Earl Stewart on Cars - 11.06.2021 - The Best of Earl on Cars - Mystery Shop Kia of Greater Orlando

Episode Date: November 6, 2021

This is a replay of a previous episode of Earl Stewart on Cars. Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent travels to Pennsylvania to visit Jim Shorkey Chrysler Dodge Jeep to test the shopping experience on a 2021 Jeep Gladiator. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. Sign up to become one of Earl's Vigilantes and help others in your community to avoid getting ripped off by a car dealer. Go to www.earlsvigilantes.com for more information. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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

He dispatches our secret shopper weekly to an unsuspecting South Florida dealership. And now, on with the show. Good morning, everybody. We're back. This is your auto advisory team right here at the studio in North Palm Beach from the True Oldies Channel. And got to remind you every now and then, this is not about music. are a live talk show about buying cars, leasing cars, maintaining, and repairing cars.

The key thing is, we're a live talk show, and we'd love to have you call in and express your opinion, ask your questions. You really kind of make the show. I say that over and over, because without you, there wouldn't be a show. Other than the fact, let's put this way, even if you were listening, there wouldn't be a show unless you called in, because that's what we do. We answer questions. We also do it via Facebook.

We've evolved over the past 20 years from Pure Radio to Twitter and Periscope and YouTube and Facebook. I keep saying Twitter and Periscope, I guess we really don't do Twitter and Periscope, but Twitter and Periscope exist, I think. We should still acknowledge them in some dimension or some parallel world. But YouTube is, and of course, Facebook. And so the point being that we're all over. And it's hard for me to mentally adjust because we started out locally. I mean, we're in South Florida and we're in Palm Beach County. And suddenly we're all over the world.

And that's because of, you know, the YouTube and Facebook. And also because of the blog and we're, you know, we're a lot of communication by text and other things like that. So we're global. We're global. I don't think we've ever had a call from China, have we? Nope. Not yet. Yeah.

Let's get a call from China, people. Come on. Yeah, maybe we could do a simultaneous translation into Chinese and expand. You know, we need to get the, because China is becoming a huge car market and very, very important. I believe Tesla is relying very heavily on China. A lot of companies are now. and so you folks out there in China I don't know what time it is in China

anybody know it's like a day no it'd be 12 hours it'd be I think isn't it like a head of us like 12 hours in the future yeah something like that so love to get a call from China now someone's going to call and pretend like they're from China I know it

but another thought I had as I as Nancy and I were coming into the show this morning driving in. I'm thinking about what an unusual time we're going through. And occasionally, we haven't been on vacation in a while on this.

This COVID thing kind of tied us to the local area here. We haven't really been anywhere. A lot of people are just now starting to spread their wings and get out of town and take a vacation. So if we take, and of course, when we will definitely will, when we take a

vacation, we'll have reruns. And how are we going to rerun something from the COVID era because it's such a crazy time. I mean, five years from now when everything is return to normal, whatever normal will be in five years, we don't know. But we're going through a very unusual time.

So it'll be interesting choosing reruns from the show. Here we are in a situation where we have a huge shortage of automobiles. We have car dealers out there charging outrageous prices for cars. And we'll talk about it later in the show. Our mystery shopping report just set a new record. You'll find out later. Stay tuned for the mystery shopping report. A new record in terms of, I hate the word, price gouging,

but it's probably the most appropriate. I mean, just a world's record in charging a higher price for a car than you would think would be morally or ethically acceptable. Rick? Hey, I heard a report recently that Ford just got a huge, supply of chips for the F-150s that they've had parked and sitting. So like you predicted, those cars are going to be starting to hit the market pretty soon this fall. I hadn't heard that. That's good news for Ford.

Because that microchip shortage really hit the F-150 big time. There it is, the best selling vehicle in the world, the F-150, microchips available. So you truck buyers out there, hopefully this will affect your prices when you go in because right Now the four dealers are getting all the money for the car. And Nancy and I were talking about that as we drove in also about, you know, what's moral and what's legal, what's ethical and what's legal. We have to differentiate because capitalism is capitalism. And you have a shortage, you're going to pay a lot of money. And that's whether you're buying toothpaste or bread or cars.

Short supply of bread, you pay a lot of money for bread. and that's just a way capitalism is and if you don't like capitalism then you know you should move somewhere else because that's what the United States is as a capitalist-based society some people like it, some people don't

but the rules are the rules don't have to like the rules and we talk about not liking some of the rules on this show at any rate enough of my random rant but I enjoy ranting sometimes please remember to give us your feedback, write the numbers down that I'm about to give you because you might not have a question now, but I assure you you will. If you listen for 15 or 20 minutes, you'll hear something that will pique your curiosity.

And the call-in number, the basic old-fashioned telephone call-in number, 877-960-99-60. 877-960. write that down and when something comes up that you want to comment on give us a call we prioritize phone calls because we've only got three or four lines and we don't want you to wait Nancy my co-host here she keeps an eye on that computer screen and when there's a caller there she waves she interrupt she does whatever necessary to get you the caller on the line and we will try to abide by that because it's important

It's a personal thing about a phone call, and we like the phone calls. And we have a lot of regular calls. We recognize their voices, their personalities. We love phone calls. But if you don't want to call, we have a text line. 772-497-6530. You want to write that down, too, if you can. 772-497-6530.

And then you text us. Cool thing about text. We stockpile them. You're on the iPhones. We get to them almost always in the same show. So you might text us right now, and we don't get to it for 10 minutes. Or you might text us and we don't get to it until the end of the show. But we really make a concerted effort to get all the texts.

And, of course, Facebook. And Facebook.com forward slash your own cars. Facebook.com forward slash rolling cars and YouTube. YouTube.com forward slash rolling cars. And we got Rick Kearney here. He's a monitor of YouTube. He's also our expert, our technological expert, on automobiles. I think we tend to focus a lot on the sales.

It's fun to talk about mystery shopping reports and prices and deceptive advertising. I enjoy that, but the nuts and bolts of cars is driving them so that they don't break, and if they do break, how do you fix them? And if you have a problem, you can't diagnose. Do you want to go into a car dealership and pay too much money? If you have any of those thoughts running through your mind, just YouTube.com. Ford slash wrong cars, and Rick will give that directly, or you can call us, just call and just ask for Rick. at 877-960.

Now, we have a YouTube, but I'm going to go to Nancy first and keep those YouTube's coming and give a little stockpile for Rick there. And I'm going to introduce Nancy Stewart, my co-host, who is also our female advocate, who has built this audience over the years to almost parody for female callers. We value you very much, and we have a special offer for you female callers. And Nancy's going to tell you about that. We do. Good morning, everyone, and welcome. You are an important part of the show, everyone.

For the ladies this morning, as usual, $50 for the first two new lady callers. And, well, I'll put a question out there for you, ladies. How effectively did you negotiate for a used car, a new car, whether you leased it or bought it, give us a call? toll-free. 877-960-99-60. 877-960-99-60. Or you can text us, as the rule said, it's 772-497-6530. And don't forget,

Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Okay, let's get to Rick's YouTube. Rick Kearney is a YouTube message. Maybe it's about fixing cars. Actually, it's about leasing. Nican 1 says, I'd like to ask about the money factor on a lease. I understand dealers can make a lot of money patting this, and that it's also negotiable.

Yeah, the money factor is just another term for interest rate, and it can be marked up, and the dealers do this. More commonly, it's all included in the lease payment. and the dealer makes some money on leases any way he can by marking up the capitalized cost, by marking up the lease factor. You can even play with a residual value in certain circumstances. The best thing to do when you're leasing in a car is don't get in the details. Don't get in the weeds of the money factors and the residuals and the other fine points of leasing.

Think of one thing. Think of the monthly payment and the term. So if you're going to lease a car, you've picked the car, truck, whatever it may be, that you want, to find it precisely. You want to know the Yermake model with the specific MSRP. Now, that tells you that you're comparing apples and apples. Then you go to three or four different car dealerships and you say, I want a 36-month lease or 48-month or 18-month or whatever lease you want.

And I want it for this car, this specific car, MSRP, $48,218, $218.19. And give me the monthly payment for 36 months with, and I forgot one thing I should have mentioned to you. much of a down payment. There's always a down payment associated with the lease. It doesn't have to be, but you will find every advertised lease has a big fat down payment. So, let me add that to my variables that you have to nail down. Down payment, term, and monthly payment. And if you compare the same car with three different dealers, you just lease it from the one that gives you the lowest payment. And that's what you do. But it's a good point that the money factor is one. It's in the weeds, nuts and bolts things that dealers think about and leasing companies think about. It's not, the more you're going to involve the detail, the more confused you get, and more likely, someone will take advantage of you.

Absolutely. Okay. We are going to go right to the phones, but first I'm going to remind the ladies that you can win $50 this morning, the first two new lady callers. And speaking of which, we do have a female, excuse me, a lady caller from all. Loxahatchie, and she is a first-time caller. Her name is Joanna. Good morning, Joanna. Good morning. How are you today?

I am great. Congratulations. You won yourself $50. Thank you for calling. Cool. I just wanted to call early this morning because I have a disabled daughter, and our other van that we had was falling apart. literally and we went to Earl's and dealt with Magic and I explained to him the situation

that I need to be able to get the wheelchair in and out of a vehicle that is safe for her because of her disabilities and there wasn't any available at the time and magic had called me back I would say probably a week after on a Saturday and said I found you a van. Wow. And I think you better come down now. Huh. And I said, what? He said, I think you need to come now. So I went down there and he let me drive it around for as long as I needed to. I took it to my mechanic, of course, being a single mom with a disabled daughter, and drove it, and mechanic said this and this and a couple little things that just needed to be week and I have my Riley the wreck there and I love him what a great story and we love Riley

and the wheelchair fits in it perfect and I just want to say the no haggle no you know whatever everything went just like boom you and I've never been in a dealership where everything went smooth ever it's nickel and dime barter this i'll can't do that blah blah blah you did everything and i have my daughter a new car joanna i'm really happy that uh magic mike made it a whole lot easier for you i think with everything you have to deal with you didn't need the stress of the things that could have happened and i'm really happy that your your daughter is comfortable and you're comfortable and it's got magic my signature all over it and I appreciate that well we're very happy we're very happy to send you

fifty dollars not only that was that a nice testimonial that we appreciate but the fact that you are a first-time female caller and we hope you will spread the word and let some of your lady friends and Loxahatchie know and we love to have you callers and I'm so happy that your daughter got the right vehicle for and we look forward to seeing her in service and we look forward to you calling the show again. I definitely will and then we had to come back because I missed the signature on something and I brought my dog and I'm like I can't come in I can't come in I have my little dog and they're like what I said I know you guys own big dog ranches but this is my little dog and I don't want to bring her in with all the people

He's like, bring that dog at. Hey, can you hear him barking at a big dog ranch, Joanna? Yes. I figured. I pretty much did. And I hear Lion Country Safari sometimes and the Parthor Sanctuary. Day of lions get so crazy in the morning. No kidding.

