Earl Stewart on Cars - 12.04.2021 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Schumacher Volkswagen

Episode Date: December 4, 2021

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning visits a local Volkswagen dealer to see what they have on the lot and how much over sticker they will charge for a new 2022 Volkswagen Tiguan. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. Sign up to become one of Earl's Vigilantes and help others in your community to avoid getting ripped off by a car dealer. Go to www.earlsvigilantes.com for more information. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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

Good morning, everybody. We're back, we're live again, we're on vacation for about three Saturdays, and we're back for a while. Not taking any vacations. You're listening to Earl Stewart live. in the studio with me. We have Nancy Stewart, my co-host. We have, of course, Rick Kearney,

our certified diagnostic master technician, the guy that knows everything about cars. And we got our manager of digital, we call it, we've given Jonathan a new title here, the digital general manager. We decided that this morning.

Exactly. And we have Stu Stewart, we think, because there's an empty chair there. My feeling is he's doing 110 miles an hour on the way to the studio. Exactly. A little bit late, but that happens to all of us. He says he's pulling out there is crazy.

Oh, very good. Anyway, we're live, that's the point. And we want you to know that we want to answer all of your questions first and foremost. That's the key that we have. We yak a lot, and I do, and we all do. We love the show. I mean, we're on for two hours, and we think that's a lot of time, but bam, it's gone. We start at eight now, and then pretty soon it's 10 o'clock, and where do the time fly?

Because we, I guess all of us have too much to say, we really should be listening more to you. And we need you to call the show, and I need someone to give me the little sign with all the numbers on it. And I remember, 1-877-960-99-60. That's the old-fashioned telephone number. and I say old-fashioned, but we rely on that heavily. We rely on that heavily because there's more personality to a voice. I mean, what do you expect me to say? This is a radio show.

But we mean that. You get a feel for a person's attitude, everything, when you hear the voice. That's we humans. We do that. So we prioritize your telephone calls, and we need you to give us your input because you're going to stimulate thoughts on our part and we're going to reply and that's the dialogue

and that's what makes live radio magic and we've turned it into a video as well and that's one of the Jonathan's expertise is out there he's got us streaming we're in cyberspace we're on Twitter, we're on YouTube,

we're on Facebook and but the video is supplemental to the audio so 877-9 6909060 and look who just walked into the studio my son stew but you got a big jug of coffee and he's ready to go we have another number that we that we rely on heavily this is our archive because we try to answer text right away but we build a backlog that way well we can go to the backlog and

catch up and we do we usually catch up at the end by the end of the show and that text number don't write just down if you're driving, please. But if you can write it down, text number is 772-497-6530. That's 772-497-497-6530. Text us. And you don't have to ask a question. You can make a comment.

We'd love some constructive criticism. And if you're a little bit nervous or shy about being critical to people, I mean, I am. I don't like to criticize people. I do. I mean, let's face it.

I criticize the hell out of car dealers. That's what the show's all about. But usually, if I'm in Publix or I'm in Target and I see somebody or somebody working there, I wish they did something differently. I'm not going to walk up to them and correct them. I'd like to, but I just don't want the confrontation.

If you don't want the confrontation, but you just want to get your message across, your anonymous feedback.com. As far as I know, that's unique radio, television. I don't know anybody has it. Don't you wish everybody had that? I do. I mean, I'd like to get my thoughts across to people

without having to go through a long, back and forth, back and forth. Just tell them what I feel about. And the input is valuable. And if you know someone's going to give you a little bit of a static about what you're talking, you pull your punches a little bit. And so don't pull your punches. give us your anonymous feedback at Y-O-U-R-A-N-Y-M-O-U-S feedback. You're not a spellfeedback.com.

Your anonymousfeedback.com. And Stu monitors that. We probably have a bit of a backlog because we get anonymous feedbacks during the week. People think of something, and that's the beauty of it. You can be on the job, you can be outfishing, and suddenly you have, ooh, I got a thought, I'd like to ask Rick Kearney on Earl Stewart on Cars, and you say, I probably won't listen to the radio this weekend, but I'm going to shoot them on anonymous feedback.

And that way, you don't, it doesn't have to be controversial, just ask Rick a question. Your anonymousfeedback.com. And if you have any other way to reach us, we'll try to get back to you. That's the key. We tie Stu and Nancy and I

We think in terms of selling cars Buying cars car dealers This that the other We got one guy here That knows more than all of us Combined and then some About how to fix a car And we get lulled into the

What is it? The glamour Of selling new cars It is kind of glamorous And it is kind of fun But The real part of owning an expensive automobile is knowing how to keep it running for a long, long time. If you buy a car, you want to be able to drive that car for as long as you choose.

And the cars are made well enough today that if you do maintain them, they will last virtually forever. I mean, not really, but we have people that have got hundreds of thousands of miles on their cars because they maintained them properly. And if they had a repair, they knew how to get it fixed properly. and that's when you go to Rick Kearney and he's been fixing cars since he was a little boy take him apart, put him together

and he's seen generation after generation of cars and he's now in the digital age and now he's a digital guy and a lot of our fixes now are computerized software you plug your car in

and the next thing you know it's fixed and pretty soon they're going to be doing that by Wi-Fi while you're driving on the highway. They'll fix your car when you're on the way to work. Anyway, Rick is in between then and now, Rick is they got a call. 877-9-60-90-60, and we will prioritize your calls to that number. We have about five lines coming into the radio station. 877-960-960. So if we get too many calls, they back up. That's the reason Nancy is monitoring the computer there, and she will pick up your call.

she will signal whoever's yakkin, me or Stu or Rick, and we will jump as quickly as possible to your phone call. Now, Nancy Stewart, she's my co-host, and she's also my wife, and she has been with me since the get-go. Too many years to think about on this show. C-view Radio was the name of the station about 20 years ago, and it was just us two folks, just me and Nancy, in 30 minutes, and we didn't know what we were doing.

sometimes nobody was listening in fact we did a whole show one time thinking how good we were and realized later that they forgot to plug something in and the show never went out so those are good old days we can laugh at them now we've got tens of thousands of people listening

we have people watching they're streaming us so it's really kind of exciting it's been a long ride and Nancy is also our female advocate who is single handedly built the radio shows audience female wise to about parity, about 50-50. And she has a super special offer. No strings attached. You can

believe it just the way it is. There's no such thing as a free lunch. This is not true. We have a free lunch, and you just can take it from me, the recovering card dealer, I'm being honest with you. Nancy will tell you about the free lunch. I will. But first, I have to mention, you do look very festive. Oh, my red sweater. Very dashing. Quite handsome. Thank you. Congratulations. Congratulations. Who found that sweater? I digress. Thank you very much. You know, on a more serious note, I want to mention Earl talked about Sea View and the two of us. And actually, I have to mention Stu because he was, well, sort of behind the scenes back then.

And I could rely on him via cell phone, which was major back then. Because, you know, when you're on the air and there's some dead time, so to speak, It seems like a lifetime, and he was a lifesaver, so I want to mention that. And everybody here that is so helpful, this whole panel of men who assist me weekend and week out. You know, Earl mentioned how popular our show has become, and thanks to our manager of digital support, But he has, you know, he has really found some remarkable information, and we are international. And if you don't believe it, I believe you go to Roll on Cars, and you can look that up. Or you did to ask Stephen, who's in Valley right now, who just gave us a message on Facebook.

Hello from Bali. There you go. Bali, hi, I'm calling. I replied, om swast yastu. Look at That's how you say Hello in Balinese Yeah

I don't know Yeah we sent Stephen In Bali We fed axed him And Earl Stewart Toyota Decal to put on his Model that he bought

We can't sell In the United States On his new Toyota And we'll have our nameplate In Bali now That's right Yeah That's pretty cool

So at any rate To all of our listeners out there Who are Well we have got We've got podcast across the globe, and this is just a remarkable time, and we have definitely reached some heights here as far as our show is concerned. We've helped so many people, and by the way, our listeners, you have helped us,

and you are an important part of the show. Now I'm going to get to the ladies who are also an important part of the show, and I'd like for you to give us a call this morning, and, well, share. your car purchasing or servicing experience or if you just want to call and say hello or maybe you have some advice for us but at any rate ladies the first two new lady callers you win yourself $50.50 and any time of year that is well extra $50 in your pocket so give us a call toll free at 877 960 9960 and if you consider your well, sort of a, you know, car expert, and you want to help us out, you can join Earl's

vigilantes. It's a remarkable team that has come together, and we really have accumulated some experts and just some, well, not so, well, not so much experts. So go to Earl on Cars and join Earl's vigilantes and also in this day and age whenever you want to go to, well, the internet and purchase a vehicle. We need volunteers in that aspect. Also, there's some seniors that need a little bit of assistance, so there too you can go to Erwan Cars. 877960. and our text number is 772-4976530 and

we're going to go right to the telephones before we introduce anyone else we've got them we've got the Bronx on the phone we've got North Palm Beach we're going to go to Paul who's calling us from North Palm Beach good morning Paul

Good morning I have a question about your 2002 Toyota Sienna hybrid and I'm wondering the engine part of it, the gasoline engine, does that drive the wheels or does that strictly add electricity to the batteries? On all Toyota hybrids, the system is designed that the gasoline engine only acts as a generator. It spins the electric motor into a generator to create electricity. The gas engine never has a direct connection to the wheels.

Okay, fine. I was just curious because we bought a 2012 to send a Vienna from you, and it's been absolutely wonderful. We love it. And I'm looking forward to buying another one, probably in 2022. And it's curious that they talk about the four-sumption. with a turbocharger. So that actually, the engine

doesn't make that much difference, does it as far as the power is concerned. Right. The engine is only there to create electricity. The car is always being driven by electric. Very good. Okay, well, thank you so much, and I love

your show, and I hope you have a great day. Well, thanks very much for the call. I didn't know that. Well, there's a lot of stuff I don't. You know, I say this is one thing. people don't believe that is true. I learned more about cars just by sitting next to Rick once a week on the show. Because a lot of things you don't think about. And we have this massive amount of people around the planet that are asking questions that never occurred

to us. And suddenly Rick, he knows the answers. Yeah, I never thought about it. I always knew that it was a gas motor and electric motor. I'm doing stuff. I assume one was moving the wheels and the other one's moving the wheels. Amazing. It's just amazing. Rick is just amazing. And he does a great job every single week answering questions that, well, he knows the answers to. Did you tell the gals about our special lover yet?

