Earl Stewart on Cars - 12.05.2020 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Al Hendrickson Toyota

Episode Date: December 5, 2020

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning visits the 3rd largest Toyota U.S. dealer located in Coconut Creek, to see if the dealer will honor the Costco price on a 2021 Toyota RAV4. 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 as my son, Stu Stewart, our LinkedIn. through Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Periscope. Stu is also the Spymaster Director of our Mystery Shopping Report. He dispatches our secret shopper weekly to an unsuspecting South Florida dealership. And now, on with the show.

Good morning, everybody. This is Earl Stewart Live and Living Color. And you just heard my introduction? My introduction is going to be a little different this morning. I'm going to do something I haven't done before. and I'm going to sing Happy Birthday to my bride, Nancy Stewart. Now, we've got some

music, I think. Mike in the control room might have some music, but whether we have music or not, I'm going to lead the staff here, the folks in the studio, Rick and Stu, and Jonathan can join in. Nancy, you can't sing. She can just blush behind her mask.

Uh-huh. A one and a two and a three. Happy birthday, you. Happy birthday to you, Nancy. Happy birthday to you. Okay. Happy birthday, Nancy. Okay. Happy birthday, Nancy. Yeah. She's getting low for clumps. Okay. You don't have to say anything. Okay, folks. We caught her off car. She's totally flabbergasted, discombobulated, and all those other things. But she'll be back. very important to the show. I thought we should do something special for her because she's a co-founder.

And she started with me, I'm going to say two decades ago. I've been saying 17 years for two or three years, so it's probably two decades ago when we're just a little old half-hour show on Cview Radio. And we worked and worked. And then they fired us because the car dealers ganged up on this, boycott of the station for advertising until they got rid of us. And then we were in exile for OECD. year and finally the radio station, CBU Radio, sold out to the current owners of this station and they hired us back and here we are. 20 years later and still feisty as ever and trying to help you learn how to buy a car without being ripped off by a car dealer. I think I need to tell you a little bit about who we got here even though I did in my record introduction. I always

like to talk about Rick Kearney because Rick is probably more important that we give them credit for. You get your car service and repair it far more often than you have to buy a car. And they get you. The car dealers get you when you get your car service. Here's something a lot of people don't even know. Regular listeners do know this, but there's a service fee in the service or I'm in a dealer fee in the service department. A hidden fee. I was going to say virtually, but I'm going to say every service department that you probably go into. And this service fee varies. I mean, they don't name it a service fee.

They don't name it anything except what they create so they fool you into not knowing you're paying it. It's at the bottom of the invoice. And that's the type of thing that happens in service. So Rick is here to protect you from that. Plus, practically speaking, to maybe even give you some do-it-yourself tips, how to fix a car yourself. as complicated as they are, there are little things that you can do to get your car going, at least to keep it safe.

And when you do get it repaired, he can give you guidance as to how to do it and how to choose the right technician. So I'm going to ask you to call Rick during the show. Telephone number, you know, can you believe that today I feel funny about talking about telephones like a sewing machine or a buggy whip? but telephones really exist. I mean, we have smartphones now, so I guess they are high-tech. But the old-fashioned telephone I think about, 877-960, call us,

and we will hear you. We will prioritize your call if you call the show. We don't want you waiting for a long time. And we've only got three lines coming into the station, so if you back up, we don't want that to happen. And Nancy is going to be watching the screen over there. So when you call, we'll see the, we'll see the call. call and we'll interrupt us, she'll interrupt us, or we'll see her waving at us, and we'll

go to the phone call. And that phone number again is 877-960-99-60. 877-960-99-60. Rick Kearney, Stu Stewart, is my partner in crime here. I shouldn't use that. He never was my partner in crime. I had another son. I have another son that was my partner in crime years ago.

And then when I started going straight in the car business, as you know, I'm a recovering car dealer, Stu said, okay, if you're going to treat people fair and honest, I might consider coming to work for you. So that was, Stu was one of my motivations as to why I went straight and decided to become a recovering car dealer. Stu was also in charge of our cyber undercover events where we send secret shoppers out. And he's also on top of the market. I know he's got Google, and we all have Google. but he lives the car business day by day with all the minutia in detail.

And he really, he's on top of the kind of thing you might want to ask about a current model's features and benefits or, you know, which would you recommend car? He's on top of that. So we got Stu there. We have a special shopping report today and he's the, as I say, he's our cybermaster. He dispatches Agent Lightning and Agent Thunder into the field

to find out what car dealers really do when you go and do a car dealership to buy a car. And we expose all that, and he's in charge of that. And I think my wife, Nancy Stewart, my co-host, Mrs. Sunrise, she goes by many names. I think she's pulled herself together, and I think she's combobulated. Is that true? Or discombobulated?

She's re-combobulated. Yeah, you're reconpobulated. I don't know. I re-combobulated a lot. Nancy, probably the main thing about Nancy on this show is the fact that she has built this show into a show for females and males. It used to be a guy thing, kind of like an old boys club. But now we have a respectable following of females sometimes. We're up to 50% and we're trying to build it up by giving you special offers, which Nancy will describe to you, the birthday girl.

It's all yours, honey. Okay. Thank you. Thank you to everyone. Good morning. That special offer that we, you know, how we invite the ladies to give us a call is really based on some of the things Earl just said. And we're still, you know, working our way out of a situation that is a boys club as far as the ladies are concerned. It's, you know, I hope the time comes whenever I don't get a phone call and a female says that, you know,

You know, they asked her, well, are you going to be bringing your husband in or your boyfriend? And that's like a slap in the face. Your daddy. So, yeah, Daddy, you know, your brother, whomever. But ladies, you have a home right here at Earl Stewart on Cars. We invite you. You're a very important part of the show. And we extend $50 to the first two new lady callers.

just to tease you up a little bit and get you to, you know, express your transaction if it did take place in a dealership. So give us a call tool free at 877-960-9600, and we'll be right here to take your call. I'm sorry, that's 87-7-6-90-60, and you can text us at 877. That's 772. I guess I am not together. 772-49765-30. So take advantage of that. I know you could use the $50.