It's really cool. I bet. A lion's roar can be heard for over five miles. I hear them. Trust me. and they're very, very loud. Makes your dog get a little nervous, I bet, hearing that lion roar. She's usually still in bed because I get up really, really early.

I can't even imagine. That'd be refreshing, listening to, you know, all of the... Sit out in the morning, have your coffee, and you hear the lions and the monkeys. It's very quiet. See how the other world, well, world. lives, animals, whatever you want to call them, in this crazy world we live in today. Joanna has been a pleasure, and it is really great that you call because there's two reasons. You won $50 and another you're helping to build a platform for ladies, and they are a huge

part of this industry, and for any auto dealer not to recognize that is financial disaster. So spread the word and have a wonderful weekend. Definitely will and thank you guys for everything. And they told me at the service department, they told me at the sales department, if you have any problems whatsoever, do not hesitate. That's great. That's great to hear. Email me your information.

And again, have a wonderful weekend. Thank you so much. You're welcome. 877-960, or you can text us at 7. 7.2-4976530 www.W.W. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. And don't forget, you can help us out, and you can sign up with Earl's Vigilantes, and you can help the people in your community.

It's a win-win situation. Get a free hat. A free hat. And that good, fuzzy feeling that you have helped someone in your community or any other place that you've been. So go to Roll on Cars and sign up. Also, we need some volunteers to help us with the process of going to the Internet. For some seniors, it's a little bit more difficult to, you know,

go through all the hoops. And, you know, we'd like someone to volunteer, anyone to volunteer and to help us. on that Irwan cars take a look I believe that Stu may have some texts yeah well we'll kick it off with Amory's text Ammy says good morning Jalopnik is reporting that a Chevrolet Corvette C8 convertible traveling at an estimated 150 miles per hour failed to make a 90 degree turn in the road struck the center median flew over a hedge crashed into a pool three yes three occupants rejected two died and the others in serious condition in a California hospital

The investigation is ongoing. Jelopnik's staff writer summed up this way, the cars are safer than it ever been, and incredible performance is more accessible too, but we're reminded here we're never more than one bad judgment away from tragedy. I'd like to add that California isn't the only state where drivers of high and not-so-high-performance vehicles are tempted to test them out in streets instead of the racetrack.

Let's describe reaction time or how fast things can go wrong in terms of numbers. I've heard people say, I only looked away for a second. Well, if you're going 70 miles per hour, you're traveling 103 feet per second or about a third of a football field. A lot can happen in 103 feet and in one second. If you're going 150 miles an hour, you're going

220 feet per second. It doesn't allow for much time or room to correct any mistake. It doesn't take a turn on the road to text when reflexes. Another car utility pole suddenly looming in front of the vehicle can do it. The laws of physics are rarely forgiving. My viewpoint has been shaped by some disturbing crashes

near my neighborhood. Nice straight roads are such a temptation of speed. The sudden lack of traffic noise being replaced by the sound of a rescue helicopter landing close by is especially ennerving in the middle of the night. I must say that the Trauma Hoc pilot's skill in avoiding houses, trees, lamp posts, utility lines, and polls at 2 a.m. was really impressive. The injuries were flown off to the hospital. There were other incidents when not everyone was lucky enough to get to the hospital. Please stay safe on our roads. Thank you, and she signed it, Mother Hen.

Yeah, but a great text, as always, Anne-Marie. Yeah, thank you, Ann Mary. I would say this, it's, it makes me think again about autonomous vehicles. It makes me think about technology. And, you know, technology in autonomous vehicles will save us from ourselves because human beings, you know, we're totally flawed in things that we do. And as you were describing the speeding, and I know Nancy was thinking about my Tesla, which is coming in, hopefully in a few weeks. goes from zero to 60 and 2.9 seconds. But we solved that problem.

You told me I'd be driving you around. But the point is human beings are flawed. And as long as we have human beings driving cars, there's going to be accidents, and there's going to be fatal accidents. And you see the crazies on the road. Every time you drive, you see them, right? And the problem is, when we see crazy drivers,

it tends to make us a little crazy, some of us. It makes me a little crazy. And I find my temperature, my temperature, my temper rising when I see somebody that's doing something crazy. And then I find myself doing something. So human beings should not be given machines that will go 200 miles an hour and turn on a dime because we don't have the emotional and mental capacity to deal with it. Very well said, that's true. I agree.

It's kind of a strange thing when you think about the way, safety and as treated now, like I think if they invented cars now, they wouldn't be illegal or at least in the current form where it's where people can make their own decisions. Good point, yeah. I mean, it's just like it's a high... I mean, I think they're great and obviously it's part of our culture

and our lives, but it's kind of strange. I would imagine something that was, they come up with a new personal helicopter, they're not going to let people just start flying them around the neighborhood. I'll betcha the horse and buggy drivers said exactly that. Are you crazy? Right. A horse is plenty fast. I mean, look how

fast my horse can go. How fast do you want to go? I want to go 200 miles an hour. I'm going to 060 and 1.29 seconds. That's human. That's the human and we evolve that way. We are that way. We're not going to change for a long, long time. We will change, but it'll be, our brains will invent things that will save us from ourselves. And that's what we've done with the autonomous car. Okay. I missed some anonymous feedback from last week, so I'll jump over there.

Good. First one says, Good morning, Earl. Can you explain why your dealership shows you have three croals in stock. Toad of Collywood shows they have one hybrid curl in stock. And Al Hendrickson shows they have 610 crows in stock. What is the deal? I can tell you what the deal is.

Yeah, I still explain that to you. He brought it to my attention before. Go ahead. So, El Hendrickson is doing what most dealers are doing now, including us while we're working on it. Yeah, to you folks overseas, Al Hendrickson. Toyota is the second or third largest Toyota dealership in the world. In the world, yeah. And they're down in Coconut Creek, just like west of Deerfield, somewhere down there in Broward.

I've never been there. So most dealers are showing with this inventory crunch that everybody's going through or showing in-transit vehicles that are coming in to their dealership to show potential availability, and everybody is marking these as in-transit or on the way in the factory clearly marked. not Al Hendricksson Al Hendrickson is showing their incoming vehicles but saying on the picture

new arrival implying that it just arrived so we did speak to Toyota about that and hopefully somebody shakes wags a finger at them for that but that's why they're trying to try to create an illusion

and with due deference to Al Hanks or Toyota all dealers virtually do that and because dealers do pool their inventories if you're Chevrolet dealer and you're in Oregon, then you can draw upon the inventory of every Chevrolet dealer in Oregon, probably the adjacent states too. And so you'll put it on your website and people go there and you say, available, 150,000

Camaros. Well, you don't have 150,000 Camaros, but you say you do. And from a technical standpoint, they're available to you, so you're not lying. So any time you go online and you look and see anything. including inventory availability, verify a call or physically go in there and check. I can tell you, the Toyota dealers aren't showing everybody else.

They're just showing their incoming, so those are their cars. They're just, like the one that I used as an example, says new arrival and it was 42 days out before it arrived. It's a month and a half. But they will advertise 1,000 vehicles available. Yeah. Well, Alderton really has that coming in,

but they sell 1,000 vehicles a month or new vehicles. But yeah, it's just deceptive. That's why they do it. They're trying to bait people in. If you get there, there's not going to be 600 crores, I promise you. Okay, another anonymous feedback. Hello. This question is for Rick.

A repair shop didn't tighten my oil filter correctly after an oil change, which caused an oil leak. When I found the oil barely registered on the dipstick, when I found that the oil barely registered on the dipstick, should I be worried about damage to the engine? The repair shop said there was still at least two and a half quarter. of oil in my engine under the 4.6 quart capacity, and the engine is okay. Thank you. You got very, very lucky if it was just a small leak and it was caught in time and the engine didn't lose oil pressure. If it's not making any odd noises, odds are you're going to be fine. What would be the time factor? I would not use them again. What would be the time factor on that way? Can they be comfortable if three months from

now they have no problems or 30 days from now? When was the time factor? problem show up right away most cars it'll show up when they lose full lose all oil pressure you know it'll show up usually within a minute or two of running it can cause damage um how about unusually i would say if it as long as the oil pressure is only gone for like a second or two you're okay just with if that light comes on shut the engine off immediately but if it stays loss of oil pressure for more than 20 or 30 seconds, you've got engine damage. Would it be, would it come to light within hours, minutes? Within days, a couple of days.

Well, my point would be, I'd go on record if I was worried about it, and I would go on record email and say, this happened. And at this point, I don't have a problem. But should I have a problem, I want to put you on notice that you'll be held liable. save all paperwork and make sure you let them know, hey, I'm going to be monitoring this, I'm going to be watching this. But make sure you have it in writing from them that yes, they made a mistake and that they're willing to step up. And you're doing them a favor because somebody didn't do their job and they need to correct it.

Is there any way to check that out by an inspection to see if there was damage? There's really not because everything's internal so sealed now. There's real no way to. It's been sure you expect it. Keep your fingers crossed. One of the things that a good mechanic does simply is listening, because odd noises will show up usually very quickly. And other situations such as like the oil pressure controls the camgears, the camshaft gears, that use that pressure for the timing on them. And if there was an issue there, that will throw a check engine light.