I have. I have, but I'll repeat it again. Yeah, do that. 877-960, 990-60, give us a call. Ladies, be part of the show. You can win yourself $50 this morning. And every Saturday morning, $50. for the first two new lady callers.

We're going to go back to the phones, and we're going to talk to Howard, who is calling us, and he's from the Bronx. Good morning, Howard. Good morning. Nice talking to you guys. I hope everything is well by you. No, yeah.

And I'm here freezing, but I can't come down until they do my, they're replacing my balconies and catwalks. I can't live there. Well, they're doing it with too much noise and dirt. and everything. But I'm planning to be down probably in January. Okay, my question is about the clear coat, the white clear coat, the 040. I think, Alan, the 040. Yeah, but I think they improved it. A friend of mine has a 2008 Camry with that

paint, and it's perfect. It never went bad. So what was the problem with 0401. Why is it now? I was told that there's no problem anymore. Your friend got lucky back in 2008 that was a... Yeah, it was Howard and just a dirty little secret. I want to tell you this dirty little secrets. All manufacturers have dirty little secrets and there are emission control rules that environmental protection agency has on all manufacturers and pollution is

pretty serious offense. and you can find a whole lot of money. And they keep tabs on the emissions into the atmosphere. One of the biggest sources of emissions are from paint. When you're painting anything, and you paint a lot of cars. If you're selling a million cars a year in the United States, which Toyota does and a lot more now, I think,

you're painting a lot of cars and a lot of emissions are going up. So a clear coat was just another level of power. paint. It was a level of paint that holds the pigmented paint, and it's just clear. But if you have a blue car or a white car or a red car, you typically would have a coat. What makes it shiny? Yeah, make it shiny and also preserve that undercoat. Anyway, the clear coat caused emissions. And if you have to not paint a car something, Toyota says, well, let's not paint them with a clear coat on our white cars. And that was just a portion of, of course, that's a lot of white cars, that's the most popular color. But by not clear-coding these white cars, they were able to

comply with the USA emission controls. And consequently, unbeknowns to the dealers, unbeknowns to the consumers, and probably unbeknownst to the government, there were a lot of cars going on the road without clear-cote. And lo and behold, guess what? They fainted. They faded in the sun, especially in Florida, in the Sunbelt states. And Toyota initially just kind of looked the other way and then they realized that it was their fault and for a long time we just kept wondering why we had to keep painting all these white cars and then it came out that it was the 040 paint that did not have the clear coat and and I think there were probably other colors I think I suspect red might have been one of them because red red used to fade a lot too anyway they got

their act together and all the cars now are being clear-coated to our knowledge we're not having nearly the claims and warranty repairs that we do under that paint. But Howard, I hope that that answers your question. Yeah, but I heard that there's a warranty on that. Let's say you have a 2015 Camry, and the paint is fading because of the sun. You can get the car repainted. Is that correct? Yeah, you have to argue.

And what we found is that if you're a loyal customer of Toyota, and this probably applies to Honda and Ford and a lot of the manufacturers. They have a different book for their loyal customers. And if you bought five Hondas and you come in with faded paint or five Toyota's and you have faded paint, there are chances of getting some help from the manufacturer are a lot greater, even though technically it's not under warranty. Their paint warranty is strictly for Toyota, 36,000 miles or 36 months. And legally that's all they're obligated to.

But if you have an older car that has faded paint, you approach your dealer, you approach the manufacturer, and you negotiate. And sometimes you win 100 percent, sometimes you don't. What we do with our customers is if Toyota bills out entirely, we agree to paint the car for what it cost us to paint the car. We mark down in the margin that's pretty good, like 30, 40 percent profit. So we'll mark that down considerably for our customers. And usually we can give Toyota to kick in and say, okay, if you're willing to forego your profit, we'll forego our profit, and then they cut the cost of the, they will reimburse us 50% of the paint cost of the painting cost. So it's not a black and white issue, but anybody out there with a faded car, they're going to get the argument. You should have kept it in the garage. You didn't wax your car every month and all this other nonsense. Nobody waxes their car every month. And a lot of people don't have garage.

And reality is, a lot of people live in Arizona and Florida. So they know that, but that's just conversation. Take it to the top, get a dealer that will be your advocate, will try to help you out, and you will probably get some relief for help. Rick has a point. There is an extended warranty for certain years of cars with that clear coat paint on it for the paint adhesion, where what they'll do is they will test the paint adhesion by putting tape onto the paint and then yanking it off and I've

actually seen white cars especially the paint literally separate right I call that a lamination that's a lamination right that's a completely different issue he maybe I simply have heard that one and misunderstood that that's that is on certain ones for paint adhesion so there is an extended warranty out there right now on paint for that reason that's correct that's not a clear code problem that's it There's something about the way the paint was applied, and they apply multiple coats, and it's laminated, and some of the, some of the lamination comes off.

So, a benefactorial has problems with that right now. But the same thing applies. Always ask, and the worst thing you can do is say, no. In our experience, 99% of the time, we can get help from somebody with an issue with paint, even though it's out of warranty. Okay, so it pays to get a dealer. who will fight for a customer. And I hate to give you an infomercial,

but you're the dealer that fights to the customer. Well, thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. There are dealers who will fight for the customers besides us. And I think my suggestion, if you are in a different state or anywhere you are, don't take the service advisor,

the person in the service drives final no. Go to the service manager, and the service manager tells you no. Go to the general. manager and if you can get to the owner go to the owner you know there's usually somebody in almost any dealership either because he cares or because he doesn't want litigation or publicity somebody up the line and when somebody up the line contact somebody in authority with the manufacturer you can pretty much always

get some kind of action it's it's a lot of legwork and a lot of phone calls a lot of emails unfortunately it's not the way it should be but if you can take your dispute off the line far enough, you've got a good chance of getting help. You know something? When you have that red phone there, you can go right to the top. It's not an infomercial. And I've never, ever, in my entire 86 years, have seen a dealer like you that if anybody has a problem, they call you right up, and you straighten everything out. Howard, I love you. Thank you, Howard.

Well, you have lunch with me. I hate to give you an infomercial, but I have to be. Mighty nice. Thank you, Howard. Thank you, Howard. We'll go forward to hearing from you again. You know, I used to get so many complaints years ago about paint and the peeling and everything in between. And things have really have gotten better, like you said.

So that's a good thing. Another good thing is that we are going to go to our first female call. Fantastic. Her name is Barbara, and Barbara wins $50 this morning for calling Earl Stewart on cars. Good morning, Barbara, and welcome. Good morning. How are you guys doing? We're well, thank you.

Good. I want to tell you first, my husband and I bought four Toyotas from you guys. The first time, I guess, when we came to the area, it was in 2000 a little bit more, but we bought the first year your tunders came out. We bought one for a real drive. We bought it actually sight unseen from, good word, from one of your mechanics. And it was a friend of ours, so we bought it, love it. And then we got a 2002 solar, a 2004 corolla, and my current carola that I have is 2010 Camry.

And that's the one I have a question about. Interesting. I had, and, you know, the little tire sensor that comes on when your tire is low. It's happened before, and we found out what tire it was, filled it up. This happened about, it's been about three weeks now, went on, and I saw one tire that was a little low, filled it up, but the sensor never went off. And I turned the car off, turned it on, said, well, maybe I'll let it sit for a while, and start it up the next day, same thing. Every, but once a week now, I check all the tires, the pressures are good. I'm wondering how to get that center off, other than just going to the dealer or mechanic and they can turn it off themselves.

I have no idea, but it's not the tires. Well, when you first turn the key on, and that light comes on, does it blink for about, say, 20 or 30 seconds? I don't know about that long, but it definitely blinks. I don't really pay attention. I'll look down to driving in at the time, so I'm kind of looking ahead. But it does blink when I first turn it on. Yeah, so it blinks on and off for a little bit, and then it goes solid. That means one of the sensors has gone bad or the battery has gone out on it.

When the light comes on and just comes on and stays solid immediately after you start the car, then that's a low tire. But when it's blinking, it means one of the sensors has gone bad. So what we'd have to do is have you come into a, go into a dealer, and they'll hook up a scan tool to see the condition of all the sensors. And they can tell them, it'll tell them if the batteries are weak in any of them or how many sensors are not responding. And then you can go from there on getting the sensors replaced. Okay. What was that cost you? I'm going to kind of stretch on a limb here and say, if you only have one sensor bad,

see, I think the sensors are going about $75 or $90 each. I'm going to say about $200 total. Okay. If it's all four, you mean? If that's just one sensor, if it's more, it would be. probably about an additional 150 per sensor. Barbara, what year car is that? It's a 2010, Cameron. You know, what, what we always try to do for our customers, and I think all dealers should do the same, is as far as I'm concerned, a sensor shouldn't go bad

on a 2010. I mean, it's, you know, it's 11 years old, but it shouldn't happen. And we try to get some help from the manufacturer. I think, certainly in your case, loyalty is, you know, is something the manufacturers look at. You bought four cars from Toyota. And all from Todd, by the way. Todd, your salesman. Well, then Todd ought to be for it. Yeah, absolutely.

Just ask them, I'm sure you will. But we'll try to get some help on that. And I think we'll be able to get you some relief, at least partial help on that. If it's $200, it'd maybe cost you half that. We'll do that. Oh, okay. And I think I do have another question.

though. It happened from probably coincidence, but I had gone to your dealership to do my semi-annual had the tires rotated in the oil change. And within a week after that, that's when it happened. So I don't know

coincidence or whatever. Rick, is there anything that the looper, loop guy could have done? No, there's... Unless they were taking the tire off the rim, say to to fix a leak or something and they weren't paying attention and they actually broke the sensor but our guys we we are very careful to train them so the tires were never removed in your wheel

they just rotated the whole wheel and tires so that probably wasn't the case okay that's why I thought I said well maybe it's a coincidence maybe I have no idea but I've had them since I bought the car actually in 2012 and it never had a problem when and I go twice you year to have them rotated there so I said it's probably just a coincidence sounds sounds suspicious to me too but Rick is the expert and remember you got 50 bucks toward the repair now so we'll send you the check 50 bucks and then we're going to try to get you some help from Toyota so who knows we might be able to get the whole thing taken care of it yeah loyal loyalty from Toyota is just amazing Barbara you know

just to dot all the eyes crossed the teas I don't know I'd have all all this the sensors checked, you know, while you're at it. And also, I want to take a moment and thank you for taking the time to give Earl Stewart Own Cars a call. And, uh, quite welcome. Congratulations on winning $50. And you can talk with the lease in our control room and give her the information. She'll pass it along to me and I'll get that check out to you.