Back to the recovering car dealer. And Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Absolutely. You know, I think we tend not to mention that because we have such a response that's already out there. Of all the numbers and ways to reach us, you would think that Your Anonymous Feedback.com,

that goes through a company is called Incognito, And they have blue chip companies like Adobe and Amazon that use this to get feedback from their customers and employees. And it's total anonymous. When you go to your anonymousfeedback.com, you can send us a message. We don't know who you are. And people feel comfortable about that. I do. I mean, there are times when I would, I want to mention something to a group or somebody.

I'd rather just be anonymous just because I don't want to spend the time, discussing it later. I just want to shoot my comment out. It's easy, pain free. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Of course, the text, as Nancy just mentioned, was 772 or E-Code 4976530. Let's shoot over to Stu for a second because we have an unusual situation with our Mystery Chaplin Report. We've done something we don't normally do. And Stu is He can explain why we did it and why you're going to like it. Yeah, we're on a little bit of a role here. We've been shopping Toyota dealerships for the last few weeks,

and it's something that we generally try to avoid because, as you know, we do have a Toyota dealership, so we don't want it to look like we're taking shots. But for the record, the first one we did, Palm Beach Toyota, did a great job. Got a B-plus, and we're recommending them. As a matter of fact, we've been recommending them for years. And so we tried to different another Toyota dealers. And, well, this past week, we kind of went down a rabbit hole. We had originally intended to mystery shop, well, I'm not going to name the dealership because we're going to go back, but it's a Toyota dealership.

And things got a little confused, as you will hear in the shopping report. And we wound up mystery shopping, one of the biggest Toyota dealerships in the world, really. It might be number three, four. You know, in the whole world. They're huge. Thousand, you'll sell a thousand cars in a month. Close to it. Yeah, the biggest toy dealership.

in the world is Longo, Toyota, and that's in L.A. The second biggest, and it's really close, is Hollywood Toyota, and that's right here in South Florida. A stone's throw from Hollywood Toyota is Al Hendrickson's Toyota, and I think there might be number three or four in the whole country. They sell a ton of Toytas, a ton of used cars. They've been there forever, and we have a history with them. I mean, actually, we're friends with the Hendricksons. Not every day, we don't socialize every day, but you know them going back a million years. I know Al Jr., who I I think is the dealer now.

So, yeah, it's a very exciting thing. And the other thing to mention about Al Hendrickson is they kind of typify the old school South Florida car buying style. And they've been around. They've been doing it like that for a long time. And we don't think they're going to change. But we haven't shopped them out because they're kind of far. And like we said, we kind of shy away from the Toyota dealers. Now, I hope this isn't too insider.

for people appreciate it. One thing that's always amazed me about Al Hendon Toyota. I think it's still true today. We need to double check. But the true test of customer satisfaction is generally do people come back? And usually when you have a dealer that's treating people dishonestly, they'll sell a car and then that person doesn't buy another car from that dealer. They might buy the same mega car, but they'll try a different dealer. With Al Hendonso and Toyota, they have a very high sales loyalty of return policy. So more so than a lot of dealers,

when Al Hendrickson sells a Toyota, that buyer comes back and buys another Toyota in spite of what we have seen in terms of high hidden fees and things like that. They've been successful at creating relationships with their customers. Like you said, they have high repeat business. And sometimes they're just kind of a strange anomaly. They're in a, I guess they're out a little bit,

coconut creek's a little bit out west of like Fort Lauderdale, right? Somewhere in that area. Coconut Creek, western. Yeah, it's kind of like this kind of strange new area. I've grown up in Florida, my whole, I've spent my whole life in Florida, and it's just like a kind of strange hinterland there, but an amazing amount of cars are sold in that area.

And the funny thing is, and this is getting really in the weeds, but when they look at, like, car dealers, and they sell into each other's markets and stuff, There's a lot of interaction between us and Al Hendricksson, like a lot of people in our area by from, not a lot, but a lot of people in their area by from us and we can't figure it out. Yeah, there's a strange, temporal anomaly. We're going to break away from the conversation for a moment, and we had a call earlier, and I invite you to give us a call back. I don't have your first name, but we are going to go to, we are going to go to Linda. Oh, that was Joe from Palm Beach Gardens.

Joe, give us a call back. Sorry, you were on hold for so long. That number is 877-960-99-60. Now we're going to go to Georgia. We have Linda on the phone. Good morning, Linda. Good morning, Nancy. Happy birthday.

Oh, thanks, Linda. How are you? I'm doing pretty good. You're a little cold. I'd rather be in Florida. Florida. I just wanted to wish you a happy birthday, and I hope Earl Teach is really good. Thank you, Linda. Well, maybe you'll be our good luck charm this morning, and the ladies are listening to your voice, and they'll give us a call.

That's right. Come on, ladies. Give us a call. Thank you, Linda. Have a great day, and thanks again. Why don't we get us some text or YouTube, or maybe anonymous feedback, Stu? Absolutely. We'll start with a leftover from last week. It's a simple question. Why don't cars have antennas anymore? I'll let Rick handle it, even though I know the answer. They do. They do. Car antennas have always been a funny thing because they tried swapping them from being just a simple whip to putting them in the glass. Sometimes that would work on a lot of cars. You'd have an antenna built into your windshield or a side window. and it gets rid of that kind of ugly antenna masks sticking up that if you're going to go through a car wash,

you have to remove it, or it's going to get broken off. Can I make an observation? Sure. In my experience, I think I know what, my guess is the person that wrote that was older, and I think he wasn't referring to the post, we call them the post antenna. And the post antenna is, you know, you had a power. You could put it up and take it back, so you put it down before you go in the car wash. And I always like the post antenna, mainly because it wasn't as directional, especially for AM.

And I could turn a corner. Now, if you're getting a station faintly, and you're going a certain direction, you can't get them at all. If you go in this or other direction, you get them more. But the post antenna always seemed to be more efficient at second end of the signal. They were. They actually worked better, in my opinion. Now, if you've noticed, a lot of cars, have that little shit. shark fin up on top.

And again, that's your radio antenna. Unfortunately, they don't work as really as well for drawing in those weaker signals for AM. Unfortunately, I think of what a lot of the car designers have gone to is the idea that

they're looking more for that powered antenna that is going for cell signal, FM to a degree, but also satellite reception for such things as XM satellite, your safety connect satellite systems, and, of course, using your cell phone to do Internet streaming.