So you don't want to deal with a mechanic who is hard of hearing? Definitely not. Okay. And also all senses. You want to have good eyesight, good smell. I don't mean the smell good, but I can smell. After the, after a few years are doing it, 10, 20 years of working as a mechanic, our hearing takes a huge abuse from all the noise in the shop. Your sense of smell, you become nose blind to odors because you're dealing with these smells all the time.

Your hands lose sensitivity from burns. And you basically, you break your body down. It's a tough business. You look broken down, Rick. I am. I am broken. On a more serious note, Rick, the damage sounds like as if that, you know, you almost have to replace your car if you're talking about your engine. Usually it's replacing the engine itself.

And believe it or not, we actually, when we have situations sometimes come up, a person's engine has gotten damaged for some reason. And we find actually salvaged cars, the salvaged engines, used engine is a much more economical way to go than trying to repair an engine or buy a brand new engine. And a used engine, as long as it's in good shape, can get you another 100,000, 200,000 miles. There you have it, folks. Great information. And guess what? It's free. 877-960, or you can text us at 77272.

497-6530. Now back to Stu. Okay, more anonymous feedback. Hello, Earl. I have a question for all of you. I want to buy a used car here for my son. Here in Florida and send it to my son in college in California. I want to ship it there in a car transport truck. Do you know if your service department can rate the emissions as acceptable or another smaller emissions service center that can issue a certification of passing emissions

before I take the plunge and send a used car to California? We'd have to see what the state and the, in California, what the requirements are, but would we have the instruments to measure if we knew the statistic or the parameters for the... Not anymore. Florida did a way, we had several counties here. I know we did. Yeah, we used to. But if I told you this is the California emission standards, do we have instruments that would measure the emissions? No, because once we did away with the emissions testing here,

Most shops don't have what's called the five-gas analyzer, the tool that's needed for it anymore, because it's not a required tool for us to have. So most shops just don't even have one anymore. Well, you'd have to have a, when they sell the car, it would have to indicate when the car was sold where, and if it conformed with the state emission standards. So California is the toughest, from what I understand, and therefore, if the car was sold in California, Yeah, well, they would require it. Even if we could test it, we couldn't certify it.

Yeah, yeah. So they would have to. But the interesting part is that most of the federal emission standards now, it used to be you had two separate standards. You had California emissions and federal emissions. And finally, the federal government just said, enough of this, whatever California says, we're all doing it. I don't know. And that's the way all standards are now. So if you buy a car in Florida, a brand new car in Florida, it has immense.

emissions standards that will pass in California. Well, it was built recently, yeah. Yep. But I guess they have to recheck. I use cars. It was annual, right? Oh, yes. Use cars, yeah.

And certain other states have annual emissions testing that you have to go through. I came in the business right when that was phasing out, I think, late 90s. That's when they stopped doing it. Okay. All right. Next one. Anonymous feedback. Come on, please.

Come up. Okay. Hi, Earl on Cars crew. I'm a new female listener, and I would love to hear you read the message on the show if you can. I'm currently trying to buy a use car by financing with unfortunately bad credit, student loans, etc. I've been trying to try and buy-here-pay-here dealerships since they are more flexible. Not sure if you take your recommendations for mystery shopping, but you should try a

company called Splish Splash. Take it away. Splush splash. Oh, no, no, Blubby Darren, right? I went recently and they were nice enough, but all of their cars had a strong mold water smell. I was made aware of recent flooding that brought cars down to Florida, and they were sold, and they were previously going to be salvaged. In knowledge of this, or would you recommend to get a flooded car if it still runs? I hope you have a great weekend.

It almost sounds like a joke. I know it's got to be serious, but for a flooded car, the dealership called Splish Blash. You know, you're sharper than I on it because I just went. Well, no, no, I actually. I saw that before and I googled it. Is it real? And there's a local buy here pay here named Splish Blash. But I would sure it was a joke.

That's great. But they are and they're buy here pay here, she said. And the answer is that unfortunately because you do have bad credit and it's an embarrassing thing to have to talk about that. No one likes to talk about having bad credit, but it's a reality. and a lot of people, particularly during bad times, find themselves in that position. And then you have to deal with buy-heer pay-hear lots.

And you think it's hazardous buying a car from a car dealer going to a random buy-here, pay-heer lot, which is a small lot for folks that are not familiar. It's their one-man operations, or two-men or three-men or something like that. And their purpose of existence is to find, somebody that can't afford to buy a car and they can't get financing because their credit is bad and so they they really are selling cars to victims that

have no say-so in their fate they I have to have transportation I don't care what color what model I'm really kind of flexible on it reliability and everything else please get me into a car and I'll pay anything and I'll do anything thing to get into the car. It's a terrible business. I was in the business a long time ago. And it was a company on Ogat Chobooga Boulevard and West Palm Beach called Stewart Select Cars. And it was a terrible business. I didn't enjoy it. I got out of it. I sold it. And it's just a, it's a sad business to be in. Splish splash. We will mystery shop them. And that was a recommendation. You might take a bath.

we might take a bath. We've done some mystery shopping of buy-heer payer. And we found a really good one, didn't we? Yeah, we found a good one up in Stewart. And I think the one right in North Palm Beach, we get them confused. There's easy buy and easy pay. Easy pay in Stewart, by the way. That'd be one you should check.

It's owned by Bill Wallace. Yeah. And also the one in North Palm Beach on US One, it's easy buy. We might have them flip, but both of them did well on the shopping. And Beach Cars is another buyer-payer payer that we had dealt with. If they've been in business for a long time, check the Google rating. If you can get some recommendations, things like that, you have to be careful because you can really be taken advantage of badly. I remember beach cars being around from back in your early 80s.

They're like second or third generation. 50 years or longer. Absolutely. But I definitely say avoid the flood car, even if it runs. For your anonymous feedback, that was your anonymous feedback, correct, from that young. lady let me tell you what put your suit of armor on if you're going to go to a buy here pay here and right now i wouldn't go anywhere near a buy here pay here cars right now if you need one if you really have to have one go for it but right now i want to tell you it's going to cost

you triple what the car is worth so Uber, live, rental, and also, as far as a flood car, wow. The problem is people that have bad credit, they can't Uber and they can't rent and they can't do anything. They have to buy a car through a buy-your-payer. So it's a terrible fact that they have no choice. Suicidal. Yeah.

Rick? Actually, I've got a YouTube question here. the ties right in. Guy Larrabee is asking, are used car prices starting to drop as new car availability is beginning to get back to normal? He says,

my reasoning here in Montreal area, Mannheim reports that wholesale prices have been inching down for three weeks in Montreal, Canada. Yeah, prices, you have to be careful

because regionally, you will have exceptions. The overall situation is prices are still sky high. We haven't seen much of that. We have seen people, like, for example, we measure our success of the auction by the percent that we sell. And when things were super, super crazy, every week was 100%. That means every car that you put up there, you got your asking price and you sold it.

And the last couple of weeks, we've had lower percentages in the 70s, and we even had one that was in the upper 60s. You know, it's too early to say that's a trend. So that could be, you know, we're not selling the cars and we run them again. So, but we haven't seen it here, but like you said, it is regional in different markets are going to have different fluctuations. Well, it's a shortage. And so the reason for sales slowing down, partly is because there's inventory slowing down. And you go into a car dealership today and they only have five cars sitting on the lot or maybe a big dealership will have 25 or 30. Unless you buy something you don't want or got real, real lucky and pay too much money, you just don't buy a car. So sales are dropping and wholesale cars are dropping in supply and prices are still high.

Yeah, I mean, as far as new car inventory, we are at the lowest we've been. It's very strange to have a cartelot without any cars on it, but the times we're living in. Yeah. Okay. Any more text? Yeah, I got some anonymous feedback. Please explain dealer handling fees and why each state has considerably different fees. can the consumer handle these fees with their own stay and save this cost? Yeah, the dealer handling fee and all the fees the dealer charges, the charge are that are not taxed.

If a fee is taxed, it's profit to the dealer. If it's a non-tax fee, then it's a government fee and it's a legitimate fee. I say legitimate. The dealer could absorb the fee and add it to the price of the car, which probably they should. But it's excusable to say that you're going to have to pay extra for your license plate or for your sales tax. So government fees that are non-taxable. That's the way you identify them.

They're non-taxable. You can't tax them twice. But a taxable fee is just profit to the dealer. And handling is just another name for that. They call it dock fees, notary fees, administration fees, electronic filing fees, tag agency fees. They name them different things. you can't get down to the minutia

and start talking about is this fee legitimate, does that fee legitimate? You need to go to the overall out-the-door price. Simplicity is your friend when it comes to buying a car. And as I said earlier, when we were talking

something about leasing, you want to identify the specific vehicle that you want to buy, newer use, and then get competitive comparisons for the out-the-door price, the price that you write the checkout for handed to the salesman and drive the car home and you take the lowest out-the-door price

and you've got your best deal and today it's not a very good deal so as Dancy said earlier if you don't have to buy a car today don't buy one okay the next anonymous feedback as a Costco dealer

do you control the discounted dollar amount I am finding that many dealers are deciding not to offer the program and take advantage of the shortage that's going on right now. Well, if you're a Costco dealer, you have to abide by the rules. And I'm sure there are dealers out there that have said, forget about it. I don't want to be a Costco dealer. More likely, they're just not promoting the program and keeping it a secret.

But if you go online, and you should, you go to Costco.com, and if you're not a member, join for $65, if you are a member, it's the best way to buy a car. The Costco prices will be higher because Costco has this rule, and in normal times it's a great rule. Costco says if you're a certified Costco dealer, then you must charge the lowest price to a Costco member, or a lower price, actually, to a Costco member, then you will sell that particular vehicle to anyone else for. Now, in normal times, that's a pretty good deal because the price range at a typical car dealership is in the thousands of dollars. Rick could walk into a dealership and buy a car for $45,000 and Stu could walk in and buy it for $38,000 because they don't charge the same price. Because I'm a better negotiator.

Exactly, Stu's a better negotiator. I'm a trained assassin. But today, all the cars are overpriced. So the Costco price is going to be too high. And there you are, folks. Don't buy a car, even at the Costco price, unless you have to. If you have to buy the car, the Costco price is the best price still. Relatively speaking.