Yeah, stay on the line. She'll pick it up. Kick listening. Okay. Okay. Okay. We'll do. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. Our lines are on fire this morning. We're going to go to... I want to say one quick thing, and then we'll go to the next caller. Quick thing before I lose my train of thought, why wouldn't Toyota have some sort of sensor that would say when your sensor light, your tire inflation sensor blinks, it means you have a bad sensor.

Because you think you have a bad tire, and you put air in the tire, you're putting your customer at all that trouble. if they just said defective sensor because it was blinking, then you would know immediately to go to your dealer. Just my thought, now we'll go to the caller. Great, great information. Ladies and gentlemen, this is an amazing show.

I do have to say so myself. I mean, can you imagine just you're talking about the sensors on your tires and tires are so very, very important. And here's Rick, and he comes up with this answer that nobody would really even think about and Barbara was the lucky winner this morning and I'll also mention I need another lady caller as well you can all call but there's only $50 left in the bank

for a second winner 877 960 9960 so we're going to go to Doug who's giving us a call from West Palm Beach good morning Doug this is Dave Dog Walker Day Hey, I have to tell you that last week's show was, I thought was one of the best shows overall I've ever, ever listened to. That mystery shop was amazing. And I wanted to bring that up.

Listen, while you guys were gone, I had occasion to listen to some of your repeats. And it turns out that I had called on two of those. shows and it's very strange to hear your own very strange to hear your own voice on a radio okay Rick Rick I got a couple of questions

to head your way one is about the certifications for the mechanics that the dealerships use you get a piece on that a few weeks back and I was wondering do the certifications come

from just Toyota classes or are there like the ACE certifications that other schools have? Where are the different places you can get the schooling? I believe you're thinking of the ASE certifications? Yeah. The automotive service excellence? Yeah, that's a national organization for all. all mechanics and they're right now I think they've got something close to 50 different certification tests that cover everything from heavy equipment

trucks on down to small engines such as gasoline the lawnmower size engines and there are ASC certifications for all sorts of different ones for auto mechanics there are basically nine main tests that an auto mechanic can have certified in and those are like I said it's a national organization and you can take those tests at outside testing centers and all Toyota technicians are required to take a certain number of those tests depending on their certification level and like for myself I have to take those every five years I have to be recertified in all nine of those levels so that's actually outside testing

sources and all mechanics everywhere can be certified in those areas and then for Toyota specific we go to Toyota specific schools that are presented by Toyota and it's all training that is more geared just for Toyota and we get certified many different levels on those yeah yeah that's always curious about that the uh the other my next question and I don't know if this is even a real thing but I did hear on another radio talk show about this new build-back-better proposal that's going through Congress right now has in it a section that would have to do with cars and the future requirements. Well, requirements.

They're calling them safety enhancements. I heard that they were going to put some sort of a breathalyzer by, I don't know, 2035 on every new car that's built. And I don't know if that's really true, if you guys have even heard about it. But my question would be, how about these folks that live up north in the really, really, really cold, you know, Howard? he's in it right now and the people that like to start their cars from inside the house and have it be nice and warm and toasty when they go out and get in their car can you think of a workaround it would you know

I would that was the first thing that came to my work I think that was the first thing that came to mine with me and so I would think that would probably come to mind to engineers and you know executives of it is in the in the bill I don't know exactly what that's going to what it's going to look like but it does say there is a auto manufacturers will be required to have their cars detect if somebody was was drunk dog this is just something that the idiot politicians come up with are trying to garner some votes it'll never happen it'll never pass and it's not really needed to be

honest with you because by the time that thing would ever pass if it would be years and years if they fought it through finally we got a it passed It's in the infrastructure bill. Well, it's not going to be law? It is law. Well, the autonomous cars will usurp that. Right. And it's just totally unnecessary.

I don't, I'm going to research it. I'm surprised that that would never become law. I just can't believe it. It was in the infrastructure bill from a couple of weeks ago. Yeah. Well, we'll see how that goes. I think you're going to find out that it would be totally impractical and it wouldn't work. and it slipped through, and I think it's going to hit the fan, come back, and be changed

because it's so unrealistic, it's only something that politicians could have come up with, and it's stupid. But from a mechanical side point of view, those remote start systems that you press a button and your car will start up and let the engine run for a while, they have a timer on it that will shut the car off after a certain amount of time, They also have a requirement that when you get into the car, if you have a normal ignition key type, you have to put the key in the ignition and turn it to the on position, or else the moment you try to shift that car or anything, it's going to shut off

because that's a safety feature so someone can't steal your car when you've started it up and you're letting it run outside. If you have a smart key type system, it has to detect that key inside the car so that it can continue running or it'll shut off. So they could simply have that same system and have it linked to the shifter to where you wouldn't be able to shift the car

until you did the breathalyzer thing. Yeah, Doug, I'm going to give you my prediction and we'll move on to another subject. That's never going to be long. It is, and it looks great. They've been working on this thing. You've got to read more about it. I think he'll change your mind.

Okay. Yeah, that was pretty interesting. Hey, listen, Earl Stewart, when I first moved to Florida in 2008 I would look I would see your commercials on television and it had the red telephone and he said well just call it's pick up the phone and you go Earl Stewart and I thought well that's hilarious and then my friend says well no that's for real he really does that oh this is great I love this guy he does what I call when I ran across you on the true oldies a couple of years ago I thought oh boy this is great

I've got to listen to this. And I've been listening every week. Well, here's the other end of the red... Here's the other end of the red phone, Doug. I'm holding it up for the camera if you're streaming. I have a red phone in the dealership, and it goes to my red phone, which is my iPhone. I carry in my pocket all the time, so...

Okay, listen, now... Thanks for the call, Doug. This is Dave. This is Dave. This is Dave. Not Doug. Dave. Dog Walker, Dave. Very good. God bless you, too, Doug.

Thank you, Doug. And on a personal note, Doug, this is inside information. Earl carries that red phone in his PJ pocket. Uh-huh. Not everybody knows that. And also, on a more personal note, I'd say probably about five years ago, I was over at Singer Island, and I walked into a shop, and lo and behold, there was a red cell phone, a Christmas ornament,

and it was the only one in the store. and I purchased it then and that is hanging on the tree at this moment That's hilarious All right guys have a real nice day Thank you Doug and that's proof that Earl Stewart answers

His red bone all the time Okay, 877 Bye bye bye bye 877 960 9960 Give us a call You can also text us at

772-49765 and we're going to go for you know stew is definitely here but our phones are like on fire this morning and he has a whole lot to share with you but right now we're going to go to palm beach gardens and we are going to talk to joe i believe good morning joe good morning gang how you doing thanks for holding a question is a follow-up to a post that burrow did a week or so ago about the market adjustment by dealers which basically is tacking on exorbitant amounts of money on top of the MSRP the one you stated Earl was a you gave the award for the gougiest dealer who basically

charged a $40,000 markup on a RAB 4 which double the price of the vehicle what what with the market adjustments and I know it the supply and demand thing, but it's gouging. Yeah, $40,000 was the amount, and then on top of that, there were some more hidden fees they were throwing on top of it. He's actually been charged with price gouging. It's in Oakland, California. I don't think, you know, I'm not trying, I hate to defend the guy, but unfortunately,

the way our laws are written, you can charge anything you want for a new car. And the MSRP, the Monroeing label, is simply the suggested retail. So if you're unconscious, if you have no conscience and you don't care how you take advantage of a customer and you can get away with it, the law lets you charge a million dollars over MSRP. So all he was doing was charging $40,000 on MSRP. I choke when I say all he was doing, but as unethical and immoral as I consider it, it was probably legal, although he has been charged in Oakland with price gouging. I don't think the charge will stick. Well, you know, we are you still there? Yeah, I'm still here. I was, I'm sorry, I thought you would do. Go ahead.

Well, my question is, when you're going into the dealerships or even trying to buy a car, how do we approach these market adjustments? Are they negotiable? I mean, basically, I went into an unnamed dealership a month or two ago. they told me what the market adjustment was, which was about 15,000 over the MSRP. And it was not negotiable. He said, hey, you don't want it, somebody else will. Yeah, my latest blog, and it will be in hometown news, and it will be in Florida Weekly. You can read it online at earluncars.com.

And it's saying that the sticker price, the MSRP, should be your target price if you want to buy a new car today at this time. And my overall advice is don't buy a new car today or a used car at this time because prices are sky high, artificially, temporarily sky high. But if you have to have a car and you want to buy that car so bad, the lowest you'll be able to find is MSRP. So to answer your question, don't pay any addendum over manufacturer-suggested retail price. And if you shop around, we found through our mystery shopping reports recently, that if you shop around, you can find dealers, not a lot of them, but enough so that you'll be able to find one at some point within a reasonable distance that will sell to you at MSRP. Full sticker, MSRP is a huge profit for the dealer. and the fact that they would market it up 3,000, 4,000, or my God, 40,000, is just

unconscionable. So target MSRP, go around to your all dealers, do it online if you can, do it by phone, so you don't have to waste a lot of mileage and shoe leather trying to knock on doors and find out, just find out online by telephone and say, okay, if you'll sell it to me out the door for MSRP, plus a license plate and sales tax. only you got a deal and in today's market believe it or not msrp is a good deal well thank you guys and have a great weekend great holiday coming up and enjoy your sunrise club as well thank you very much thank you so much give us a call tool free at 877 960 960 or you can

text us at 772 497 6530 and speaking of earl's column that he was just talking about It is amazing, and I have it right here. Only suckers pay MSRP for new vehicles. Today, only smart people buy MSRP. There it is right there. So take a look at that. And if you haven't read that column yet, go to Erwan Cars, or you can take a look at the hometown news where it will appear

and the Florida Weekly. So there you have it. I think Jonathan picked it up. I'm not sure. There it is. And I proof read that. I gave a pardon the A-plus on that. I grade Earl's columns.