There you have it, folks, more than you ever needed to know about radio and antenna. But in seriousness, I still think that they should make it available. But I can do a little plug for how you can listen to the show when you're not by a regular radio or if you don't have an antenna. I discovered it from the, because I just wanted to hear it. hear the show when you first went on. So I got an app a long time called tune in on my phone and you can tune in any radio station in the country and you stream it through your infotainment system. So I heard. Yeah. So you can also listen to, you know, cable news if that's your

thing. And then, but it's pretty cool. And so it doesn't, it's really not, it only depends on your cell signal. So if you have a bad radio signal, you can take up the show. Okay, well, we have Joe back. Thank you for calling back, Joe. And Joe calls us from Palm Beach Guard. curtains. Good morning, Joe. What can we do for you? Good morning, Nancy. Happy birthday, first of all. Oh, thank you. My question for the team is, why do some upscale cars, namely Mercedes-Benz, have proprietary codes. So when something goes wrong on these electronic transmissions, They put you on their diagnostic machine for $300, and they tell you, oh, you need a speed module for your electronic transmission, which will cost you $2,000. Your auto mechanics, your regular mom-and-pop shops that are great in this town can't get the codes because Mercedes won't do.

give you those codes. You know, that's a great question. And it's a timely question. Massachusetts, you may have read, is fighting that issue, and they're taking to the legislature, and the manufacturers are up in arms. Mercedes is not the only manufacturer that wants to keep this proprietary.

So your question is, why do they do that? You know, they have purportedly what they're saying to the legislators is, is we do that to protect the consumer. That's always the, and we're protecting them against hacking, and if we put this code out, it's going to allow the bad people to hack into their system and do bad things to the car. The argument against that is that it's not really they're worried about the proprietary

or the hacking, because anything can be protected, at least for a while, and then, you know, it's always going to be as long as this planet exists, the battle between the hackers and the good guys, and it'll be a continuing show. I think, and I personally, I personally think the manufacturers are being influenced heavily by their dealers, and I think in a sense there's a good reason for that, because dealers do have the best equipment, dealers do have the best educated technicians, and Rick is smiling now behind the mask, I can tell, he's very happy, but it's true. So Rick Kearney, when he works on your car, I can't tell me how many years of training he's had and he's still being trained.

I can't tell you how much money I've had to spend on diagnostic equipment. And every time I turn around, there's a new box that Toyota sends me with very, very expensive equipment. So when you go into a car dealership, franchise new car dealership, you're getting the best trained tech and you're getting the best equipment. With that said, you also pay a hell of a high price, and sometimes it's too high a price, and the price doesn't justify the skill and the diagnostic equipment and the rest of it. So if they had this thing where the independent mechanics were, as you said, Joe, there's some people out there that are really good. A lot of them are Rick Kearney's trained technicians that decided to go into business for himself.

Rick could go out there and open up a shop and make a lot of money. I wish I hadn't said that. You wouldn't dare. And a lot of very, very good technicians have done that. So I vote for making it not proprietary. And I think Mercedes and Toyota and all the manufacturers should share this diagnostic information with whoever the customer wants to bring it to have it fixed. You can say, okay, if you don't fix it right, we'll avoid your warranty.

That's okay. But just don't keep the secret on that information. Joe, I hope I didn't go on too long. I know I did. No, no, you didn't. And believe me, it's less shorter than the frustration I've had having to deal with unlocking the car basically locked down. The car would not go into gear. And the only people who can get the car out of gear was Mercedes.

So, anyway, the other question related to that is, how about these gadgets like sticks that plug into that computer system? Are they worth it? Rick, I can't answer that. A lot of the simple code pullers are very well worth it. They're worth their weight in gold for just the very simplest ones because they will pull the code, tell you what it is. You can go online, run that code for your car, and you can find so many resources.

And, of course, you may have to search for the truth out of the garbage, but you will find resources there that will tell you probably in about 85% of the cases exactly what part you need to have replaced on your car. Now when you go to the mechanic and you say, hey, I've got to check engine light on and your mechanic says, okay, well, it's this code, you already know it, you need this part and you already know it, and he gives you a price for how much it is to replace it, and it's a reasonable price that you've already seen, you know you're safe. you know yeah that's that's the reasonable thing and if you're a do-it-yourselfer and you know you want to

simply do that basic repair yourself hey all to you what's a good place to buy those tools believe it or not i like just a simple one from like discount auto parts auto zone they're about $25 you can get them on amazon the same thing you don't need the one that goes to your iPhone and sends you all the information you don't need the fancy one that you know is 85 $100 that tries to send you too much information and probably about 70% of the time when you've got a check engine light on and you pull those codes certain norms of those codes are simply going to be replace your gas cap just put a new gas cap on it yeah and half the time that that solves the problem that's your question Joe it did I thank you very much and I wish you

guys a great rest of the weekend thank you joe thanks for being a regular caller recognize your voice have a great weekend give us a call tool free at 877 960 9960 and ladies i extended an invitation for you to give us a call earlier and i'd like for you to well share your shopping experience your service anything at all that you had to you know do this past week and uh there's a lot of stories out there, too, as far as the ladies are concerned. So we just want to sort of fine-tune things. And this is a platform right here where you can vent and you can share your stories. And if you don't want to call the telephone number, simply text us. You have that, which is 772-497-6530. You get the $50 if you call the $877-960. And if you really want to remain

Well, Anonymous, you can go through www.W Your Anonymous Feedback.com. But remember ladies, the first two new lady callers, $50. And don't forget Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Periscope. We get messages

on all those. Not many on Periscope or Twitter anymore, but YouTube and Facebook are big. And we're Facebook.com, 4.slash Erlancars. YouTube.com, 4.slash Erlancars. and Periscope, probably something the same.

I don't know, Twitter handle, I'm not sure of it, be honest with you, but do probably remember. You know, while I'm thinking about it, let me mention Earl's Vigilandis, and even if you don't consider yourself a real expert, we could still use your help. You would not only help, you know, our listeners and everyone, but people in your community,

so you can go to Earl on Cars or W.S. www, earlsvigilantes.com. I got exciting news for potential vigilantes. Oh. We ordered some hats. We ordered some hats. Oh, wow. So they should be here in pretty soon.

We'll take pictures of them. Hopefully we'll have them by next week's show. We can show it on the... We'll wear the hats on the show, and that way it'll be like a constant reminder. Okay. Of Earlsvigiginal. Sure, you can wear a hat the whole show.