Yeah, the dealers set the price, but if it doesn't fit into Costco's market prices they determine, then you can't list it. And what Earl just said is absolutely true. So the Costco price is still lower. Like, for example, at our dealership, it's lower than, the other, our standard pricing, but it's still higher than it's ever been. Yeah, exactly. Okay.

More anonymous feedback. Okay. We have, no, no one's calling. Call. What we forgot to do was mention the anonymous feedback line, and I didn't do, that was my fault. We have a unique line for people that don't want to be identified, obviously, your anonymous feedback.com. You just go online to this website.

website, Y-O-U-R-A-N-O-N-Y-M-O-U-S, Your Anonymous Feedback.com, and you can ask us a question, you can insult us, you can make us laugh, you can make up a story, you can call us names, do anything you want to do. Don't get crazy. And we don't know who you are. And it's popular because people just like privacy. And so have your privacy and go to Your Anonymous Feedback.com, and you will be on live radio, and we won't know who you are or where you are.

Absolutely. That's definitely an option. Give us a call at 877-9-60-90-60. Another option. Phil must have been listening to us because he is on the line and he's calling us from Jupiter. Good morning, Phil. You're a first-time caller.

Thank you for listening to Erwin Cars. Yes, I'm a customer of yours and I've had a 2017 Prius and I love the Prius, this is my second one, but I got a question probably for Rick. I understand I have to have a hybrid battery fan filter. I mean, I've never heard of this, and I didn't see it on the warranty book or anything like that, but what is a hybrid battery fan filter?

Is it in the back seat? And do I really need to get it replaced? Yeah, it's actually a screen. See, on the 17, I'm pretty certain if you look on the passenger side by the back seat there there's a little air vent opening and that's actually where it draws air in to the fan is back inside the battery case and it blows that air across the hybrid battery to help keep it cool there's a screen that we install inside that that helps prevent getting hair and dirt and dust building up inside that fan we've actually seen some of those blower fans

pack up with so much debris that no airflow gets to the battery and the battery will overheat and destroy the $3,000 battery. So it's a very inexpensive thing in comparison to get that screen installed and make sure you don't get that dust and debris getting in there and clean it all out every so often. What does the owner's manual recommend the frequency of that? The owner's manual actually doesn't recommend it

because to it at first didn't realize when they printed the books what was going on. This is kind of a change in production, a thing that they have changed in about the last three or four years we've seen this coming up. So it's not recommended by the manufacturer, but the original owner's manual. But it's now been a changed thing that they recommend about every couple of years you have it checked and cleaned. Where did that recommendation come out? A technical bulletin? Yes, in technical service bulletins.

But on the newer models now, 2021, it would have that in there. And they've also changed the design again to where the screens are built in, and they've changed the location of it to try to avoid getting that dust and dirt getting in there. Yeah, my friend has a Prius V, and he was getting something's going on with it, and he just had stuff in the back seat blocking it. Yes. And he was just told, just got to don't keep your bag down there, and it'll be fine and took care of the problem. If you look at the filter, can you tell that it needs to be changed?

You can see, you can look in there and see if it needs to be cleaned or changed. changed out, yes? Yes. To keep the dealership honest, which happens to be our dealership, you should ask to see the filter and be sure that it does require change because it's not, I'm suspicious even of my own dealership any time we recommend something that's not in the owner's manual. But now the fact that it's been explained to me that Toyota has put it in the owner's manual and later model Prius, it makes more sense that it would be accidentally excluded from the 2017.

So, Phil, great call. You just taught the dealer something about his own dealership. Yeah, and another thing about the Prius, is Prius going to still be relevant with all the electric cars and everything where everything's electric? I mean, do you see that we still, I mean, will I still make a Prius? For a long time, I mean, it's extremely relevant in the fact that it's the transition electric cars. People call it a hybrid. You know, it's an electric car. It's partially electric, that's all.

And it was the original trendsetter that really got the whole attention going toward the whole electrical movement. The best definition of a Prius, it's an electric car, because it is fully driven by electricity, that carries its own generator with it. So the best advantage, it's the best of all the worlds. Not only are you driving an electric car, but you have a car. But you have the ability to simply continue on with gasoline forever without any worries. And they will be around forever because if you think back in history, when automobiles were first coming out, horse and buggies didn't just vanish. It took many, many, many years before automobiles took over.

And this change to electric cars does not mean that gasoline engine cars are going to go away overnight. It's going to be decades that we're still going to have fuel available. They'll have Priuses in Central Park with a horse and buggies. Exactly. That'll be a quaint little ride around the park. Actually, our Toyota rep was discussing the run Toyota's plan for EVs, and it's not as aggressive as I'd like it to be, but by the end of the 2020s, they're expecting close to half of the sales to be hybrid and something like 13% being all-electric.

So they're slowly transitioning into it. So Toyota sees the hybrids as a transition to like an all-electric future, but for the next couple of decades we're going to see plenty of both okay okay super thanks a lot thank you thank you for the call for thanks for tuning in and we can't wait to hear from you again thanks for being a first-time caller and ladies and gentlemen give us a call lines are a little the phones are a little slow this morning 877 960 or you can text us at 772 49760 we're going to to go back to Rick and he's got some YouTube to share with us.

Well, I've got one from Negan One who says, I would like to ask Earl, do you think we'll get to a point that cars will not drive faster than the speed limit for the road? In other words, be physically restricted to the speed limit. Would you like it? I definitely like to stretch my right foot every now and then, and I'm definitely a bit older now. You know, actually, it'll be the other way around. I think when we fully get into the whole autonomous thing with electric cars,

you'll find cars going at incredibly fast speeds, especially on expressways. Because all the cars will be communicating with each other. So you'll be on the turnpike or the expressway. And you will know, your car will know, and you'll just be sitting there reading the newspaper. I guess you wouldn't be reading the newspaper. You'd be online, right? But anyway, you won't be paying attention, and your car will be taking you to wherever you want to go. And you'll probably be doing 100 miles an hour, 200 miles an hour.

Really, there's no limit to how fast you can go. Because if you have 1,000 cars on the expressway, and they're all going exactly the same speed. One inch apart. One inch apart. How safe is that? I will be blindfolded during that future. Yeah. So it'll be cool.

Better airflow. The cars will travel smoother. Absolutely. So it's going to be kind of interesting. It'll be, it sounds thrilling today, but it'll be very boring when it happens. I'm looking forward to seeing the intersection how they're going to handle that. Imagine, though, today, right now, you pull up to a four-way stop intersection and three other cars, so all four directions have a car there, and everybody has to stop and think and look at each other

to try to decide who goes first. Whereas with computers, every computer would immediately be talking to the other cars, and they'd be going right through that intersection at speed, Millimetres apart with no chance of the collision. Like I said, blindfold yourself before you get in that car. Today the aggressive person goes to the intersection. And, you know, I, you know, it's good being a recovering card. It looks like I confess everything.

But when I, I remember after a hurricane we had here on a comical Nancy and still has nightmares about this, but all the lights were out. I loved it. And you want to go from point A to point B and you had to go through all these intersections with no traffic lights. and so everybody's waiting a four-way stop or somebody to make a move and everybody's afraid so the aggressive driver just pulls one through and then the less the more timid follow the aggressive driver through and so I loved it because I'm you can make it from Jupiter to Lake Park in about

two minutes yeah I could go anywhere I wanted to go because nobody else was as stupid as I was to be able to go through these intersections so you look at the guy on each side again you kind of nod and not. Oh, you don't know. You don't make eye contact. You have to look dangerous. I'm giving away one of my cigarettes. When you make eye contact? That's the thrill of that all. I want to get the guy in the lane next to me to go through with me because that way if someone hits him on that side, I don't get hit. And that's why we need autonomous cars. Are we talking about... Get it all off the road. For any of no other reason.

Are we talking about 95 or are we talking about NASCAR? I'm thinking I don't even have to close my eyes. They both start with a millimeter. We are going to go to another first-hand caller, and how great is that? Everybody is just tuning into Irong cars. That's a great feeling because you know you make the show. Everybody is very important to the show.

We're going to go to Stephen, who's in Hope Sound. Good morning. Good morning, Stephen. what can we do for you hey do we lose you oh there you are how are you I'm doing good I'm doing good how are you all today great welcome

thank you and I'm Stephen I'm from Hub Sound and I wanted to ask you a question about the Corolla hybrid is it the same system drive system as a Prius where it's really electric and it's got a generator Yes. All Toyota hybrids run on the same basic principal system of full electric car that carries its own generator. All hybrids of all makes run on that system.

Okay. All right. That's a thought. Also, that's the only question I have, but I just wanted to tell you all that the last two cars I bought, I bought from you. And the process was very pleasant, which is rare, if not nonexistent. Oh, thanks. A lot of dealerships I go into, I just get fed up and walk out so stressed and don't even buy anything. But, you know, it's just Earl Stewart for me from now on because I bought a CHR in December, and I got a 2016 Corolla I bought brand new. Very pleasant. And Leonel is a great guy.

Leonell is super great. We love Leonell. We're just a bunch of nice guys. Nice guys and girls. He moves around so fast you can hardly. thing we call him the flesh I like him he's he's very good to work with you know

and just very everybody there's so friendly and pleasant and I'm always going to come back anytime I need a car it's I know where to go and I recommend you to my friends thank you Steve thank you Stephen very nice sir that's all I got girls blushing

keep knowing what you do you're doing great and you guys have a good day that's a whole lot Stephen you had a whole lot thank you so much Give us a call again. You know, it is embarrassing because we try to do an informative consumer advocacy show. But you've got to admit, you get a warm, fuzzy feeling when you get a call like that from Stephen. We had one before from Joanna.

And it's nice to get those calls. I want to remind everybody that we have a car dealership, and we've been around for a long time. This particular one I've had for 47 years, same location. but we have had some bad experiences with customers. I should say they've had bad experiences with us. And so I want to encourage anyone that has an ax to grind. We've had a few calls like that. We've had situations that were embarrassing that we found out about.

And I want to remind everybody that we sell a lot of cars in South Florida, thousands and thousands of cars. We're a fairly large volume dealership. And so we encourage people that have had bad experiences with us to call and talk about it. Because that's life in the big city. You know, every business, even Apple, even Costco has bad experiences with customers or customers have bad experiences with them. So we open the door. No one will hang up on you.