Just a little more inside information. Okay, folks, we are going to stick with the phones. We're going to go to Marty, and he's calling from West Palm Beach. He is a regular caller. Good morning, Marty. Good morning. How are you doing today? Well, well, thank you.

I have a question for Earl and probably for Stu with the situation when they just said that car dealers are making an exorbitant amount of money now what is the incentive for the car dealers to go back to normal conditions? Competition Yeah but if everybody stays if everybody stays in this mode

they won't the moment is yeah the moment a dealer can take advantage of another by lowering its price and getting that customer and that's going to happen when they have cars available it's i mean it's going to take a while and obviously the dealers are very used to it and they love it but it's going to happen every single time the same question comes up every time there's a hot new model it's sold for msrp it used to be a long time ago they'd sell for msrp for you know a couple of months but a dealer is going to lower his price to get the advantage and that's going to happen as soon as there's cars available

Now, what's your latest estimate of cars being available? It's going to continue to improve. It's already begun to improve, but it's going to be slow, so sometime in the next six to 12 months before they're at normal levels. Okay. All right. I assume Earl agrees with that. I don't know.

Yeah, I don't have a crystal ball. I mean, I think it's going to be sooner. than a year, but no one knows. It's getting a lot better. I mean, up until a month or two ago, you couldn't buy a car for sticker price. So it's come down to sticker price, which sounds kind of silly, but it's a significant decrease. Two-thirds of all cars that were sold three months ago were above sticker. Right now, I'd say, it's probably closer to 50-50, and you can find a sticker price, an MSRP price. And I think in another 30 days, I think you're going to find people coming down below MSRP.

So it's going to be a gradual procedure. When it finally hits dead bottom, I can't predict. But it could be as much as a year. Okay. All right. Well, I'm waiting. Thanks, Marty. Yeah, that's a good idea.

Definitely, Marty. And take a look at that column that Earl wrote. You know, he has some amazing information in there. And can you even imagine paying as much as 40,000? dollars above sticker yikes was the guy mentally ill or anything probably not no actually

Marty they're on record people who pay more than that I mean you remember there a lot of people out there that have what they call stupid money they have more money than they know what to do with and they're people that are just so in love with cars want to be the first guy on the block to have the new Corvette or

the new Supra and what do they money is no object so yeah the dealers know that And if you want to be, if you have stupid money, the dealer says, I'll be glad to take your stupid money. And then the price drops like a rock. We were seeing records when the new super came out, what about a year it goes to? Two years ago, yeah. Yeah, we saw record people were paying 100,000 over a sticker.

And we knew that wasn't going to last. And so we started, we were selling it a sticker, and we were making good money, selling a super and sticker. And then they dropped, and pretty soon they were only giving them. and 10,000 and 5,000. The next thing you know, super is a discount of 2,000 or 3,000. So it's a question of the guy that wants to be the only one

of the block with the new super and that glory, which only lasts for a few months, cost them a lot of money and they pay it. Yeah. Well, I know L. Hendrickson, he's had market adjustment on way before this

pandemic hit. Yeah. And when I've done any dealings with him, I immediately have taken the market adjustment off. And I said, you know, let's go to the real price. And they've always done that. But I guess if somebody comes in there and doesn't know what to do, I guess they can get taken. Yeah, I'll get them. Thank you, Marty.

Thanks for the call. All right. It's amazing. It still happens today. But downtown Oakland, Toyota, yikes. A Ravrefour prime. Rick had a point. When the new Ford Broncos came out, those were being priced way over sticker.

It was insane. They all do it. Amazing. You know, for Dave, who called earlier, give us a call back. We kind of got backed up, and we'd love to hear from you. I was Dave. I think it was. We're going to go to John in Palm City.

He, too, has been holding. Thanks so much for your patience, John. You were hanging there for a while. Good morning. Good morning. I have some good news for people that get frustrated by renewing their license tags. I went in last month, November, twice to the local tag agency, and the computer was down, so they couldn't do anything for me.

But here's how it's to look like it's going to be solved for the future. In Palm City now, at the Publix, there's a machine that looks just like an ATM machine. It's put in there by Florida to renew your license plate. you just press in a couple of numbers and bingo before you know it there's your renewal license tag so it's already in

the main one in Palm City in Martin Downs Boulevard so that sounds some good things coming which people need and December is a big renewal month a lot of people not only born in December but I think your dealer tags and I think your transport

of tags I believe we'll all expire in December but I'm not sure but this is very convenient, right in the public's. It looks just like an ATM machine, and bingo, you just press some simple numbers in, and before you know it, it prints out your tag for your license plate. Love it. So I wanted to mention that. Fabulous.

Yeah, I think that's great for things to come. And the second thing I want to mention, we always talk about Tesla, but we don't say anything. One in the five vehicles that are sold the United States is either a full or mid-sized pickup truck. truck, and that truck is out. That's been 12 months in the making. It's from, I think it's made to the United States, and it's called Rivian. Rivian, yeah. And it's not cheap. It starts at $68,000. It has four motors. It has a 314-mile range, but for 10,000 extra, you can get an upgrade, and it'll make it go more distance. And the success

this company is, Amazon owns 20% and Ford owns 10% of it. So it tells you something right there. You got a great look in SUV. Yes, the stock was recently, I don't follow it, but it was recently public traded, and the stock is worth, I think, over $100 billion. You know, it's a big company, and it sounds like another Tesla, and it's, for people with pickup trucks, it's worth watching. By the way, there's four motors, Rick will tell you probably a little more, four motors that spin at 18,000 RPM, and it's got a different technology, but it's a lot of power for a truck.

Oh, it's built in Irvine, California, that's what I want to tell you, at an old Missabichi plant. So it's a future of things to come in the electric field. Yeah, I've been watching, Rivian. I really like the style, and it's going for a different market. instead of that upscale Tesla, more of that outdoorsy, you know, sort of, you know, a hiker, that millennial sort of demographic. My personal opinion on that, John, is that it's not going to take with your pickup truck buyer. Most of those guys out there that operate in the big trucks, the big expensive trucks, they like the noise, they like to smell, they like to smoke, and their exhaust pipes, and to put them in a quiet car, the power isn't going to be. the trade-off that will get the switch from their combustion-driven vehicles.

I think, I think, Rubion obviously is going to have a market, and people will buy the truck, but not your typical pickup truck buyer that's making the F-150. That's what I said. It's more of that, like, adventure, outdoorsy, millennial type, you know, like more like hiking and fishing and camping. Well, let's hold pricey, Rick will tell you for his pocketbook, but I would love to see them put an experiment in somebody like Rick and let him use it and put it

through the paces and that would be a good publicity if they ever chose somebody like that, you know, for our area or our region. Oh, I'm sure, they'll be national publicity on it and it'll help the public. Yeah. Rick will volunteer, I'm sure. Oh, yeah. I'll volunteer.

I don't know if they'll take my... Oh, I'm sure he would. He put it through the paces and he would go to a good test report on it. I'll help you write it. I'll write shotgun, Rick. All right, guys. for the shopping report. As always, John.

Thanks for the great information. 877960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-49-6-5-30. And for all of you who have text and, you know, have sent in your questions from YouTube, we're going to get to that momentarily. We have another call to get to, and Allie is calling us from Wellington. Good morning, Allie. Hello, good morning. Good morning.

We're well, thank you. How are you today? Good to hear. I'm in. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much for your program. I've been learning a lot of from you.

I would like to ask, I threw the factory order for the new Toyota Corolla Cross L.E. wheel drive. I would like to know because how this all-wheel-drive is different to compare with other always-drive system in the Toyota lineup. Thank you very much for your help. That's actually one of the few cars we have right now

that'll be all-wheel drive unless you step up to say a trucker and SUV. for being a small car, that's pretty much going to be the only all-wheel drive-wheel have. So it'd be hard to compare it to any of the others. But for me, the idea of that technology, if you're up north and you get in the snow, it's almost a guaranteed necessity. And even down here in Florida, with the rains that we get, sand on the road in various places,

some of the dirt roads you might encounter, again, it's a fantastic technology. is the idea that you get power to all the wheels puts you more in control of the car and it's a much safer way to drive. I agree. Do you have any information if next year we're going to get the same model the hybrid, Toyota Corolla Cross,

hybrid? I believe that's coming out on the hybrid as well. And I think it is next year, as a matter of fact, yes. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for information. You work. Welcome, Ali. You're welcome, Ali.

Thank you, Ali. Have a good day. You're welcome. Give us a call again. Guess what? We're going to go to some texts. We're going to go to YouTube. We're up to us.

Let's let it roll. All right. You know, I think Amory is feeling neglected. Her text has been waiting here for an hour, almost two hours now. Oh, Ann Marie. Amory says, good morning. Based on your years of experience selling cars, What features that seemed to be a great idea when they first came out turned out to be very unpopular or bad in the end?

And we're not counting high profit options that aren't really worth it, such as nitrogen and tire, fabric treatments and undercoding. My nomination, this is Amory's nomination, is the talking car feature on the Chrysler E-class cars. The car literally talked to you with messages such as a door is a jar. And who likes a talking car that nags? Remember Eddie Murphy did a bit on that. And he says, why doesn't it tell you something useful? Like, hey, man, something stole your battery. So Amory wants to know what features we would pick were these that seemed like a great idea in the beginning.

I'll go first. It was in my first car. It was in the CELIC, 82 CELA, and it had a lumbar support for the driver's seat. But it was controlled with an inflatable bulb. And so there was this bulb. It looked like those old-fashioned car horn bulbs. And it stuck to the side of the seat. And everybody asked me, what does that do?

and like, oh, it pumps up the lumbar support with air, and then eventually got dry rot and just popped, so I had this, like, shredded rubber thing that just sat next to my seat for several years. But that's my nomination. Do you guys have anything? Uh-huh. Okay.