We can use your help, folks. I'm going to wear a mind around the neighborhood. neighborhood where I live and uh you look like a condo commander or one of those uh look i want to tell you what you're pretty busy i heard about uh you uh being a part-time detective yeah i'm helping uh i'm helping my neighborhood police for the jupiler police because we've captured the culprit we think on our webcam so really we're digressing let's get to the text okay let's get to one from brian in california and i always tease brian because we get his text at very strange hours for somebody who is three hours

at the different time zone. We might have another call right now. We do. Thanks, too. I want to go to Ashley and Ashley is a first time caller. Wow. Welcome. Ashley's calling us from Palm Beach Gardens. Fantastic. Good morning Ashley and congratulations. You won yourself $50.

Is this Ashley Moody? What do you have for us? Ashley Moody. Is this Ashley Moody? Good morning. Good morning. I have a Ford Escape, and it has a keypad on the outside, which I really like. And I was wondering, do they have any Toyota? Does they have a keypad to get in the car on the door? They actually, not Toyota doesn't make it.

The distributor in this region, Southeast Toyota, does offer it as an accessory. I think it's a couple hundred dollars. I can't vouch for how good it is. Southeast Toyota thinks it's a good product. but it is installed after manufacturer at the port, and it would come in with the car. So it is available, and there's probably other aftermarket keypads that you could get. Oh, so you think you can have it put on any car? Yeah, you can.

It isn't available accessory, but I've never actually used one. I don't know how well they work, but they are available. Because I'm always locking my keys in the car. I've got to call AAA and have them on. Unlocked the car, and I hate that. Oh, yeah, having a keypad would definitely help with that. Ashley, if you're going to try one of these, check like you would with buying a car. Talk to two or three toilet dealers and get the installed price, get the price.

And because it will be a competitive item. And some of these accessories tend to have high markups, and you'd be surprised how big a discount you can get if you shop and compare. Yeah, good idea I think with anything It's a good idea to get three prices Earl and I do that all the time No matter what we purchase And it's a good idea with this accessory

Yeah Are you guys going to go to the boat parade tonight I don't know I tend to avoid it every year Just because the traffic probably not well nationally I might watch it from the inlet because we're close to the Jupiter inlet so they

congregate there and I think that would be kind of fun to watch yeah yeah okay have a great day thanks Ashley give us a call again 877960 or you can text us at 772-4976530 don't forget ladies $50. I have $50 for the second new lady callers right here. Call to say hello or share your

experience, whether it be in service or sales. Now back to Stu. Okay. Yeah, we're about to read Brian's text out from California. So here's why he texts at odd hours. He says he works at a grocery store and he always works on Friday nights. He gets off work around 11 p.m. locally. Then Ian Wyens has some dinner. Then he sends the text before before he goes to bed. Oh, huh. So one day, my goal would be stay up really late or wake up early and call you guys once on the phone while the show is live.

That would be a nice surprise. Also, on Friday, a pretty big car news story hit social media everywhere. The much anticipated Ford Bronco production has been pushed back. Originally, it was supposed to be released to the general public in the spring of 2021. Now it's been pushed back to at least the summer of 2021. Why? They're having a parts supply issue because of the ongoing COVID-19. pandemic. I might have no doubts

if Ford is having this issue, then we might see other manufacturers have this issue again like we saw a few months ago. I might add to that that there's some skepticism on Wall Street about the excuse, yeah. They're saying that they don't quite get it why the

parts supply should be affected and they think that maybe Ford is just having some design, engineering problems and it sounds a lot better to say. And they have a convenient We can't get the parts, yeah. And I don't know which is true, but...

I hope that's the case, because Brian alluded to, back in the late spring, we really, all the manufacturers got hit pretty hard with the production delays and shutdowns. Well, we've heard nothing from anybody else. All the manufacturers are building cars and new models and otherwise, like they're going out of style. The demand is huge. It slipped a little bit in the past 30 days, but in general for this year, there have been no mention of the supply chain, of the parts availability. So why Ford would have that unique problem is a little suspicious.

You know, a lot of people have been waiting for the Bronco, and, you know, what I read is it has been put on hold, and it has a whole lot to do with availability and the mechanics of it. Every time I hear Bronco, I think O.J. Simpson, and I think a lot of people do, I'm a little surprised I didn't change the name of that vehicle and they should call it the OJ yeah yeah I think of Bronco OJ you know

but also I have fond memories a friend of mine in high school he had a Ford Bronco and that was the car we just went out in so it was just very fond of good memory you call it the OJ no we didn't call the OJ that was pre OJ well pre OJ trials yeah I have visions of him in the airport and he's making it to you know a connecting flight uh we're going to go to john in palm city uh john is a regular caller and uh he always has some new information for us and uh we love hearing from him good morning john

you there john give us a call back oh we'd love to talk to you yeah call back john we love you 877960 and if you want to text 772-49760 and if you want to take advantage of the anonymous feedback you can go to www your anonymous feedback.com Okay, I love these texts. I'm just going to read it without any editorializing. Have any of you done any engine cooking? You know, when you wrap up some sausage, peppers and onions and foil, put it on your engine on a road trip rick i haven't but i thought you might have thanks great show okay i'm going to interrupt everyone we have another caller that's a great question we're getting

back to that rick you're not getting out of the phone we're going to go to dave uh who is a dog walker and he's from pome beach good morning dave good morning guys how is everybody well good how's your dog are doing oh they're fine they're just glad to live in Florida like the rest of this. Oh, that's good. Yeah. Listen, a little trivial minutia. Post antennas.

Okay. The post antennas on older cars were all of mostly a specific length. And that was because, in the old days, the radio wave length was, you know, with old analog radio, was a specific length. It really was the length. And the antennas on the cars were to get as close to one quarter of a wavelength as possible. You're right. And that facilitated AM radio transmission. Yeah.

Same as like the CB radio needed a longer wavelength, and that's why the CB radios had the extra long whip antennas. Yeah. Interesting, isn't it? That is. You know, I completely blanked out on that, but you're exactly accurate. and if what maybe you know the answer this why why is it that the directional issue when you have an a.m. signal why does it pick up the a.m. signal if you're going south maybe and if you're going north or east or west you don't get the

signal without it without the point wait a minute I just answered my own question because it's up in the air and you get the yeah okay very good okay Thank you very much for that, Dave. Yeah, I got a tech question for you. I don't know if you remember when I called back when this pandemic started. I was the guy who said, use your dog poop bags at the gas station. Yeah. Yes.