No one will speak over you. we will listen to your complaint, and we will deal with it in a respectful manner. So other car dealers, we welcome your calls, car salespeople, mystery shopping victims, we welcome your calls. And we, in fact, we're getting so few calls, we welcome, please, anybody. Just calls and give us help. You know, I have to say to our listeners share with them, there's no way that we sit here every Saturday morning and profess that we are perfect because there isn't anyone that's perfect

and if you think you are, let He without sin cast the first stone. With that said, we just love our first-time callers that are tuning in to Earl on Cars and in this stressful world that we're living in right now and I'm sure 150% of you would agree, isn't it just great to be able to,

well, I can either do it the easy, way or the hard way don't you just want to wake up in the morning and do it well the easy way and you just don't want to be taken advantage of i mean people are living hand to mouth and it's really very important but i will reiterate we do make mistakes we do you know stay at it like a lot of dealerships don't because there are no family members around and we have family members right there. And again, we are not perfect. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. And don't forget, I'd love to hear from you. We all would. Your AnonymousFeedback.com. Now back to... This guy.

Anonymous feedback. I saw an article stating that Honda in Australia is going to a fixed price model. Do you foresee it coming into North America anytime soon, so much for getting the best out-the-door price? That's an ain't going to happen.com thing. I did Google it that is announced. In Australia, Honda will be one price, all dealers, where if you buy a Honda, no matter where you go, you're going to pay the same thing. I'll probably be screamed at by the ardent capitalist and audience. but I would say I think that is a good thing, but that's not going to happen in the United States,

and Earl can tell you why. Well, yeah, it probably won't. I was going to say eventually it will happen, I think, but it's going to take a long time. Saturn tried that, by the way, a long time ago with General Motors, and it didn't work. Actually, Saturn cheated a little bit because they didn't have individual Saturn dealers competing against each other. they had a group of Saturn dealers. For example, in Palm Beach County, Florida, Ed Morris owned all the Saturn dealerships in Palm Beach County,

even in Martin in adjoining counties. And he had three or four or five of them, I forgot. And if you wanted to buy a Saturn, you paid sticker price. And if you didn't like it, you'd go to the Saturn dealer next door, but it was also a sticker price. You had to go out of town to find the competing. So competition is a good thing. in normal times.

And I think it'll happen, but there'll be a long time. And I don't think it's going to work in Australia. I agree with too. I think, you know, Honda, how are they going to compete with Toyota and Nissan and Kia in Australia if everybody can cut the price of the Honda dealer? They're going to have to do it with incentives, but they're going to find the same problem that you found in the late 80s, early 90s when you did one price at Pontiac. Yeah.

You get into a, you know, the same thing we struggle with, but hey. And you have two other variables. If you do have the one price, the dealer can still cheat because he can, as we say, steal the trade under value your trade in. He can overcharge you on the interest, and most people finance the car. So dealers make more money financing the cars and selling the maintenance contracts, et cetera, then they do, you know, then they do in the profit on the car. So it's a complex thing. It's one of the more complex transactions.

It's not like buying a watermelon or a loaf of bread. There's a lot of variables. And the dealers have got them all figured out. And when you go and sit down on a poker game and you look around the table and you don't know who the sucker is, that means you're the sucker. So when you walk into a car dealership, you're the sucker. You're the sucker. That's one of my favorite quotes.

Yes. More anonymous feedback. Any chance there will be a beefed-up 2.5 turbo Rav4 in the near future? I don't know. I haven't heard anything about that. I don't know, Rick, anything? We were talking about turbos on the show, I think, a couple of weeks ago and how efficient they are. And I know that, well, the Super is a turbo.

They brought that back as a turbo. Well, as a matter of fact, Toyota's moving their trucks away from V8s. Right. And they're going down to a V6, but, turbos. And they've been running turbo diesels in the highlux in other countries for years and years. So the technology is there and they've got the improvements and they're, you know, they've made it a turbo now that unlike those of 10, 20 years ago that they'd spin up so fast that they'd just burst apart, they don't have those issues anymore and they're working.

Okay. Next anonymous feedback. Good morning all. Nice to see. your maskless faces again. Thank you. What can you tell us about the power train for the new Corolla crossover? I don't know much about it. I know it's a small SUV. It's kind of strange. Toyota's really filling up the SUV space.

You know, we have a land cruiser, a Sequoia, Four Runner, Highlander, Venza, Ravre, what else we got? The Corolla crossover? Yeah. I mean, it's, I'm going to, you mean, it's probably going to be a two-prose. Let's go back to the question, the power train. I'm a little confused. The best answer, it's a Toyota drive line.

Yeah, it's going to be probably a four-cylinder. Tell people what the power train is, that's for starters. Basically, power train just simply means your engine, transmission, and the drive axle. So basically the guts of the car, the nuts and bolts, mechanical nuts and bolts of the car. And it's probably about the same as a corolla. We could do a four-hour show trying to describe all the different features on these engines. But basically, what you're getting is an engine that is designed to have the best combination of power, fuel economy, low emissions, and reliability. And when I think PowerTrain, I'm thinking about what is a value to the listeners, is that a lot of these deals out there are selling or giving away PowerTrain warranties.

A power train warranty is useless. When you see these dealerships advertising free lifetime warranty, it's on the power train. The power train is the most reliable non-problem causing part of a car. It's built to last for the life of the car. As long as you use, keep it lubricated. So if you have a car, you have a power train, and you have to keep it lubricated with oil and grease. And if you do that, according to the manufacturer's recommendation, the power chain will outlive you. I mean, it's not going to fail.

So when they give you a free warranty, it's worthless, and it's worth what you pay for it, which is nothing. You're more likely to see a failure caused by an outside source. Something hits your oil pan, pokes a hole. And if that happens, a warranty doesn't cover it. The only thing the warranty covers is if you obeyed the rules, to maintain it. And if you maintain, it's catch-22. You maintain it, it won't fail. Yeah, exactly. And if it does fail because you didn't maintain it, it's not covered. So catch-22, it's worthless. If it's free, take it.

I was- Like nitrous in your tires. If it's free, take it. I was reading an article about the power train, and what you just pointed out, it's really important, that maintenance to take care of it. And there you have it, longevity. I mean, It has a life of its own. We are going to go to Walter. Stewart, are you finished? No, we can catch up after Walter. Okay.

We're going to go to Walter, who's calling us from Stewart, and we've talked to him before. Good morning, Stuart. Our, Walter. Hello. Listen, I just want to let you know. I went to a dealer. I drive a Toyota, and I had upwards of $1,000 of repair work that needed it to be done, and they've previously done what's called a concierge service,

which is to pick up the car and drop it off again. They agreed to that, and it took five days to get it done. Then I had tires put on and was not told that apparently, and it's not anywhere on the Toyota paperwork, when you have tires put on, you automatically get a two-year 24,000 or whatever, whatever road hazard warranty. And I pointed that out, but an interesting point to this whole subject.

So on Monday, I try to get the car in, and it finally, I had to drive to the dealer on Friday to find out what's going on here. This dealer, I generally have a good experience with them. But when I went into the service area, there were six service advisors, not one, car in the in this service bay I mean in this other words you pull in I guess the service advisor looks at your car and then maybe they pull it into a different location obviously to do the repair work but I was told on Tuesday morning we're short staffed I was told on Wednesday morning we're shot short staff we cannot

pick you up I said I'll drive to the dealer no we don't have a driver for the shuttle service. So you can imagine how this is all going down. In addition to that, the service advisor did not even return my phone call about the road hazard warranty, but I'm not going to ramble,

but I wanted to say that point one. Point two, Chevron and Toyota have a joint venture going to produce hydrogen in the event to install hydrogen pumps at Chevron stations and to propel an electric car through hydrogen.

So when everybody talks about electric electric, Chevron has a joint venture going with Toyota. And the third point, and I won't go further, is that the Yaris Hybrid Cross Track has been unveiled in Japan right now. Well, there's a lot of information, Walter. Let me go back to the dealership issue. Have you gone up the line and try to get hold of the general manager? Because what you've described sounds like kind of a chaotic situation. And you say you've had good experience with the dealer in the past.

So if you could get through to somebody in charge, I mean a general manager or an owner up the line, you'd be doing them a favor. What I finally found out, the service director, I found out there's a service manager, and then there's a service director. She agreed. She said, this is the last time we're going to do it. But maybe a point I'm making on this. I as a customer, you as a dealer, just so you know, I think that's an add-on feature that I would be willing to pay money for that my car picked up.

I mean, the concierge? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, we've thought about it. And we, in fact, we've done it during the worst part of the COVID situation. But let's go back to the other point you touched on was the hydrogen. And I'm surprised about that. Stu has a point.

Yeah, the toy has made the Marai, which is a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle for several years now. I actually got to drive it at a show in Las Vegas years ago. It's pretty cool. So it takes hydrogen and it breaks it apart. to, I'm sorry, it combines it with oxygen to create electricity and it emits water from the tailpipe. And so they are focusing on that exclusively on the West Coast. I think you can only get them in California. And the challenge is the infrastructure having hydrogen filling stations. And that sounds like the venture they're going with Chevron to produce these filling stations

up and down the California. I'll have to Google that because I wasn't aware of that. My source on that is CNBC, and that when you go to CNBC and put in Chevron Toyota, this is like about, like, three, four months ago. It was pointed out that the idea is to have basically a hydrogen source at Chevron station to fuel the vehicle. Sure, yeah. Rick has a point. And the other thing is, I don't know why Toyota abandons people at the local. low-end, like they took the Yaris off, but in Japan, now they have a Yaris 4-4 cross-track,

which is kind of completely different vehicle, but I would think that maybe Toyota would think about the low-end customers sometime and think about bringing back an echo-like car because that 1.5-liter engine is one of the best engines Toyota made. Yeah, Walter, it's all about demand, and you find some unusual cars in Europe and Asia, because the roads are different, the cultures are different, people are different. Americans, unfortunately, tend to like big fat cars, and we've got a lot of big fat people, and we've got a lot of big fat trucks, and that's just the way our culture is. But you're right, you know, you travel around the world and you see extremely small. fuel-efficient cars. I mean, some like two-passenger. And it works in different parts of the world. But in America, with a small subcompact, it never worked. And Toyota stopped selling it because

the supply and demand. But you're right. There is a market for it. It's not big enough a market to justify the manufacturer in this part of the world. Yeah, well, I guess, you know, times change and whatever, but I guess maybe the point I was making is that, how can I say, as you're pointing out, if you're selling cars above the sticker price, couldn't you sell a small car and still make a profit? Sure, I'm not much. That's another reason that small cars never have done well here is that the margin. or small dealers are the mechanism to sell the car for the manufacturer and the dealer wants to make a big fat profit an echo

a stew would probably maybe remember what is the margin at full sticker on an echo I'm going to say maybe $400 okay what is the same thing well I'm saying that's between invoice then you maybe have another 400 it's less than a thousand I would say and what is it now on a Sequoia or a land cruiser over 5,000

yeah so the big trucks and the and the heavy, the large vehicles have large markups and big profits, and the small ones don't. And the dealers want to make the big profit, the manufacturer also makes a lot more on a truck or an SUV than they do on a subcom bank. Again, it's a matter of capitalism and profitability and follow the money. So like it or not, that's the way supply and demand makes it happen. Real quickly, do you still offer concierge service? Yes, we do.