Toyota Entune system. Oh, yeah. That was a turkey. That was a big turkey. Well, tell them what it is. This was Toyota's way of having your cell phone connect to your radio and with all the various apps that could connect in and work through your radio

and it never worked right. No. It was the biggest dog I've ever seen. And I won't insult dogs because I love dogs. It was just garbage. And it still is. And they still have remnants of it. And instead of following like everybody else did

and playing nice with Apple and with the Android communities and getting car play in the radio, They fought it. That worked so perfectly well. They're putting yourself together, Rick. Sorry. You've got so many customers. I'm still in my line.

I'll go way back. I can sympathize with you, Rick. I know exactly what you're talking about. I mean, take a look at the Sion and that pioneer system that was in it. I mean, it was just. It was a great radio. I digress. The car?

Not so good? The pioneer system. Very good. There were Sions that I liked. a lot. Absolutely. Do you have anything? I'm trying to think of the name of the Cadillac that came out with a six or eight.

And I think he would, depending on how fast and how much power he needed, he could use these four, six or eight, North Star. That was that North Star system. And those were, those engines blew up about as fast as the first GM diesels that came out. That would probably be the other great idea. Gentle Motors was going to come out with a diesel engine for Old automobile and Pontiac, and they were bowling up faster. And I, oh, probably the classic of all, because we're talking about all engines, I would say

the rotary engine. There was an idea that even today I get tears in my eyes because it was such a beautiful concept. The rotary engine, very few moving parts, it was like a scientific engineering genius discovery, and everybody thought it was going to change the world, and it was the greatest driving car in the world except they blew up in 60,000 miles and you have to put another engine. And outside of that, it was a great engine. Pull yourself together.

You know, I think if they redesigned that with today's technology, they might could make it work. No, the mouse have tried. They came back again. I'm not saying you're, well, that is too late to the party now because it's all electric. But, I mean, sooner or later, they would probably figure it out. But the apex seals and that rotor, they never figured out how to make it mesh with the Right. What about some of these features that they got really popular for a while,

like there's the automatic seatbelts that close automatically. Would they just break too often? How come they're not in cars anymore? The fact that it might get stuck halfway, you could jam up in the track. Yes, they broke a lot of, yeah. So suddenly you're caught with it. The idea also, a lot of cars had the seatbelt built into the door to where as you open and close the door, it was already there. And people were getting tangled up and trying to get in and out of the car.

I can just imagine. I see a complete disaster right there. Anne-Marie, as always, you've asked the best questions, and you've got everybody in here. Yeah. Well, you're going to have to pull themselves together. We got all riled up, Annery. And if I wasn't here to referee, we'd be talking about your text for the rest of the show. But unfortunately, we have to move along.

The leader of the pack keeps us in control. I like your word, though, garbage. No. Meaningless. Pull yourself together, Nancy. Okay. Here's a text from Dennis. It says that it's a technical question.

Getting a new car off assembly line should one wait X amount of time before applying paint protection allowing the paint to cure. Paint repairs recommend a waiting period, but this might be different listening for the answer. So Dennis is listening. So should you wait on a new car before you apply anything? And also, I'm not sure what he means by paint protection. Paint protection is something that the manufacturer, not the manufacturer. He's talking about some he would do. Yeah, the dealer, just wax.

Well, also ceramics and other. Yeah, I think for any consumer-applied products, I'm definitely not the expert on this. We'd need to get Alan's opinion on this. But I would say no more than, like, three months. It should be cured in plenty well. And then you can begin applying any consumer-grade. And normal times, I'd say.

If that's the question, I'm going to think you can apply it right away. I don't, you know. Yeah, they put them in. these big baking things. Yeah. I don't think they're pretty cured. Yeah, they're not selling unfinished products. If you're talking about, if you want to do that, that's right.

And plus in normal times, the car that you're buying isn't fresh from the factory anyway. It's probably been sitting on the dealer's lot for 150 days. But now they're all pretty fresh if you're buying a new car. Right. Another good question. That's a great question. Thanks, Dennis. And let's see, what do we got here?

Pictures of spun bearing to show Rick on 20, Raptor. That's from Negan. Okay. As a matter of fact, I'll give the quick thing here. He says, is 20-20 Ford Raptor, which is one of those performance engine trucks, apparently very little miles on this thing. And it did what's called a rod bearing spun. What that means is the connecting rod, connecting to the crankshaft and the piston, has a bearing in between a metal bearing that will allow it to work for, you know, it should be two or 300,000 miles or more. And unfortunately, if the bearing is not machined perfectly correct, it can actually spin in the connecting rod and move out of place. And of course, that destroys the engine. It locks the engine right up.

So apparently they're getting a new, basically a brand new engine for him. They're going to have to give him, you know, build a new engine. But yeah, he said he's looking at several weeks waiting on parts to come in to get his truck fixed. Amazing. 877-960-90-60, and as, you know, all of you that have joined us so far, amazing, isn't it? All this free information, free. It's tough to get anything free today. Be very careful at there. 877-960-99-60. We have a whole lot more to come, and we're going to go back to Stu. I want to jump over to anonymous feedback. This one came in last Saturday. I don't think we got to it. This is for Earle says what is your advice on buying a new car now with dealers marking up above MSRP? I'll wait as long as you can and if you don't

have to have a car just don't buy car. We don't know when prices are going to reach competition levels that they did before COVID but it could be Stu predicted six to 12 months they're going down every month now. We've seen them come down from way over sticker almost everywhere down to about 50-50 for a sticker. Sticker's a good price for a car. You wait 30 days. You get a price in 30 days than you do today. You wait 60 days. You'll get an even better price. We'll see. And we've got the new on the cron variance coming up. We've got this COVID thing to prolong the supply chain issue and the microchip shortage. And nobody's got a crystal ball. But if you don't need a car, don't buy one. If you need a car, don't pay over

sticker MSRP no addendums no hidden fees MSRP okay and the other attack if you can't wait is find the few that are selling it for MSRP plus their fees okay uh here's the next anonymous feedback it's funny watching your video how to get the out-the-door price in 2021 when dealers are price gouging over MSRP and people think they're getting your great deal paying full sticker plus crazy dealer fees and it is that is insane It's such, they seem like anachronisms now when we start, I was going through old mystery shopping reports and realizing that 99.9% of them involve a dealer advertising a ridiculously low price that's too good to be true, only to switch it up when you get there, and it's just not happening now. It's a whole different world. Okay, the next one.

It's amazing that the sales manager from Toyota Vero Beach and your mystery shopping report was not sufficiently smart to structure the scam. showing at least $5,000 for the trade, clearly one dealer to avoid. I don't remember that one exactly. That was a couple of months ago, I guess. But, yeah, we're always shocked and surprised by the actions and behavior of the people we mystery shop. I'll leave it. They never cease to amaze us for sure. All right, here's a question for you.

More anonymous feedback. Hey, Earl, can you do a long segment on how to buy a car if you have bad credit? I feel like this is a topic that needs to be talked about more. I've written a few of those if you if you go on to earlancars.com, www.orgoncars.com, and you go to search, I'll put in their bad credit, and you'll find several blogs. I've written on that. I probably have to do a fresh one, and I think I will because times change and conditions

change, banks, lenders have all changed. the people out there with bad credit are the victims we talk a lot in the show about how much you pay for a car when you have bad credit or you think you have bad credit you usually pay way too much for a car why because you feel like you have to you walk into a dealer asking them to do you a favor

to find financing for you and when the dealer looks to you is doing to you a favor then he's going to take advantage of that fact. He will actually sometimes pass along exorbitant fees that subprime lenders charge him

should be charging him to process and approve your loan because a lender approving a loan to someone with bad credit has a high repossession rate and that's costly. So he's justified in paying

asking you to pay a higher interest rate. So the deck is stacked against people with bad credit. The blogs that I have written basically say this. Number one, don't assume that you have bad credit. Always go to your bank or your credit union and talk directly with a conventional lender about your credit situation. You might be pleasantly surprised.

And even if they have to charge you a greater amount of interest, a conventional lender will give you something far more reasonable than these subprime lenders. who that's all they sell finance cars for are people with terrible credit. So if you're buying a used car, you're going to pay 20, 25% interest, whereas that same car could be bought from a conventional lender at a higher interest rate, say 8 or 10 or 12%. That's a lot of interest, but a lot better than 30.

So I'm going to take your advice. I will do a new blog. Stu, remind me if I forget, I will do a new blog on buying a car with bad credit. You know, I think you're going to get a whole lot of responses from that. This is such an important topic, and it needs to be addressed more than once or twice. And I've talked to so many people lately with bad credit. You definitely don't, you don't have to be a victim. You don't have to be vulnerable to having been taken advantage of.

There's a will, there's a way, and you too are human, and you should be treated as such. So take Earl's advice, and we all look forward to that next column. We're going to go back to the phones, and we are going to talk to Rolinda, who's calling us from Melbourne. And she's a first-time caller, and she wins herself $50 this morning. Welcome. Welcome. Hello. Hello.

Good morning. Hi. Good morning. What can we do for you? I just bought a used car. about a month ago and it has that the new transmission technology

the CVT Yes Maybe I just hate it because it's an Aloncha I had an Aloncha This is a 2016 I had a 2014 And I got much better gas mileage

With the 2014 than I am with this one It's a 2016 And it just feels like the car always jerking it never smooth ride that's something you might want to take into your Hyundai dealer have put a scan tool on it to see if everything's operating normally in it because the idea of the the CVT or continuously variable transmission is that instead of having actual metal gears to where it has to

shift through first second third fourth gears etc. is it's supposed to be basically two pulleys with a metal belt between them and the pulleys actually are designed to where they can change size based on how fast the car needs to go and that allows it to actually have an infinite number of gear ratios as you would call it so that the car should never actually shift a gear but it should be just a continuous smooth acceleration all the way up and down, if it's jerking like that quite a bit, that sounds like something inside that transmission may be acting up. And if you're still under their factory warranty, which I'm not sure if they have the same as Toyota, which is five-year $60,000, or if Hyundai has

gone like Kia, where they've got that 10-year $100,000 drive train warranty, you might want to just stop at your local Hyundai dealer and have them take a look at it. It sounds like something might be going wrong in that transmission. Okay. I appreciate that. I had bought it used from Mike Erdman, Toyota. Okay. Oh, okay, yep.

You might want to Google issues with Hyundai CVT transmission. I just Google that, and there's some information about that. and read that and that might help you and guide you when you go to your dealer. Google is awesome. Yeah, Google is awesome. I hope that we helped you this morning.