Yeah, that was me. But anyway, here's a tech question. I know a few people who have newer cars with newer electronics and computer systems. and I read an article that said oftentimes the tire fault error code that would come up and sometimes the airbag error code that would come up or just even the warning light rather could be and were caused oftentimes by unshielded plug chargers or like a laptop or a cell phone. And Rick, do you know if there's anything to that? I haven't really heard of that myself. However, I could certainly see a possibility of it. If you had, say, an adapter plugged into your 12-volt outlet that converted to 1-10, and you were running a laptop on it, and it was near some of these electronics, the sensors for

the airbags, I can see the potential for electromagnetic force, the field around it, actually interfering on those wires and causing a, basically a erroneous code. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the article went on to say that if you were a passenger in the back seat or you know, some SUVs with the accessory plug farther back, that if you were a passenger in the it would even indicate different tires, like the tires in the rear, because of the proximity to the trucks. It was a very interesting article, but I didn't know to give it much credence or not.

And then where in the world, we have to go to Best Buy or someplace like that just to get a shielded plug, and instead of buying one at Publix? Well, it may be actually that the factory wire, your wire that came, with your computer if the shielding it has just begun to deteriorate due to age yeah because most of them should be shielded pretty well like if you've ever noticed on a computer wire there's always like a little spot there's like a plastic piece on the wire that's much larger than the wire kind of added on looks like a little like a decoration or something that's actually there to help reduce that electromagnetic

interference okay okay I I always thought that that was just there so that you didn't pull the wire out of the plug so easy. Yeah, it looks like that, but that's actually, that actually has an electromagnetic purpose. You sound like a guy with a technical education. Are you an engineer or? No, not at all. You're very well read. I'm curious.

I'm just curious about things. Yeah. And I love listening to the show. Thank you. I listen every weekend. I'm even trying to get my wife to call. She has a couple of technical questions. as well.

Oh, please do. I'd let her do that, though. Yeah. I gave her your number this morning. I said, you know, you should really call these guys because they'll be able to help you. She gets 50 bucks and she should have to split up with you if she calls. No, she doesn't split anything with me. Hey, Dave, have I invited you.

Have a happy birthday. Thank you very much. Dave, have I invited you to join Earl's Vigilantes? Have you heard? No, you know, I'm very curious about that. I even had a, I even had a suggestion for a logo that I gave you guys a couple weeks ago, though. It was something with a very big dog on it, you know, in reference to a big dog ranch rescue. So if you haven't decided on a logo yet, we got a dog on the logo.

We got a dog there. Oh, cool. There you go. Awesome. Awesome. No, listen, I don't really have the ability. to go and actually physically, you know, not physically, but experience-wise, with new car purchases and maybe with repairs sometimes.

But thank you so much for the offer. I just don't think that that's something that you guys would benefit. We understand, Dave. Thanks for your honesty. Thanks, Dave. Thanks for your honesty. We love talking to you. So we'll wait to hear from you again.

All right, you guys. Thanks. Have a great day. Happy birthday, Nancy. Thank you, Dave. Okay. That telephone number is 877-9-60-90-90-60, and you can take advantage of your anonymous feedback.com.

And also, you can text us at 772-4976530. So you've got a lot of options. Give us a call. We love hearing from you, as I always. say, ladies and gentlemen, you make the show. Now back to Stu. Yeah, we're just going to find out Rick's thoughts on engine cooking if he'd ever wrapped up some sausage peppers and onions and foil

and put it on his engine block. Never have done it. I've seen that before. I've heard of this. I've heard of it. I've seen it. I always thought that just seemed like a very inefficient manner, and you don't get an even cook because you wouldn't be able to flip it over.

I'm going to recommend against doing that. You probably don't want that stuff. one of my favorite ones is the idea of putting a cookie tray in your back window on a hot day or up on the dash and let cookies bake in your car because then at least it would smell nice I would do that absolutely that sounds like a very familiar recipe where's that text from there's no there's no name on it it's not anonymous I guess we could figure it out if we really really tried yeah here's a little bit more serious question what happened to sop I never see their cars anymore? Are they still in business? I actually Googled that, so they haven't

made any new cars since 2011. They filed bankruptcy. I don't know if the company's still around in some other form, but they're not making new cars. Yeah, it's not surprising. I don't think they ever had a real quality car, and the volume was very low. There'll be a lot more victims of car manufacturers as we get into all-electric, because a lot of people, people just can't afford to make that transition. Okay, that's great information. We're going to go to the phones where we have a female caller. And her, I believe her, she's from Palm Beach Gardens.

No, she's from West Palm Beach. And Minna? Minna, yes. Hi, good morning. Good morning and welcome. Thank you. Thank you. I have called before, so I am a repeat caller.

And is it your birthday? Happy birthday. Oh, thank you so much. My question is on a 2012, it's a Mercedes SUV, the transfer case, the import shaft is leaking, the seal is leaking, and they have to remove the transfer case and replace the seal, and that would be the input seal, and they said at the same time, I should replace the output seal. It's an expensive fix, and I'd like some information on this. Well, Rick can address the technical. I'll address the economic. You really need to get at least three bids on that.

And we can probably come up with a couple of recommendations. Here in West Palm Beach, we could probably name a couple of qualified independent mechanics you could take a look at. But, yeah, as long as you specifically know what the repair is, you should get. two other opinions and two other prices. I agree there. However, you know, I called the dealership and they don't call back with the price. Well, when you say you call, you call the dealership for a second opinion?

Yes, yes. You know, there's between, you got, Del Rey is a, there's a Del Rey Mercedes, there's a Del Rey Mercedes, dealers in West Palm and North Palm, and there's, I guess, the nearest dealer North is probably up in, not Hope Sound, Fort Pierce? I'm not sure. Yeah, you could go to some independence. Let's ask Rick to address a technical issue here, and you could probably shed some light on the time involved. I mean, I have a really nice mechanic that I have a lot of faith in. Good. Well, you're very lucky. Very lucky. You know.

I bet you pardon? I said you're lucky to have somebody like that. Well, I don't know. I'm not that good at cars. You know, we're not that. We're not car experts. But he appears to be very straightforward. Well, that gives you another quote.