And we charge for it, and we didn't during the COVID crisis at the heart of it, but we do offer it. And I'm like you. I've always thought we dropped the ball because I think to a lot of people, time is money, money is time. If I'm a businessman and I have a job that keeps me busy all the time, and I'm in downtown wherever. I don't want to have to go and wait in line at 7 o'clock in the morning

and sit there for three hours to get my car service. I'd rather have someone pick it up, take care of it, and if I have to pay for that, I come out ahead of the game because I'm able to work and make money and not have the inconvenience of having to sit in a service department or a customer lounge waiting for my car to get fixed. So I'm with you on that one.

with you on that one, Walter. I think we should push the effort and make it more obvious. Yeah, and not only that, maybe, well, of course there's a shortage of cars, but I think that's a selling point to the dealer, even

in an advertising thing. You know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. But anyway, listen, I appreciate you guys' time, and I'm a regular listener. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We look forward to hearing from you again. We're going to go to Steve, who's been holding from New Jersey, and he is on the line right now. Steve?

Good morning, Nancy. How are you? I'm well, thank you. Thank you for your patience. Thank you. I have a question for Rick. I have a rather simple camera. front-facing camera on my car that I plug into the port in my center console and I'm thinking about getting a little bit more sophisticated camera system that's both front-facing and rear-facing

as well as when I shut it off having some type of motion detection and so if anybody hits my bumper or my side of my car, it'll turn on. My question is I think I won't install it myself because I'm worried about how the wire

how the wires travel by the airbags on all the pillars and as well as how to connect it electrically and here's my question if this was wired to my fuse box again assuming a professional is doing this

would anything happen to my new car warranty where the manufacturer and a dealer to say it's voided no not really if it were to cause a failure there's a potential for that but i can't see where any anybody would even care i see dash cams 20 times a day on cars and we've gotten to where unless it's something that you're in for a warranty concern that was obviously caused by the installation of the dash cam now that would be a different subject like say a customer came in said hey this plastic trim panel isn't staying right it keeps popping loose and we look at it we find that somebody had ran wires down through there and they damaged the clips a little bit you know we'd

say i'm sorry but that's no longer warranty because it was damaged by the installer but if something say the radio quit working because they had tapped in on the radio power leads but the But the radio is the problem, just because you've tapped in on that power wire, no, that's not going to be anything related. So it would be a case-by-case thing. Now personally for me, my vehicle and my wife's vehicle both have dash cams that have dual cams. One in the front, one going out the back window for safety factor.

If you're in an accident, it's not your word against theirs, it's your video against their word and you know a video speaks millions of words so it's I consider it a great thing I would recommend though find a place like Best Buy or somewhere a good competent installer to have it installed and go with it now other question could I possibly use the port that's by the steering column that's for the I think it would you call ODB or something the OBD is I really don't recommend ever tapping anything on that OBD plug because that actually is where you've got the canned communications.

I would avoid that. I would use just a normal power circuit that has 12 volts on it. Okay. Okay. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. We love hearing from you, Steve. I hope we answered your questions.

We did. Thank you very much. We look forward to hearing from you again. 877-960 or you can text us at 772-497-2-497-60 quickly. Jen has a question and it's about warranty and she wants to know if her warranty would be void, if it would be voided if she didn't go to the dealership. No, you can have your car service and maintain by anyone. You have to keep a record of it.

be sure that you're obeying the rules of the owner's manual recommendation, but your warranty, you can't have warranty work done anywhere except at a franchise dealer, but if you maintain your car according to the owner's manual, you have avoided your warranty. Hope we answered your question, or Earl answered your question, Jen. Give us a call. We'd love to hear from you. 877-960, or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-3-0. Now back to Stu.

Okay, more anonymous feedback. I love the reintroduction of the Venza, but I also love a sunroof, any option available to get one rather than the non-opening glass roof. Just for listeners who know the Venza, the Venza was a crossover SUV that Toyota introduced and then stopped producing a few years ago. then they reintroduced it, and it doesn't look anything like the old one, but the limited model has what they call the stargaze panoramic roof, and it covers the entire roof of the car, and it's kind of cool because you push a button, and it electronically goes opaque. You know, have you ever seen those, well, not many people have seen them, but it uses electric current to keep it clear when the current goes off, it gets cloudy, and so that you can do that with this roof. so it's all glass so no you can't cut a hole in the glass the other two models the le and the x le don't have that but it doesn't come with the sunroof

and so the only option would be to do an aftermarket one which we completely completely say avoid doing because there are nothing but problems anytime you cut a hole in the roof as good as the installation is there's going to be a leak there's going to be corrosion problems and and other unforeseen things so unfortunately no you can't cannot get a sunroof in a Venza, unless you take a big chance. I always saw the side windows on the vehicle.

It'd be great to have that feature to, during the day, they darken just enough to cut the glare. And at night, they go back total clear again. Yeah. Toyota, are you listening? It'd be great. Does more anonymous feedback. Does Toyota offer a theft protection option on new cars on the sticker? It shows 250.

I think that all of the vehicles have some type of, you know, theft deterrent, like locking, steering wheel, you have to make sure that the chip has to match. Rick could probably get into that. Well, immobilizer systems, automatic door locks. The security features just go on and on. Various different models have various things. But if you're meaning like a full alarm system. Toyota doesn't. No, generally.

There are a few cars that do have that option or you can, you know, add on. on a Toyota factory alarm system? We're talking too much about Toyota forks. Yeah. Well, I can have a more generalized answer is if you saw that on a car, it's very likely the dealer, it could be a dealer installed option, they could security or even a port installed thing, and this would be applicable to, I think most manufacturers, they tend to be an accessory, they're not really a factory option.

And actually, immobilizer systems have been out on just about every brand of car for the past 20 years or longer and they're getting so much harder to defeat on all the systems that you know it's almost impossible really to steal a car unless you hook up a tow truck and pull it that's good news all right uh go back to some text messages uh earl if i do my own oil changes and other maintenance myself well i risk being denied a future warranty claim how can i demonstrate that all required maintenance was done you know the manufacturers don't try to prove you wrong to not honor a warranty you just need some reasonable evidence if you do it yourself I would keep a receipt of the oil I bought the oil

filters I bought if you really want to make it ironclad buy it from a dealer and the deal that would do the warranty work and they would know you and you go in there and you'd buy the oil filter you buy the oil and you take it home and you do the work yourself and there would be no argument whatsoever but you can buy the oil anywhere keep a receipt but you're not going to need it yeah like kind of rick said manufacturers aren't hell-bent on like looking to cancel your warranty if something happened as a result of negligence like if they suspected the oil wasn't changed and that was like then that might be an issue and it'd be helpful to prove that you were doing that but you know it's it's like unless what the

modification or something that you did causes the problem your probably not going to have any issues. You'll get this conversation a lot of times from dealers and you'll come in and you'll say yeah you have to have this done because if you don't you're going to avoid your warrant it. Well that's not true. I mean it can be true but in most cases it's not true. If you have owners manual recommendations you should have them done but you don't have to have them done exactly on time or exact mileage. If you're within a few thousand miles, If you're in a few months and you have it done, then you're covered. They're not going to take your warranty away.

And Rick was shaking his head and as a mechanical genius. It sounds like he's been done that road where he saved his receipts and everything. One factor to remember is if you, say if you modify your headlights, you put the wrong headlights in there and it causes an issue there. And that is no longer warrantable on that part. That doesn't mean that your engine warranty is gone. The rest of the warranty on your car is still at that. It's a claim that would be denied. And I actually had one occasion when a customer brought their car in,

the oil pan was literally full of sludge, and by the number on the filter, I could tell the oil had never, ever been changed. And the car had like 20,000 miles on it. And when we presented her with this evidence, she said, but I've got my neighbor down the street that does all my oil change. And it's like, well, you need to have a talk with them because they haven't been doing it. They had been taking her money and not doing the work. Oh, my goodness.

And her engine was destroyed. Oh, my God. And she got stuck with it. It just was that situation. It's like Jen, who was worried about her warrant and whether she had to go to the dealership. I bet his price was very reasonable. Oh, it must have been. Yeah.

To do nothing. But you're right. It comes from the dealers. that's where that comes from. That's always a warning. And then it became part of like an urban legend. Well, you come into a service drive. Remember, you're talking to us.

They call themselves a managers or assistant managers. They're salesmen. They're service salespeople. They get paid on commission. So you come in, you're with a car. And he says, you need to buy this and buy this and buy this. And they said, well, I can't afford that. Well, you have to have it done because if you don't have it done,

you're going to avoid your warranty. Then you're going to have a $5,000 report. repair and it's not going to be taken care of. So you get that BS when you go into a lot of car dealerships. They threaten you with voiding your warranty. And a lot of times the things they tell you have to have done are not the manufacturer's recommendation. They're not in your owner's manual. They're in the dealer's recommended maintenance, which is usually fluff, and it doesn't require. Not always, but usually fluff. Okay. Here's a text. Is there any danger of shock plugging in or unplugging an electric vehicle in the rain?