Oh, tremendously. Thank you. We'd love for you to, you know, give us a call again and let us know, you know, how everything turned out. And congratulations on your $50. Elise, we'll get your information in the control room, and I'll get the checkout to you next week. Oh, thank you so much.

I really appreciate it. Oh, spread the word. We're building a platform here for women. Okay. I heard about this from my friend Frank, and I love this show. I've been listening for this next week now. Thank you so much for that. Give us a call again.

Thanks. Have a wonderful weekend. Thank you, you too. And have a Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas to you, too. We're going to go to Frank from Jupiter Farms as a regular caller. Good morning. How you doing, Frank?

I'm doing well and I can't believe I'm following Rolinda I retired out of Melbourne or Patrick Air Force Base years ago and we met Rolinda there working on the base and we just stayed in touch of her sporadically over the years and she always

asked me about car issues and stuff I said you got to start listening to Earl's short on cars of course the radio doesn't go that far but she's on Facebook listening to you and I'm just on the regular radio station, but a small world. She's a very, very nice person who really helped around with that CBUT issue. Thank you guys. Thank you. Well, well, well. How to go? I need to get the dag on my hat. I've been doing this little bounty hunting for two different dealerships now.

We spoke briefly last week about that BMW having a lot of issues, possibly Lemon Law and the things like that. Well, that gentleman was actually thinking about getting a Kia telleride and I made the calls I didn't want I wasn't going to drive all over the country looking and the overmarket price was the lowest at 5,000 some up to 10 to 15,000 and I said I we're not going to pay that and they guys say well that's what it is I said no here's the way it is I'm gonna hang up and we're not going there I said and we did that to dealer after dealer and maybe it might sink in but as I spoke to him I said you know you've had BMWs

for almost 14 years. Why do you want to go to Kia? Why don't we go down to Brayman and talk to them, explaining the issue? And he got an appointment with one of the very high managers there. And I was in there with him, and they were wondering who this guy, Frank is. And if I had my little hat, it would look better. But that's all right next time.

The good news was he got rid of his 2020 X3, about 30-something thousand miles. They gave him a brand new 2022, but zero miles, with more options and more things for the same price he was paying, which was about $450 a month lease. And he has it for three years, and then a buyout $12,000 at the end of the lease. I said, can I get that deal? But that's okay. There is something that made me think about Schumacher, about being in the family,

you're all family. Well, the Trump card for this gentleman, his sister was married to a dealership and up in Rhode Island at BMW. So it kind of stayed in the family, but I don't want to say too much more and get anyone in trouble. But with that. Well, that's a good job. So, no, that was, that was fun. When we first walked in the door, I was greeted by this gentleman named Mo, M-O-E, and he said, can we help you? I said, well, we were here to buy a car today. Well, he starts salivating because I guess it was his turn up. And actually we had to go see someone else because of the turn back and all. But he said, we'd like some coffee.

We went and got coffee. He pours my coffee. He's like cream. Yes, I would. He puts the cream in. He stirs it for me. I go, I never had this kind of, you know, politeness in the dealership. You got sugar?

No, I don't need sugar. I got enough around me. But anyway, interesting dealership, I would say about half them wore their mask and half didn't. Their friendliness, if you go out of a bottle of water. This is the one on Indian Town? No, no, no, no. The one down in Oklahoma. Yeah, big dealership.

So then I have another friend that's looking for a car. One of the ones that you have serviced since 2008. It's the Lexus RX-350 that Randy knows all about. She's actually very happy their car. There's nothing wrong with the car, but she's ready for a new car after 14 years. So we went to the Lexus dealership up in Orlando. We were up there for a week on vacation. interesting dealership

MSRP nothing above dealer fees none no dealer fees I go are your relation to

you know Earl's and and if you already have a Lexus like she does they'll take

another thousand off for Lexus loyalty I mentioned I'm in the Air Force reserves or it was oh we'll give you another thousand off for military

so here is actually a dealership below MSRP with no dealer fees it's like unheard of It's like heaven on earth. Who owns that, Frank?

Do you know the owner? I think it's Auto Nation. Is it Auto Nation? It might be. It's a really big dealership. I mean. We'll check that out. We need to shop on and get them on the approved list.

Oh, yeah. They would like that. They gave us a $3.50 to go for a test drive. The only thing that Amory doesn't like is this huge hood. It looks like a dagum, you know, a Mack truck coming down the road. grill work but it drove nice and the price was in the 40s and a really nice bamboo finish on the woodwork inside and the color combination gorgeous gorgeous car so then the next day we go back to try just out of curiosity nx 300 and the lady was busy so I got a customer of it's picked the cars

all ready for you brand new it had all the plastic on the wheels on the steering wheel and they put that tag on the back hanging out in your car with two little ropes flopper around so you can tell as a test drive. And we went about a block and it just didn't feel right. It was just too small, too. And I said, well, we got a car, let's go. So we went over to look at the Porsche dealership. And at the McCann, they only had one McCann because that's another car

she would like, obviously a lot more. And then also check the Audi and saw the RX5. And so anyway, but I mean, here we're going around with a test drive from Lexus to different dealerships. I don't think they said they ever saw anyone do that before. Was this Lexus of Orlando? Yes. Yeah.

That's Jimmy Bryan. Is that right? Jimmy Brian. I'll tell you what, that was, we go, I know Jimmy Brian. Jimmy Brian was a Toyota dealer. He started out as a Toyota dealer, and he drove Rolls Royce for a driver. And he was really a character. He used to, his bait and switch in the service department was a $9.99, $9.99, oil change.

And they get you in there and hit you with it. So he's really come a long way. Jimmy, you've come a long way. I love your stories. I really do. How about Mr. Lipton? Amazing, wasn't he? Him and his role, voice.

I got one more for you. I need your help on. So now Amri has found a car that she absolutely loves. It's up in Stewart at the Audi dealership. They only have one. They only have one. A whole car and the whole place, and the pipeline is very small. But they are selling that MSRP.

which is interesting. But then the other fees they throw on is absolutely ludicrous beyond ludicrous. The other fees are from $899 to $999. The electronic finance fee is $240. The doc SAMHSAPS are $250. License fee is $200. Tag agency fees $890.

And there's more. And then they got something else. When the new car comes in, they've got to put nitrogen in the car. Oh, yeah. They've got to put lug nuts on. And they got to wash their car with special little soap for another $500.

But it does, it's not like a wax, it's not like a ceramic. And so with all those fees, it's almost $3,000 over at SRP. And so we're going to tell them, you take those off? She's a buyer, but if you don't take them off, we're going to walk out and see.

And now what they're saying is remember how you said to order a car and you can order it at today's price and then when it comes in, it's lease there? Supposedly, BMW is not doing that because now they're actually the manufacturers rise in their prices to grab some extra incentive, like a car

that was ordered back in October or not before that, I guess back about August or something. Well, that's good, Frank. You touched on something I was going to talk about later, and I will, but we're focusing on the dealer gouging the price. We're not focusing on the

manufacturer, but trust me, they are raising their prices, and you just confirm that. It's hard as tell when a manufacturer raises his price because they don't have to mess with the MSRP they can leave the MSRP the same way or they can raise it if they want to but they raise prices just by lowering their incentives to the dealers and that's exactly what's happening so you got two price raises going on during this whole COVID thing yeah no it is you know she's very logical woman I mean it's at a point in her life

you know that she doesn't want to drive around the Lexus that looks old-fashioned She does some part-time work at her sons and daughter-in-law's place right there on Juneau Beach on US 1 called Terramarsh is a fruit stand. And the people that come in with the... Bring her for a long time. Yeah. I mean, it's really funny. It's really funny.

They had something on Facebook about when their store was there actually down near Carl's furniture back in the 60s. And I remember my mom and I actually would stop there on our way. My mom and I lived in Miami, but she drove a bus during the wintertime, but in the summer there was no work down there. And so we went up to Asheville, North Carolina, just driving up U.S. 1 because back in the 50s, they weren't running super highways.

And I remember stopping that place as even a kid, and there it is right there on a Facebook. So it's an interesting family. We know them well. We spend Christmas with them Thanksgiving. Went to the Keys for a month down in a marathon with our trailers. So it's a unique business. But she sees all the cars.

Anyone that has an Audi, SQ5 or Q5, whatever they're called, Thank you very much, Frank. I love your calls because you're an old guy like me, and we have the same memories. I remember that same fruit stand and going way back. And we love your calls. Thanks very much. A lot of memories.

Yeah, I talk too much, I know. Thank you, Frank. Yeah, you all have a nice date. Thanks again, guys. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye. Okay, we're going to catch up on some texts, some YouTube.

Rick, what do you have down there? Anything? We're a little caught up right now. Okay. We're going to go to Stu, which he's been waiting patiently, and we've run out of time for phone calls, so we'll pick up next week anything that we have lost. So Stu, take over.

Okay, we got one more text. I think it's for Rick. It says, good morning. We have a 2019 Toyota Forerunner Limited that we bought from you, new. My wife has an iPhone X10S, and the Bluetooth with her forerner work fine. A month ago, she got an iPhone 13 Pro Max, and the Bluetooth doesn't stay working. I Google the issue, and it came up that it's a Toyota issue. Please advise, and that's from Robbie and Stewart.

First thing to do, make sure that your phone is fully updated, and the easiest thing, if you want to try this on your own, is delete the car from your phone and delete the phone from your car, then do a restart on your phone, and turn the car off and back on, and then repair it, but make sure that in your contact lists, that you don't have any odd characters for the names in your contact list, like dollar sign symbols or things like that. Those things cannot be interpreted properly by the radio, so that can cause issues. And the other thing that you can do is stop in at your local Toyota dealer and ask them

if there are any radio updates for the software and the radio. Yeah, Rick, you ought to do a YouTube on that. that would be a good one maybe yeah just walk it through it yeah it's just it's painful you know I know some of these things you're supposed to do but I hate to delete something and reinstall it is a psychological issue with me because you know I say I've got this thing it's not working right this app is just not working right but it's working but it's not working right if I delete it and I try to reinstall it and I can't reinstall it and course that's purely a mental issue something we shouldn't have to

to put people through, but a YouTube on that would be great. Oh, by the way, one day early, but happy birthday, Nancy. Happy early birthday. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right, so that's the last text. Let me just double check everything here. There's nothing coming in on Facebook.