So you're going to have the dealer, you know, you should find a dealer to get a quote. And then you have the independent mechanic. And we just need one more. How long should that repair take? Can you comment on the Mercedes? I couldn't even make a guess at it without investigating what all is involved in it. However, on the idea of replacing the other seals, anytime you're going to have a big unit like that out of the car, I would replace any sort of seal because seals are not expensive in themselves.

Well, that's what he said to me, you know, and that's exactly what he said. and if they have to take it out to replace the one seal. So, you know, it's cost-effective just to replace the other seal. Did he break the price down in terms of parts and labor? The seals cost us much and the time he has to take. Yeah, the seals are, you know, practically nothing. It's the labor. Yeah.

How much is he charging per labor hour? Well, I don't know per labor hour, but it's over 800. Yeah, you should get another price. Rick, do you know a good someone in the foreign car area that independent? I've heard good things about foreign affairs auto if they're still in operation on military trail. Right, okay. I've heard of them. The other one I would probably consider recommending, at least just to talk to them, is, oh, what is the name of that? it's on the place on us one

low ways north of good sam hospital let me google up there their name real quick you know you sound like you really have a hold on all of this and the information that you have you said you didn't consider yourself a expert but well no it's because the mechanic was so forthright I felt

that help explaining it yeah but it sounds like some extensive work that labor is pretty expensive. Right. Well, Rick's trying to get that information. I just want to thank you for calling because there are other ladies out there

that are listening to you, and you've been an encouragement. Back to Rick. Palm Beach. Well, it's a very interesting show. I enjoy it. Thank you. I appreciate what you do for the community.

Thank you very much. Here's the name of another mechanic. It's Palm Beach Prestige Auto. And they're 2,100 North Dixie. Hold on a second. I'm sorry, Palm Beach. Prestige. Orchow.

Okay. And their telephone number is 561. Uh-huh. 832-7800. Okay. And they're closed on weekends, but one thing I've noticed about that shop, they do a lot of high. had luxury car to work, and it seems like any time I go by there that they are open,

they are just jammed up with work. And there is no, the only reason a place like that is that busy is because they're doing something right. Yeah, people are coming back. Yeah. Right. Well, we wish you a lot of luck, and I hope you stay in touch and let us know what the end was. Okay, dook.

All right. Thank you. Great day. Have a wonderful weekend. The number is 877-960-99-60. You can text us at 772-49765-3-0. And we'll go back to Rick. I got one here that kind of interesting one.

Guy Larrabee says, the alloy rims on the new C-8 Corvette fail. I'm not sure what he means by failing, whether it's an appearance or breaking or what. It says they are warrantied against workmanship and material faults, but General Motors refuses to replace them, claiming it's due to poor design. What was the last part? Because of what? Due to poor design.

Well, if they designed it, right? General Motors designed it. Why wouldn't they cover it? Yeah, I think, Guy, rephrase that. I think probably we're misinterpreting And what you're saying, if General Motors manufactured these, then they would be responsible for the design and the engineering and everything else. So I would persist.

If you've got that feedback from a car dealer, I would probably go to another Chevrolet dealer and have them re-contact a factory because if it's under warranty, it's under warranty. And they designed it, and that's the problem, and they're responsible for it. So maybe you send us another YouTube. Let's see, according to this, on motorbiscuit.com, they're saying cracked and deformed corvette wheels may force another class action lawsuit. Well, if it's out of warranty, you have a class action lawsuit. If you have an end warranty, then they have to fix it.

So let's maybe clarify are your wheels in warranty or out of warranty. If they're out of warranty, that's a different story. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's really so difficult to get the factories to hold up to their, you know, end of the repairs and everything else in between. I've heard a lot of conversation about that this week. We're going to go back to the telephones where John is calling back from Palm City. Good morning, John. Thanks for calling back. Good morning and happy birthday to Nancy.

Thanks, John. You haven't spoken in a while about dealers that take advantage of people that speak little or knowing. have a perfect example of somebody that was caught and they were caught good. Every trick in the book that you could do, warranties after market, all added accessories. The dealer advertised in Chinese newspapers, okay? Bored in a lot of people could speak no English, thought that they're in heaven, Chinese heaven, and boy, did they get sock too. So far, the district attorney.

of the state of New York has found I think looking over here how many people there's 21 people so far but he has an 800 number

771-7755 they got civil fines the 21 people so far they agreed to give him reimbursement of $187,000 and let me tell you who the dealer is

I lived only five minutes away from him years ago, and these mostly from cases 2014 to 2018. It's called Star Toyota, Bayside, New York, Northern Boulevard, conveniently located, not far from the Long Island Expressway, and Clearview. And, boy, they really want to know additional people that have been sucked to, and it's a shame, because it was, that's an area that's a very heavy Asian, and like five minutes from there is Flushing downtown Flushing, which has the largest Korean population in the United States.

So it is a shame that people that spoke no English or little English and they saw their ads in the Chinese newspaper went in and they got socked too but good. Yeah, I just thought I'd heard it all, John. That is a trick I've never heard. What a underhanded, terrible thing to do. I didn't know where you were going at first. They actually had a Chinese language advertisement, and because, as you say, the heavy Asian population in New York,

a lot of the Chinese were probably so happy. Oh, look, there's an ad, and I can understand it, and they probably have a bunch of Chinese-speaking people and contracts, and, you know, it's been so hard dealing with American, English-speaking, and now so they flocked in and they did it just to get them in the door and then they took it and they probably didn't have anybody that spoke Chinese

and they spoke English and by that time it was too late they were in the dealership and they were taking advantage of that is that is really low down It gets worse than that the sales representative who said they were going to take care of them

sign this and do that then the nerve this has never been done before they said to them they demanded that they give them cash tip unbelievable. Actually demanded like you're going for a service like a restaurant or something,

and they demanded cash tips for their service of helping you. Wow. That is unbelievable. It's no end to it. Congratulations to the Attorney General of New York. They always seem to have good guys, tough guys, and I don't know if they had any gals in that position, but whoever the Attorney General in New York is,

They seem to step up and take action. I wish Ashley Moody, our Attorney General, would emulate some of the actions I've seen on consumerism by New York Attorney Generals. You're right. Last year, if you remember, I called in 15 minutes away from them going toward Manhattan, they caught the major Chevrolet group in Long Island City, same type of shenanigans, but they're still in business.