Sounds like it. I hope not, because I've done that. But yeah, it's kind of scary. I'm sure there's some protection, but is there an amount of water that could cause you to get shocked? If you were in a torrential downpour, I wouldn't do it. Yeah. If it's just lightly raining, just holding an umbrella over it so that the water's not splashing directly on the connector and plug it in.

I'm going to Google that because I just realized that, you know, I'm in potential danger. I think it'd be the same thing as if you were plugging an extension cord into an outlet outdoors in a light rain versus a torrential downpour. The plugs look very complex, though. It looks like there's like holes in there. You can't see any of the metal electrodes in the thing. So it's buried in there. They're very protected. So I guess there's some protection from the elements.

But, yeah, if it was in downpour. It'd be a great lawsuit. If you've got electrocuted your estate. would be able to pursue the manufacturer. Exactly. Elon would work for you. Oh, that's so reassuring. Nancy's just thinking of her near future. I was like, honey, can you plug that in for me?

Really? Okay, we have shut our lines down. Jonathan has given me the signal. Jonathan's great. He just sits over there and does what he does, and what a talent. He is a huge part of our Erlon cars. He is rarely mentioned.

Thank you, Jonathan. Stu, we're going to go back to you. Yeah, I got another text here. With the price of everything going up, especially cars, shouldn't people wait until things calm down before paying too much for a newer used car? Absolutely. I've talked about that over and over again.

It's a terrible time to buy a newer used car. unless you absolutely have to. It's a great time to sell a used car, trade in. Can I segue into an important piece of information that Stu didn't know, and I didn't know until I read it in Automotive News? And we talk a lot about off-lease cars, because when you lease a car, typically we've had the option, unless he has the option to buy the car at the end of the lease.

Now, because used cars are so high price, and off-lease cars are so valuable, we just found out that Ford and Chrysler are both preventing the dealers from, and the lessees from buying the car at the residual value that they have to buy it at the market value.

And the Ford, if the car's within 120 miles, 120 days of the end of the lease, you have to pay market value instead of the residual, which was a shock to Stu when I told them, and shocked to me when I read it, and Chrysler says within 30 days. So I don't know if any other manufacturers are following suit, but you should realize that you have yourself a potential banza and the residual value opportunity in your lease car when it goes off lease,

except if you're driving a Ford and you're within 120 days or a Chrysler within 30 days. okay we're all caught up with text messages let me just double check anonymous feedback real quick and we're all caught up we have YouTube well actually I think you just answered it

because Kyle was asking when would you estimate use car values coming back down have they peaked thanks I think they're pretty close to peaked I mean everything moves slowly but I've always predicted

the last quarter of the year And I still, October, November, December, I think things will be back to a semblance of normal in pricing and new and used cars by the last quarter. And it'll just get there gradually, and it'll be regionally. I mean, we've got to remember we're international. You know, we're talking all over the United States now, and California, it'll happen. And we talked about Montreal, prices coming down and used cars of Montreal. And they haven't come down in South Florida. but they will come down.

So it happens slowly and regionally. Just be careful out there. Here's a statistic from the current issue of automotive news. In the first quarter of 2021, the average auction value of a car was $21,925, let's call it $22,000. And the first quarter of 2019, it was $17,000. So that's a huge difference. and the used car values

and it'll adjust and wait unless you have to buy a car and if you can get rid of a used car that you have in the family and get by without it for a few months you can really make a home run by selling that used car

shop it go to Carvana go to CarMax go to We Buy Anycar.com go to your local dealer go to Auto Nation, a big dealer and get bids on your used car you will be amazed what you can sell it for, or what you can get for a trade in.

The problem is when you trade it in, and the mystery shopping report, which I'm about ready to read, will explain this to you. When you trade in your car, I don't care how much they give you for it. They're going to get you when they sell you the new car, and they're charging obscene amount of money for new cars now. Great information, Earl. Stu, have you been? We're good.

Oh, great. I'm going to take a moment to mention Earl's column, which is considering carpooling Uber, lift, or rentals. It's a great read, and you can go to Earl on Cars, and you can check it out. Also, we are coming up to the Mystery Shopper Report, and I do have to mention Agent Lightning, and what a find. She has been amazing on this journey that she's been on with us from the very beginning. She just had the talent, and she had the understanding, wisdom, patience. Her experience goes a long way, and she loves what she does, and it shows. So we're going to, this week, she took us to Orlando, and well, I'll let Stu do you have a

something to add to that? Yeah. So, you know, we're kind of like on a Kia kick. I think the last three or four mystery shops were Kia dealerships. But we were astounded last week. We, well, it's in the shopping report, but we went down to Phil Smith Kia. And we were, had a staggeringly large markup on the car. And we wanted to check out another Kia dealership, but we wanted to get out of the area.

So Agent Lighten took a little trip up to Orlando and, well, the story will speak for itself. I thought things, well, I won't say, Neil, I'll give it away. Now back to the recovering car dealer and the mystery shop from the greater Orlando area, and it is from City, Kia. And remember, we want to hear from you. We'd love for you to vote on the mystery shopping report. Earl? Yeah, it's a good thing that Agent Lightning likes to travel,

because we've never had such a widespread number of shops, and it really adds to our credit. Now that we're international, at least we're going out of state, and we've done that a couple of times. Like Stu said, we have stumbled across some outrageous markups on cars, and I hasten to add that there's nothing illegal about charging way, way over sticker price for a car. To me, it's a moral issue or an ethical issue, taking advantage of a short-term situation, but that's just me, and there's nothing illegal about them. When we grade our mystery shopping reports, we focus on truly illegal or deceptive.

If you charge a million dollars for a car and the car only has a sticker price of $25,000, it's not illegal, strange as it may sound. If you find somebody that will pay you a million dollars, it's strictly legal. So we would not give that person a failing grade on our mystery shopping report. As long as it was disclosed, if you charged a million dollars and you made them believe they were only paying $1,000, that's bad. So as long as you charge a lot of money and you say you're charging a lot of money and you don't deceive the person, then you're going to pass on our mystery shopping report. So, so we're following up, as Stu said, on the Phil Smith Kia down in Fort Lauderdale, there's a $12,000 markup over MSRP on a new, 2002.

The keyers are out early, the 2002s, and it was a $12,000 markup over a telluride, 2002. So we investigated because the Wall Street Journal reporter called me, and interviewed me about prices on cars, and we told her that we're charging more money for the cars we sell, and all the car dealers are charging more money for the cars we sell because of supply and demand. And I said, well, we don't charge over my dealership over a sticker price. And they said, well, do you know dealers that are charging?

We said, yeah. And we give her the name of a customer that we sold a car to. And this customer had bought a car at Phil Smith and told the story, and that's the reason we missed it, mystery shopped him. So, following up on this, we decided to, you know, mystery shop another Kia dealership and see what happens. So we focused on this dealer in Orlando. It's interesting that they call themselves City Kia.

I like City Kia because it made me think of Dodge City and may think of, you know, the whole... Marshall Dillon. Marshall Dillon. We talk about South Florida being the Dodge City or the, you know, it's the Sodom and Gamora of car dealerships. But we find out now that it stretches upward north, and we find some very interesting dealerships north of us. I think the whole state of Florida can be a while, wild west. I even thought this morning when I was reading the mystery shopping report with my coffee, I said to Alexa, I said, Alexa, play the theme from Gunsmoke.

Because we need a theme. You know, we got banned from using the good, bad, and the ugly on the show. I'm still using it. And I tried the Dodge City theme, and we probably couldn't use that one either, but it just doesn't have the twang that the good of the bad and the ugly does. But it would be a good one. I didn't get the memo on that. No.

That good, bad, and ugly is me. My name's written all over. Yeah. Anyway, so that's what we did. And Agent Lightning headed up to City, Kiev, Greater Orlando, to see if they could top the performance of Phil Smith down in Broward County, Fort Lauderdale area. And here's a report, speaking as if I were Agent Lightning. I arrived to the dealership just after 9 a.m., entered the showman that was greeted by a young woman.

That's refreshing. We need more female salespeople. I'm not going to get on the female thing. It just comes out naturally. We had a call her a couple weeks ago that said that's demeaning to call women. women, females. I guess so. I mean, I'm too old to understand the political correctness or incorrectness of that, but I defer if it is demeaning. I thought lady was demeaning at some point, but if you look hard enough, you can find something demeaning about everything, I guess. Anyway, walked in and the woman said, the woman's salesperson, won't know if I had an appointment. I told her no, I just wanted to see if they had any available new telly rides in stock.

While we spoke a salesperson named Diego approached and offered to help, we introduced ourselves and made some small talks, and I pointed to the telly ride, parked just outside, and said, that's the one I want. I will bring a chill to a salesman's back. You really want to feel good when they say, I want that car. Diego seemed pleased with the selection, suggests that we'd go to take a look at it. he said it was the only

Telluride they had in stock Now that should scare the hell out of you right there You know Run You go into any store And that's a last Of what do you want to buy You're not going to get a bargain

That's the last pair of shoes Yeah I'm sorry we don't That's it broke It's the last onion in the box You like those shoes Well it's it only street So you're in trouble Now the last tell you ride

And then he had to Rub it in by saying it's the best-selling SUV in the market. I don't know if that's true or not. Well, it's probably not true, but it's certainly not true. Inaccurate. But anyway, you know he's excited about it. It's the only one.

At least he says so. So you're in trouble. Okay. That's the reason we say, don't buy a car today unless you have to. We talked about the vehicle, and Diego said that he was impressed with how much I knew about it. She's been shopping them for three weeks. He asked if I'd like to drive, but I said I would. He asked me to wait outside while he found the key.