Okay. All right, yeah, we're good. We're close to the Mystery Shopping Report, which is, you know, we went over to Schumacher, Volkswagen. Do you want to mention this or you want to wait until later? I think we'll wait a later. We'll get to the J.D. Power Sales Satisfaction Index later, and we're going to go to the Mystery Shopping Report. And what I'm going to do with the Mystery Shopping Report is, before I get into that, I'm going to talk about something that I just happen to find on the mystery shopping report, but it's something that I'll find on any dealership's vehicle buyer's order, legal contract when you buy a car.

And I'm thinking about the arbitration, the hidden clause in every dealer sales contract in Florida. If you go into any dealership in Florida, and probably the United States, and you look at the fine print, which you can't do, I brought my magnifying glass for this purpose. I had to use it to read the fine print on the Schumacher Volkswagen, which is our mystery shopping report. And on the mystery, on every car that you bought in Florida and most other states, you signed an agreement that you didn't see because it was in the fine print and was agreeing to arbitration under the rules of the American Arbitration Association. And I'm going to reach you the pertinent clause here, which I wrote in print I can read after I used my magnifying glass. And it says this is the first part of this long fine print. the purchaser and seller

hereby mutually waive all rights to a trial by jury the purchaser and seller in the words you as you buy this vehicle and the seller the dealer agree both of you agree to waive all your rights to a trial by jury

now that's just un-American right I mean we have the American legal system the American jury system trial system is unique in the world and you take anybody that's that's wronged they have a right to a trial by jury why would you want to waive your god-given American right to a trial by jury and every car dealer has that on there if you really want if you really want to light a fire with your dealer when you get ready to buy that car find the arbitration clause on the agreement

he's asking you to sign. It might not be even until you get into the business office or the F&I office. It'll be there. And I'm going to show you Schumacher's buyer's order. I'll hold it up. And you can see my scribble there. But your arbitration agreement's down at the bottom

in that blur, which is a fine print. Every dealer has that. Well, except for us. And we're the only dealer. And I am bragged. I'm bragging, okay? You should. But we're the only dealer in the world that doesn't have an arbitration agreement.

I told you about what the arbitration agreement did to Kevin Spacey. Yeah, $30 million. It cost him $30 million. That was an amazing story. Your dad shared that with me. That one got away from me. Anyway, the point is you're probably not going to get them to take that off, but you should let them know, and sometimes they will.

Sometimes they will. And you don't want to go into an agreement with a dealer thinking you might have to, assume, but if you're like me, you just don't like to have to waive something so important. It's like voting. Would you give up, voluntarily give up your right to vote? You don't want to voluntarily give up your right to a trial by jury. And every car dealer is going to make you do that, and you just don't know he's making you do that because it's hidden in the fine print. Who wants to walk around with a magnifying glass? I mean, this magnifying glass has served us very well, 20 years very well. But this is...

is just, you know, who does this? It's just un-American. One of the jeweler things. Yeah. I mean, that'd be great commercial. When you purchase a vehicle, you've got to have one of those little. Anyway, I digress back to the recovering car dealer. Stu, are you going to do this for the shopping?

Yeah, we had a great idea last week. Last week you said you're going to. Let's do it. That's how I was going to think about it. Oh, you have to digest. We're working on Stu. Stu is the genius behind these shopping reports. I am the pretty face that reads the report

He picks the shopper He chooses a target He tells the shopper how to do it And then he takes all the information The raw data from the shopper And he puts it in his report And I read it like I know what I'm talking about So we're trying to talk, Stu, to assume that role

Because he's the guy Yeah, and he's become so creative And such eloquent, eloquent writing that I'm wandering around the house in the wee hours of the morning reading his mystery shopping report waiting for it. And there it is, and it is quite enlightening, and I love it. I'm just a product of a liberal arts education. Okay.

Shoemaker Volkswagen. A Shoemaker Volkswagen. Last week I remarked that despite the crazy inventory shortages and the upward surge in prices car dealers seem to become more honest and straightforward with their customers and we are seeing this trend thank God dealers are changing astronomical prices or charging astronomical prices but they're looking they're looking their customers right in the eye while they're doing it I

mean if you got to pay all the money you're looking at Tiffany's and and they give you a diamond bracelet they don't haggle they don't hassle and they're very proud of their product and they say this is a Tiffany a diamond bracelet and they're not going to discount it, and people go in the Tiffany's all the time, and they pay the price. So there is a place for high pricing. There's no place for deceptive bait and switch advertising. So, you know, we're seeing an improvement. The days, the price is...

Sorry, these days. Yeah, yeah, yeah. These days, the prices, the price is what you pay, what you see is what you get, and there's no more blog advertised prices or bait and switch ads. all the dealers have become one price, one super high price, MSRP, or higher. You're lucky if you get the MSRP. Now, Stu thought, and this is the, it's amazing how you can read my mind. This is, this is maybe in disguise a real positive trend, because maybe eventually the prices will come down,

but the habit of charging the price that you advertising in quarter, the price that you're actually charging will stick. And that's kind of what we're seeing, a trend toward. So it just took a pandemic on the global supply chain collapse for this to happen. Although it's become more expensive to buy a newer-use car, couldn't the argument be made that the current environment is in some ways better for the consumers? Like the Tiffany analogy I gave. It's never been easier to compare offers from dealers.

And that's what Senator Monroeney back in 1958 had in mind when he, passed the bill which became law of every new car has to have a sticker with a suggested retail and even if he don't pay that retail which you hope you don't have to you have a basis for comparison so you take that Chevrolet Camaro and you go into three Chevro dealers and you compare the MSRP discount it gives you a firm platform to compare the best price and that's what the dealers have taken away with you in the past, with their bait and switch, inflated prices, phony Monroeis, and the rest of it.

So I guess we're both optimists, too, and me, we're both optimists that maybe this is a signal that we'll wake up from this pandemic, from this bad dream we've been having for the past almost two years, and we'll wake up, and the car dealer environment will be a better one for it. So it's never been easier to compare offers from dealers. and here we are. If you don't like the price, the next guy's going to pay it, and that's the way it is.

That's the reason they can be courteous now. They don't have to argue, and they say, well, thank you for coming in, because they're looking over your shoulder, and there's somebody waving at you saying, I want that car, and they're going to buy it. They see them lined up behind you. Exactly.

We're going to laugh at you. The current state of affairs is a car dealer's dream. Let me tell you. You've got to pinch me. us too. I mean we're just, we can't believe what's happening. Every car that comes in is already sold. All we do is take it off the truck, clean it up, and deliver it to the customer. They're very happy. They love the car and we make a big profit, MSRP. And that's what we're charging MSRP, not a nickel over. That's the out-the-door price. Find a dealer to do the same thing

for you. But we recommend that you wait. Prices are going down. Don't buy a car from us. Don't buy a car for many dealer unless you have to. Going on for a number of months, and it'll be a while before they come down, but they are coming down now. For consumers who have to buy a car, they can expect to pay more, but they can all expect in either time finding the lowest high price. So that's what it is, the lowest higher price. The lowest price these days is MSRP, manufacturers, adjusted retail. Be careful. Don't just say lowest is list price.

sticker price, if it's a dealer list, it's meaningless. If it's a sticker that the dealer put on the window, it's meaningless. So you've got to be careful, the terminology is very important. MSRP is the only thing you can trust. If it's MSRP, that is the Monroney label, that's a legal document. If they're charging MSRP, sad to say, as high that price is, it's the lowest price you'll be able to find. And there are a lot dealers, not a lot, but a few that are going at MSRP, look around in your market, you'll find one.

We talked to Frank today, I think, that said he was in Orlando, found a Lexus dealer, that actually was a thousand dollars below MSRP. If you were in the military, was that what it was? Yeah, he had the military rebate and also, he had two of these, it's hard to get rebates. Yeah. Anyway, here we are suggesting you buy a car at MSRP. We thought we'd never see that day. We found several dealerships who, repeat, to be self-regulated and impose the MSRP cap. It was easy to find out of the other. They just asked the price, and they provided it. And those are on the recommended list, and you can go to hurluncars.com, look for, or you can go to best dealer. Good dealer, baddealer list.com.

Either place, and you can find out those dealers that are getting eight grades or high grades and choose those dealers. Agent Lightning was back on duty this week, and she selected Schumacher Volkswagen. We haven't shopped this dealership since June of last year, so we're excited to see if a local institution, like Schumacher, fell on the side agreed or restraint. Operation Report. I arrived at the showroom in the evening. The dealership looked empty and closed. No customers or no cars. Not an uncommon look to car dealers today.

They're selling maybe a third the number of cars or less than they normally sell. Bright Lights were the only sign this business was open. I entered, was greeted by a salesman named Nome, unusual name, in O.A.N. Like Nome Chomsky. Hmm? Like Nome Chomsky. Oh, okay. Don't know Nome Jomsky.

Famous sociologist. Oh, I don't know. I told Nome that my husband, currently owned a 2018 Volkswagen Volkswagen Atlas, and we wanted to get another smaller recipe. Ticuan? Ticuan. Tyquan? Ticuan? Okay. I'll Google it. For myself, OAM said they were very low

in inventory. They only had seven new available toilets in stock, unbelievable. When normally, it would have 250, and that's believable on hand. Out of the seven, he had a couple of Teguans, one that was in the showroom. I said, I'd like to see the one in the showroom. It was white. 2022 SE model.

We walked over to the SUV displayed with a big red blow. Oh, on the hood. Noam continued to be mown in the inventory situation. Chris Hyde's Volkswagen for taking away all the good cash in Sennies, and I alluded to this earlier. Not the price hike. Not only are you paying over MSRP, and the lowest you're going to pay is MSRP,

but the manufacturer has raised their price to the dealer which has increased your actual price because the dealer passes along this and it could be passed long because the MSRP goes up or it could be passed long because the profit to the dealer is in a dealer incentive that you never knew about it. Those are secret incentives. Now there are customer incentives

which might as well be secret because you probably don't know about it unless the dealer tells you And when you buy the car, you're going to sign a waiver saying that you agree that all customer incentives are awarded to the dealer. And you never knew you signed that. But a lot of things happen that you never know when you're in a car dealership. No, I'm explaining the differences between the different trim levels of the Tijuana, Volkswagen, as he made his presentation. I inspected the car of the MSP was 32,0725.