So, Earl, it tells me it seems like the manufacturing, manufacturers seem hesitant to revoke the franchise after there's exposure of a lot of their abuses. So it makes you wonder sometime what's going on, whether they, you know, they're hesitant or they're afraid of big lawsuits. But it seems that even after they pay the fine, that they just continue. Yeah, John, part of the problem is that the manufacturers are afraid of the state laws. the dealerships have lobbied in changes in the state laws to protect them against the manufacturers, including to protect them from also other things. But a manufacturer has very few reasons to cancel a car dealers' franchise.

You can get away with bloody murder, not literally. In fact, that's probably the only crime that you have to commit to be canceled. It's if you murder somebody, but car dealerships can do all sorts of things, and they cannot be, have their contracts franchise. In fact, I'm being canceled. In fact, in a lot of cases in Florida, you might not know this, John, but in Florida, a contract with a manufacturer on a franchise agreement is a lifetime, it's forever. It used to be two years, they used to be one year, and then they went to two years, then they got to six years. years. Now the state laws have it in Florida. If you

get a franchise from General Motors for a Chevrolet dealership, it's a lifetime franchise. It doesn't expire and have to be renewed. It's for as long as you live. I didn't know that, Earl, but do you notice lately a tremendous amount of dealers are changing hands?

The latest one is right here in Stewart. The Ford dealership just sold out. I don't know what's behind it, whatever. Maybe it's just offers that they can't refuse, but I do see a tremendous amount, I mean change of dealerships

and some of them like a regal they still keep the same name and they still have the same advertising, current advertising, but it does seem like a strip of dealers that are changing hands. If you notice that also. Yeah, part of it is the fact that the car

business is so good, counterintuitively with the COVID pandemic, but the car business is more profitable. Car dealers are making more money today than ever. Manufacturers are making more money today than ever. And so a lot of these, like the Larry Morkin Auto Group and other people are going out and buying these up and they're making an offer the dealer can't refuse. You know, the dealer in Stewart, they probably made him an offer a lot more lucrative than anything he'd ever seen before. And he said, where do I sign?

So people are trying to buy up car dealership because they make it so much money. Well, even John Stalupi, what did he do? He sold 70% of his dealership group. Yeah, yeah, I didn't. Recently, or that was before? Yes, recently. Oh, I didn't know. I didn't know that, so...

Yes. Very interesting. Well, you know, it comes down, like you say, it's an offer that you can't refuse. All right, thank you, John. For sure. All right. Looking forward to the shopping report. Okay.

Thanks so much, John. We love hearing from you. I'm going to talk a moment about the Attorney General Ashley Moody, and, you know, she really does a great job, and I'm going to say some positive things about her. There's been so many changes during this pandemic, and there's a lot of people that are struggling financially, and she's done a whole lot for the Consumer Protection Division, and we talk about her, and we, every week, you know, we expose a lot of car dealers. But we can't do it alone, and we need the Attorney General Ashley Moody to give us a helping hand. And I hope somebody out there who's listening or, you know, maybe with some luck, the Consumer Division might be listening. And you can help us out to protect the consumer. Like you said, everybody is struggling financially.

So we really need your help, Ashley. So keep that in mind. Thank you. We're going to go to Dennis, who is calling us from Lake Worth. Good morning, Dennis. Yes, good morning. Happy birthday, Nancy. Thank you, Dennis. Welcome to the show. Thank you. I just have a little question. I wonder if Stu is either prophetic or had some inside information

because I read a big article yesterday about a charging mat that BMWs come out with for one-modeled their car for their electric cars. and you just drive over it, says it has a 96% efficiency rating to charge your car. And they also said the SAE worked with them and numerous other manufacturers that are going to be using this mat for their cars. So I thought that was quite an interesting story after Stu was talking about something like that.

I'd like to think of myself as a profit and a visionary. And, actually, I think that was, I mean, I'm going to give a credit we're credit to do. I think Earl came up with that. You said pulling it into your garage and having a charge automatically without having to worry about it. Yeah, this device, if you come, as you're within 14 inches, you're charged. So you put your mat or whatever it is, it's on the floor of your garage,

you pull in there, and within 14 inches, and overnight you've got a full charge. Actually, a 90% charge. It doesn't take it quite up to 100%, but that's all you really need. Pretty expensive, though. Yeah, I didn't, I know right now they said it was just available. One model of BMW, and I forget the other car is... Yeah, several thousand dollars. Yeah, but the price like everything else will come down.

And pretty soon, you know, as I said last week, we talked about, if you can imagine anything, if you can imagine it, it will happen. You know, we are... Did you know they're growing chickens now? I was telling the folks here in the studio before the show that in the Philippines, they've just made it legal to sell chickens and restaurants, a chicken sandwich that was manufactured in the laboratory.

Real chicken, but they take it from a cell and grow it into a... They have to call it Lab Bird. The chicken breasts, yeah. So if you can imagine it, it will happen, and wireless charging is here, and five years from now, it will be standard operating procedure. The technology is going crazy. Yeah, well, like I say, after hearing last week and it's here, and it's here already, it was interesting.

Yeah. Well, thank you, Dennis. And by the way, it's Lake Worth Beach now, right? Lake Worth Beach. Well, no, actually, I live in Unincorporated, we used to do it, Unicorporterbury in Comptomi's County, where they call it Lake Worth. So I don't actually live in Lake Worth Beach. I still live in the part of Lake Worth. I got you. Yeah, you're out west where I am. Yes, yes, that I am. Yeah, close to Wellington. I don't know how they ever called it Lake Worth out here. Oh, yes.

You know, yeah, it might as well be Wellington, but I don't think Wellington was here yet when they named it Lake Worth. So, okay, well, thanks. Have a good day. Thanks, Dennis. Thanks for the call. We have a mystery shopping report coming up at, oh, I guess we get to it around 9.30. So you want to stay tuned for that. And that mystery shop is from Al Hendricks, Toyota.

And it's a mystery shop based on Costco pricing. And you're going to find it very informative. So give us a call. Stay with us. And that number is 877-960 and our text is 772-49-7-2-49-6-5-30. And we're going to go to Paul, who is holding from North Pole Beach. Good morning, Paul. Good morning.