They always got to find the key. That's standard, and it's an annoyance. And one day, there won't be keys. That's very soon. That'll be with the app. That's coming. Exactly, yeah. While he was away, I climbed inside the SUV,

fiddled around with the seats in the mirror. Diego was back in a few minutes, climbed into the pastor's seat, and said that I looked like I was ready to drive away. And we both chuckled at that. on the ride he demonstrated expertise in the vehicle, covering quite a bit more than my salesperson

from Phil Speth. When we pulled back into the dealership, Diego asked me to take over the driving so he could park in the same spot near the front door. We got out of the vehicle continuing his presentation of the exterior. He opened the rear hatch,

showed me how the seat folded away. It was about then that I saw the Monroney label, MSRP, mandatory. that you always look at the MSRP. That tells you a whole lot. That tells you how to compare when you are price shopping, which you have to do.

Look at the Monroney and be sure that it is the real Monroney. And I saw the addendum label that accompanied it, and that's not the real Monroney. That's the phony monorony. And they're made to look like the real Monroney. The MSRP was 15. $50,325. And that's supposed

to usually, that's a lot of money. People say, I don't pay sticker. Well, guess what? If you're going to buy a car today, you're lucky if you pay sticker. But the addendum, the Photium, Mnoni added, sit down for this one, as John

from Palm City would say, sit down for this one, added $17,470. $90.90. A new world record. Hard to believe that you would add $17,490 to full sticker. But that's what they're doing. And wait, there's more.

Listen. Stay tuned. So now we're looking at the addenum added $24.95, $2,495 for a host of unwanted, virtually worthless, dealer-installed items. You don't want to pay for those. cabin sanitation service that's a rollably new one door edge and cup guards what's a cup guard

I don't know I'm thinking it's a liner door edge guard is when you have the door handle the hollow shape behind it on the door they put a little clear plastic thing that's so your rings and that don't scratch the spot behind the door handle and of course they're good old they all reliable

nitrogen and then you get five free free refill after that it gets $300 who knows what it is And the rest of the adenum was a 14,995 market adjustment. So those two added together was there's 17.490. So on the grand total on the old gold scoreboard, how old am I? Who remembers the old gold scoreboard? Not me.

I know you don't. That's a cigarette, folks. City Key is list price. You have to lie down. You can't just sit down. Lie down for this one. City Kia's list price on the Telleride that had a sticker, what did I say it was, 50,000, 325. 50,000.

The out-the-door price, list price, $67,815. And remember, that's the only Kia. That's bold. Only telluride. And you want it, you're going to pay the price. Diego must have seen my jaw drop because Hurdley said this was a very very, you're going to pay. high demand car and the only one they have. He said, they fly off a lot as soon as they get them in. I asked that the price was negotiable and he suggested we go inside. You don't want to answer that

question. He says, let's go inside. It'd be harder for you to get away and get some info. I'll get some info from you. Then we'll talk with the infamous sales manager. The game playing begins. Diego was entering my info into computer I pulled up their website on my phone and found the telewrite that I found earlier the online price was

as I said before MSRP 50,000 325. There was no markup and this is all in the advertisement the estimated taxes and fees total about 4,500 and the Althador price was 54-929

now that's the advertised price but wait a minute he just told me it was $67,815. That's a huge difference. That's, what is that? $13,000? Yeah.

Okay. $13,000 more than the Althador price. The Althador advertised price. So now we're getting, we're not talking about just price gouging. We're talking about deception. You can't advertise one price and then tell the customer it costs, $13,000 more. But that's exactly what's going on here.

Diego then said he would go speak with his sales manager and see if he could come up for me before he left. I showed him the listing on the phone. I said, this doesn't match what's on the window sticker. So I showed him what he advertised. He took a picture of my phone picture with his phone and walked over to see his manager. So he walked and said, hey boss, look at this.

He didn't know about it. So Dingo returned in 10 minutes with another man, I assume was the sales manager. His name was Jimmy. He actually asked me where I got that information. I said, I got on your website. Jimmy disputed this. Now he's arguing with me. And said, it couldn't be right.

He wasn't sure how I got that kind of pricing. Why didn't he just go to the website himself? He said, even if it was online, it shouldn't apply to the telly ride. They're priced differently, he said. Now, should, shouldn't, it did, okay? And there it is. I have a picture of it, and he saw the picture. I told him I didn't want to argue with him

and asked him to give me his best price. It's funny, Diego was a gentleman and a class act, albeit at a price couch. But now he's got a manager, this being nasty, and questioning your integrity, and just not the way to go. Anyway, the top line was labeled

market value selling price $50,000325. Then they added city care for $24.95 and a market adjustment for $14.9.95. This brought the total purchase price to $67,8.15. But wait, there's more. How could there be more?

Almost impossible to imagine. $8.99, pre-delivery service charge. $837 and non-tax fees. Now, right away, you're talking about $17, $18, $100 in addition to the huge markup you've already seen. Now, the outdoor price is really, okay, we've sat down, we've lay down. Now, bury yourself underground. Well, you get underground for this one.

Out the door, true out the door, $73,600. $39.99. I'm having palpitations. I can picture the fetal position. Yeah. I try hard to get Jimmy to discount the car. He would not insisting that it's the only one they have. It's true. And he will sell it for that price, which is true, sadly. It's not on their website right now.

Oh, it's on the website. Not today. And this was done on Tuesday. Well, it might be because they didn't know was on the website. I think it got sold. Yeah, I mean, you know, they didn't get caught. Anyway, I said it appeared that we are at an impasse. He didn't disagree. He didn't care as long as he sold the car, which he figured he would, to somebody.

I thanked them both for the time and left. Okay, there we are, folks. I mean, I got to turn the page and see what that was. $73,699. sticker price with $50,000, $325,000, is that round numbers of $23,000? That's a round number, $23,000 over sticker? No, it was $18,389 over MSRP. $18,000.

I estimated the gross profit on that to be about $24,000. Yeah, so that's how much they'd make. That would be a new record gross profit for anybody. It's six slam dunks. Yeah, exactly. So here we go. Okay, the rules will we go on this. The rules will we go on this.

Hang on for a second. There's no limit on what you can charge for a car. Sure. Where we draw the line in our grading process is that illegality, and illegality means when you advertise a car at a price and you won't honor the advertised price. That folks is illegal. So take that into consideration when you grade

And we would like to hear your grades You can YouTube the grades You can Facebook the grades You can text the grades, you can call the grades You can't call, we can't call, we turn the phone so So they're coming in They're coming in So Jonathan Wellington says charging 17,000 or more

Over sticker price is not illegal but it is disreputable I wonder if Kia headquarters knows about these dealerships And their sorted activities I give them an F for find another dealership Bob gives an F for City Kia Then Anne Marie I'm sorry not Ann Marie Linda

That's an easy one F oh my gosh Call the paramedics to carry out Agent Lightning LOL Martha gives an F minus minus And so yeah

like the whole pricing thing I'm with you on that What we should do is we should get Agent Lightning because she's really good actress Fempt to fake a heart attack Yeah when something like this happens she should clutch her chest and just slump over.

Just follow it on the desk. And see if they have a, you know, deprimpillator. I mean. Be careful. If we could video that. Clear. So what did it for me and it was the monkey wrench, the agent lightning threw into it, was when she pulled up the website and he disputed that it was on there.

I was really familiar with it. The guy should have known. It was on, they have an online shopping tool. They have the same website. that we do and and it's they provide an out-to-door price and the guy was on their website and he called in the question if it was legit you know I saw I'm gonna fail them too because that's that's where they lost me yeah there's a Florida statute and it's true in all states I believe that you cannot advertise any

product at a price and not honor the price and it happens every day but this is the most egregious violation we've ever seen okay Rick I've got Guy Larrabee F, F, F, F, F, F, F, Nagan, one. All from Guy, we have four F. Negan, one, triple F, F, F, so I guess that's F cubed. Let's see here, we have Mark Anderson, Mark from St. Louis, advertised grade D, in-person grade F. Andrew with an F, Mark Smith with an F, Brian with an F,

Mark Ryan, F, classic Mickey Mouse Games from an Orlando dealership, Bro scientist says 67K My buttocks hurt F can I give them a foobar Whoa Just don't spell it out No no no no no

And for me It's an illegal activity F right off the bat Hey first before I vote I wanted to ask you You said you were drinking coffee Whenever you read the mystery shopping report This morning

After you were finished Did you have a martini No Oh, okay. I did. Ladies and gentlemen, I have to point on Agent Lightning again. And her experience, her patience, she clearly stated in the mystery shopping report. I don't want to argue about it. Her understanding, her wisdom, she is amazing.

And this journey, as I said earlier, that she's been on, it has been fantastic. She really gets into the meat of it all. I give the City Kia. I don't think there is a grade. And it's not funny. And I don't find it amusing. And there are a lot of people out there that are being taken advantage of

City Kia, clean up your act. There we go. Sounds like an F. Yeah, and the shame is you can make a ton of money today of your car dealer. We admit we're making record profits. or we're making record profits and it's a little I feel kind of bad about it

but it's a way it's capitalism but you can make a lot of money by selling cars at a high price you don't have to trick your customers you openly if he had drawn the line and saying this is the only tell you right we have I'm going to charge a $73,000

for it and if you don't like it we're sorry but somebody else will buy it we don't like it We don't like that. We think it's the wrong thing to do, but we would have passed you. If he put it on the website at the same price. Exactly.

If you advertise a car, you can advertise it for any price you want. Advertise it. Honor the price, and you get a passing grade. Because we're not against capitalism. We're not against profitability. I hear it all the time from dealers that are critical of me and say the way we talk about dealers on the show. What's the matter, Earl? You got something about making a profit?

No. I have something about lying. I want you to make as much profit as you can if you tell the truth. And that's what Citi Qia forgot. You have to tell the truth. You have to obey the law. And if you do it, you can make a lot of money. When you go beyond that and lie, you're getting greedy.

And if we had legislative responsibility and the authorities like the Attorney General would enforce the laws of Florida, people like this would be punished. They don't punish them. So they get away with it, so it's left up to Earl on Cars to publicize what's going on. If you live anywhere in the central part of Florida, stay away from City of Kia. Absolutely. They will take advantage of you, and they will lie to you. Absolutely. And that's why we have Earl's vigilantes.

You can help us. We try to help everyone every week, but we need your help. And ladies and gentlemen, we have come to the end of our show, and we so. we're very delightful that you've joined us again this Saturday morning. Stay tuned. Next Saturday, we'll be right here for you. Have a wonderful weekend. Let's go.