That's the legitimate manufacturer's just retail when ruining. But there was an indemnium label, okay, that's the first red flag, Schumacher vote for a record. Here we go. That added a $295, $2,995 on top of sticker price. They call it market adjustment. That's become common for that gouge. The deal of this price was Schumacher labeled total MSRP. and boy, that's illegal, isn't it?

That's not MSRP at all. That's not the SSRP. That's the Schumacher's suggestion. Exactly. So what do we have here, folks? And if you're listing Schumacher, here's an opportunity to sue me. You're talking about a violating of a Florida law. You violate a federal.

A federal law and a floral law that says the MSRP is the MSRP. You cannot put an addendum and call it total MSRP. That's deceptive advertising. So it brings it up to $35,720. I told him I wanted to see his best deal on this one. I asked him what kind of discount I could get. Norman was very nice and said that they're not offering any discounts. He said, the only way to stay in business,

while the inventory is this way, is to charge more. And that scene, I talked about that in the car on the way in. To a degree, that's true. That's egregious. because first of all it's not true the dealers are making more profits today than they ever had in their history but

it's true in a theoretical sense that if to stay to keep the light to meet their expenses they would have to charge more than they normally charge well it's true also it's true also for noam because noam is on commission and he might have used the word profit carelessly profit to

noam is difficult because if he sells only five cars and he normally sells 15 cars and he gets 25% of the profit on the car how is he going to equal his price, his profit, which is his compensation

and he has to raise the price it at SSRP. It's smoke and mirror but it's not true. The profit is definitely extraordinarily high for Schumacher Volkswagen. So Noam was talking about his own commissions suffering, which they would worry not to charge

a whole lot more than sticker. He began to write up the deal on a blank sheet of paper, and that's a red flag with a ballpoint pen, but I stopped them and asked him for something more official. Norm said he needed to get me into the system first. He asked for my driver's license and seemed pleased to discover I had already been there. So Agent Lightning had been in had not been discovered. I mean, I wonder often, why not? We're on radio.

We're on Facebook. We're talking about Schumacher vote squadron. You think they would flag this in the computer? Not necessarily. We've kind of like had thought experiments about, we have customers that come to us for years over and over again and never buy a car. And they're not mystery shopping us. They just come in and they shop and they leave. I guess you're right. He printed the buyer's order for me right at the desk. The top line label price of vehicle was 35,000, 720. He inflated MSRP price, inflated almost $2,000, $2,000. And on top of that, $39 private tag agency fee, which is a hidden fee, it's a profit

to the dealer, it's not a fee, $379 electronic registration fee, which is the same thing, electronic registration filing fee. So you got $39 for $379 and a $995,000, I can't say it, $995 dealer prep fee. the real selling price was 37,133. So you had all those hidden fees together. You got $1,13, in addition to the 1999, whatever it was, and the market adjustment, on top of the MSRP. So you're being hosed.

You're being hosed big time. I estimate there's anything he could do on the price. Oh, I think you skipped a paragraph. Oh, I did? Yeah. No, I'm told me that the estimated tax, O-Tag, it was a 550, we'll likely come down, tried to justify the 29, oh, 29-95 market adjustment, by saying it was one of the lowest markups around, but not true, it's probably average.

I mean, you can't take this Oakland Toyota for $40,000, that's an anomaly. But anyway, Volkswagen, a Shoemaker Volkswagen, is hosing their customers. They're nowhere near MSRP, and they're supplying the man. And it's not legally price couching, and my parlance is price couching, and your parlance is price couching, but legally is not, because he's legally entitled to charge as much over MSRP as he wants. He's not legally entitled to allude to the fact that it is an adjustment of the MSRP. That was a violation of the law. And I don't like it, and we now need to get some votes where we've got plenty of time. votes will come trickling in. You can do it on YouTube. You can do it by text. You can do it by

your anonymous feedback and we will register your votes. You can go to good dealer, bad dealer list.com at her own cars.com and you can find out recommended Volkswagen dealers. And if we give Schumacher Volkswagen a passing vote, it will appear. If we don't give it a passing a vote, it'll be on do not, it'll be the bad dealer list. Do not buy. from this dealer. So you choose how you want Chumacher Vogue to be seen and text in your

votes or YouTube in or Facebook your votes. However you want to have them come in. I'm still waiting for something to come in. I don't have any but I'm a little bit torn here because I think they've satisfied the criteria of transparency. There wasn't an ad

that drew her in and everything was presented up front without deception but it was still adding in that they're going against the trend the trend is to come down in price right now and they're still adding that all in so they're still

trying to take advantage I'm going to give them a C I think you're being kind but I your analysis was quite accurate Rick what do you feel well let's see here we've got Mark from St. Louis

market adjusted grade of an F Tim Gilli and dealer slash market adjustment equals me out the door, F, Mark Smith with an F, Tom with a D for deceptive MSRP excessive fees, Brian with an F, Ernesto with an F, Mark Ryan with an F, Wayne with a big F, I'm thinking I might just follow that trend and say, I'll give them a little bit, I'll give him a D minus as the best I can really do. is it's you know

we're whatever whatever rate this ends up with for Schumacher Volkswagen I would check with other Volkswagen dealers you can go to Gunther Volkswagen

in Fort Lauderdale and also Del Rey I believe I believe they have the Volkswagen dealership in Del Rey and who's a Volkswagen dealer in Martin County

in this area Wallace? Yeah I would check there I would definitely check around you'll find a Volkswagen dealer I feel fairly sure

that will be marking up their vehicles less than Schumacher. And we're agreeing now on evasive advertising, deceptive advertising and something in illegality. We're not trying to punish Schumacher voting for a price. Nancy, what do you think? I think I have a headache. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, I think about this senator from Oklahoma. You know, he's turning over in his grave. At any rate, I'm sorry. I'm thinking if I went into the dealership, and I'm basing my grade on that, I give him an F. The whole thing stinks. I got a D-minus from Martha on Facebook, so you have somebody right next to you. D-minus is almost an F.

Yeah. And let's see, I've got Negan 1 with a D for fake MSRP, And cram 1624 with F for deceptive. Yeah, I'm going to give him a D-minus. And I can't, in good conscience, fail them and put them on the do not buy list. But I think, you know, I wish people would get word back to Schumacher. I know Chuck Schumacher, I knew his father, and he's got a lot of dealerships now. You can't possibly watch all the stores carefully.

And I think he just needs to take, you know, take a few minutes and study the situation in his Volkswagen store in North Palm Beach and talk to the people there. And anybody that knows a group out there to let them know. First of all, you can never allude to a customer that the addendum label is the final MSRP. That's illegal. Also, if you're trying to maintain your customers, you're going to have to come down quite a bit on your prices toward MSRP. You're way over MSRP. When you take, was it $3,000 addendum, and then $1,400 in hidden fees, you're way, way over.

So you're going to bring your prices down. I think if you want to maintain the reputation, because other dealers will be doing it. And my guess now that Gunther is the one that probably will be taking a lot of your customers. So Chuck Schumacher, if you're listening, or friends with Chuck Schumacher, take a look at that store. Can I address what you just said about Schumacher? You know, you said that he can't maintain all of the stores. You know, I'm sorry. I really can't swallow that. Here you have a person that has built his brand, his name, and everyone believes in him.

And you read this mystery shopping report. And I'm sorry, as hard as we all work, and we had no other dealerships to do. Also, maintain your stores. This isn't a time to take advantage of the consumer. The environment that we're living in right now, it's not necessary, really not necessary. That's all I have to say. Anybody else? Do you have anything to add?

Stu's scratching his head. I'm scratching my head because it's, I think. I thought this would be a clean-cut thing, but we're not all on the same page with a Schumacher Volkswagen. I don't know. I just feel bad about it. I watch the commercials. You have to deal with the fact that most dealerships, they are large, and Schumacher is one of the smallest chains. So if you're going to deal with Penske Automotive Group or a Sonic Automotive Group, AutoNation, I mean, huge.

So this is a problem. Car dealers used to be mom and pop operations, and they evolved very quickly to three and four chains and six and eight chains, and now there are hundreds of dealers in the chains. And the problem of management is magnified exponentially. And if you're one owner of a group and you have to be responsible for three stores, it's harder. Six stores is harder. Two hundred stores is even harder to find good management and all those stores. difficult. So it's a challenge. You put your name on it. Be careful because your name is important

to me. My name's important to me. Everybody's name is important to them. Be careful out there you dealers who put your name on the dealerships. Branding. To know what's going on. Absolutely. And I think we're about at that time. That's our mystery shopping report from Schumacher Volkswagen. And remember folks, dealer fees aren't bad. Hidden fees are. So it's a minefield out there. I haven't said that in a while. And if you've got to do your homework, honestly, I think that our digital manager, our manager has summoned me to, did you say five, four, three, four minutes. Okay, I'm going to give it back to the recovering car dealer. Okay. What we'd like to do is hear from anybody out there that has a dealer that we

would like to mystery shop. And I'm speaking mainly to your South Florida. our South Florida audience. We do get out of the state from time to time, but it's difficult. And some of you out there that might be thinking about, maybe you had a bad experience with a dealer, or maybe you're anticipating going to a dealer. Give us some suggestions of South Florida dealers. Maybe there's a unique situation that you want to tip us off to.

We can investigate a particular situation that you felt you were subjected to. And you can text us at 772-497-60-6-5-30. Or you can use your anonymous feedback, your anonymous feedback.com. Can't call right now because we have the phones now, but the text would be your best bet. 772 area code 497-6530. Give us some dealerships out there in the South Florida area, I think, say from Orlando South to Miami. We can stretch out that far without too big of a problem. You see, our listeners, our textures, are you.

You are a very important part of the show. We really appreciate you. Look at this suggestion for the column for, you know, people, consumers with bad credit. So we appreciate you, and we want to let you know that you are an important part of the show. Folks, we had a great show, a wonderful time with all of you, and we hope that we have helped each and every one of you. Stay tuned next week, Saturday morning, 8 o'clock, will be right here. wonderful weekend.