealer, bad dealer list. So let's pull from inside. Rick will go with you on a scale of A to F. How do you grade Hollywood Chrysler Jeep? Oh, I got to give them an F all the way around. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they didn't do it much right, did they? They just had it.

They had it so bad. It just, oh. We score on the curve, too, by the way. And when we say a dealer fails, that means among all the dealers, which are not really very good anyway. This is one of the worst inmates in sinks. I'd be running away from that place in a heartbeat. Definitely.

This is the kind of dealership that keeps us at the bottom of the Gallup pole and F all the way around. Yeah. Alan? Yeah, they failed at everything from the moment he pulled up and they stayed ganged up, which most people feel intimidated. by that, you know, you always feel like they're talking about you, you know, when they

watch you walk in and they're all friends. But I'm going to, if I could go lower than an F, I would. But F and F for sure, and I'm not sure that I've ever done an FF. Yeah, double F. I would have failed them strictly on the fact they broke the law. I think you've got to draw the line somewhere, and we do agree it on the curve. But if we didn't fail a dealer for breaking the law, I think we would be remiss. So that failed them.

The deliberate deception on the Takata Airbag, they have the Carfax Report. The Carfax Report does disclose. In fact, we have a copy of the disclosure from the shopping report that they did have that information right at front of them. They looked at it. We know they looked at it. Here's the Carfax Report,

and they do clearly show that it had the Takata Airbag on the passenger side unfixed for several years. I think 2016, 2015, before the end, and still hasn't been fixed. And I also wouldn't fail them on the dealer fee because all car dealers charge dealer fees, but that would have failed them because they lied about the dealer fee. They had a dealer fee that they took off, actually, but they left the other dealer fees on. So they lied and they broke the law. That's a double whammy, and that's the reason they got a F-minus.

Yep. as a matter of fact Linda Doug and Jeff all agree F grades right across the board pretty hard to do that it is pretty hard is that the worst we've ever had

I remember there was another dealer I use those words on I can't remember who it was but this Hollywood Chrysler G may be the worst shopping report that we've ever had I think that's very likely yeah usually there's at least

one of us that can find just some little glimmer or hope for a dealer or so the really bad ones, one of us might give them a C or D. I don't remember ever across the board Fs. Exactly. I agree. You know, that's a long way to go, but I have to say that we need to go back to Hollywood

and we won't do it next week, or maybe not the week after, or maybe we will. I just want. You never know. Hollywood Jeep, Chrysler Jeep, I want you to be aware that we're coming back in, and we're going to give you a chance to redeem yourself, and we can put you on the recommended list. So that's what we do. We don't ever just hit somebody once And it goes the other way too

If we pass a dealer and put them on the list We go back We try to hit everybody as often as we can But check up on them and verify you Let's make sure they're still towing the line Exactly Mystery shop of Hollywood Chrysler Jeep Absolutely

We've got about a minute to go And I will add Can I throw one quick thing Please do www.safercar.gov. Exactly. Folks, if you get anything out of this show, that's probably the most important thing ever. Very important.

And one other important thing, there's an article today in the Miami Herald about the hurricane cars. And as you all know, we've had a lot of hurricanes and a lot of flooding. And these cars come flooding into Florida to use that term because Florida is a place where they can sell all these cars. because a lot of car dealers down here will sell the car without disclosure. They'll clean them up, they'll wash them up, take them to your mechanic, take them somebody like Alan or Rick or somebody that's an expert, put them up on the rack, study the car about the only way you can really say for sure if a car's been in the flood. But heads up now in flood cars.

Absolutely. Great information. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us here at Earl Stewart on Cars, and we will be back next Saturday morning. Thank you. Let's go.