I love your show. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. I have a technical. It's great. I look forward to it every week. Oh, wonderful.

technical question. I have a 2013 Mini Cooper, and it has the fan that turns on, when you turn the car off, I'm assuming if it's hot, I'm assuming it has some kind of thermostat, and then when it cools down a little bit, the fan stops. Well, I recently had to change the battery, so it was disconnected, reconnected it. And now, even when I run the car just for a few seconds even.

The fan runs for maybe five minutes. I wondered if I did something wrong by disconnecting the battery or I have to do something to get it back to run normally again. I don't think so. Probably there's a learning

maybe a reset that the computer has to relearn certain values. Most of the computers in your car are they're set up to learn. You're driving patterns in that. So when you disconnect the battery, it kills all that memory, and then the car has to relearn certain features of itself by just comparison over time. I would give it a week or two. As long as it's not running for any really long length of time that might draw your

battery down, if it doesn't seem to straighten out after a week or two, then I'd have somebody check it out. But I wouldn't be too worried about it right now. As long as it's not running for more than just a few minutes, just enough to circulate air somewhere. You know, it's really interesting, and I think you're right, Rick, and it's spooky. I'll call it artificial intelligence. It's probably not literally, but your car does learn your driving habits, and, you know, I'll get in the car now, and I'm going somewhere, and it tells me where I'm going. I say, how the hell do you know where I'm going? And I'm thinking about it, knows my driving habits. So if I get in the car at a certain time I'm

certain day for the radio show. Every time Saturday morning when I get in the car to go to the radio show, my navigation says it's going to take you 18 minutes to get there. Google because of the driving conditions at that time. Well, it is artificial intelligence. It is, yeah, yeah. The scary part is getting smarter than we are. It's got me, yeah, right, it's going to be frightening when they get, you know, they're already smart of them, a lot of us. Oh, that's great information. Very, very. interesting. I really appreciate your help. And again, I just look

forward to your show so much. You really do a wonderful service. Thanks so much, Paul. We look forward to hearing from you again. Have a wonderful day. Very good. Yes, you too. You're welcome. It's amazing. I mean, look at Alexa. She tortures

us sometimes, doesn't she? I think she knows she's doing it. She's a, some of the personality in her home. Okay, we've got some all we've got the YouTube over here. This was right up your alley Ernesto Ortega is asking Good morning

How can you tell if you're getting a fresh car on the lot Is it by the manufacturer date On the plate in the driver's door Or is there another way? And by the way, he also says happy birthday Nancy You've had lots of happy birthdays for you I'm telling you Yeah, you can get the manufacturing date

And that would certainly give you the More accurate But when the car has been passed around from dealer to dealer and dealer traded, you could ask the dealer, and they might tell you the truth about how long it's been on his lot, but the manufacturing date would be the best. I've got to look at one of those VIN plates.

I mean, I know you got the year. I don't know if there, is there an actual date of manufacture on that little plate in the door jam? It'll give you the month and year. Okay, okay, so I put you in the ballpark. But I think, what Rose alluding to, sometimes it's not necessarily chronological time. It's what happened to that car in its short lifespan.

A brand new car getting manufactured. It could be transferred back and forth between three or four dealers, gotten damaged, joyridden, miles put on it. So it is your best bet to try and get the freshest car that comes in because it's the least likelihood to have damage. For a lot of reasons, exactly, yeah. Okay, we're going to go back to the phones, and we are going to go to a regular caller from Palm Beach Gardens,

and that is Mark. Good morning, Mark. Welcome. Good morning, Nancy. I'll just add to everyone else and wishing you a happy birthday. Good morning, Earl, Stu, and Rick. I've been scratched my head this morning trying to come up with a good question to ask and can't come up there with anything. So I wanted to do, pardon? I was kidding. I said, goodbye, Mark.

I wanted to go ahead and kind of give the vigilante movie. kind of a boost here. Every morning I kind of anxiously looked through my emails to see if I've been contacted by any of your viewers to see if they, you know, give me a vigilante question, and I haven't seen anything. So I just wanted to encourage all the people that are listening here today that if you have even the simplest of questions, it doesn't have to be a major problem or something you're dealing with, but if you have a question about your oil change, or how often you should

get your car looked at, or, you know, you heard something that you were worried about your car, you know, even the simplest of things. Please, feel free to use a vigilante system that the team has set up, that we're all out here to help you, and I'm looking forward to giving some emails. So please, if you've got any questions for me, I'm listed on the vigilance. Lanky list. So just look up my email, give me a text, and I will be more than happy to answer any question. There is no question, but it's silly. Well, thank you, my work.

I just want to say that out there as a vigilante myself. We're going to promote you. I like that. And I think it was very nice. What would you make Mark a corporate? He's a private. We see how he does. So far, it's all on the resume right now.

He was giving us a plug right now. He gets credit for that. You got a hat coming. way, Mark, so... Yeah, thank you for the plug, Mark. Keep your eyes open, yeah. Mark, what did you say? I'm a colonel as far as the pelicans go, so maybe, you know, I'm more than happy to be a

vigilante pelican guy. Anyway, dear listeners, please use the vigilante system. We're only out here to help you. Thank you, Mark. Thank you, guys, and have a wonderful day. Nancy, enjoy your birthday, okay? Thanks, Mark. We love hearing from you.

well, he's become a regular. Okay, folks, 877-9-60-99-60, or you can text us at 7-7-2-49-6-5-30. Oh, we've got a lot of calls. I think, I believe that Stu has some. I've got a ton. Oh, geez. Let's jump over to Anne-Marie. It says, good morning.

Decades ago, it was common for cars to be manufactured overseas and shipped here. Now, many, quote, unquote, foreign manufacturers have assembly plants in America. I was wondering, does your dealership see any vehicles manufactured in Japan anymore, or is all your inventory coming from U.S. plants? Any vehicles coming from Canada or Mexico before COVID closed the borders? Do most of your vehicles come by truck, rail, or ship? Does that affect the cost of transportation, or is it just a flat rate? Well, I can kind of address that.

Most of the Toyotas are made in North America, I think over 70% of them. but it's a global economy we have cars that are made in Turkey that's the CHR the Tacomas are made in in Mexico and Baja California we have Ontario Canada it does the RAV-4s

we have trucks made in Indiana Is Lexers still made on the in Japan? They are but some are actually made in I think the R-X vehicles are made in Ontario, Canada so they're made in North America and yeah we still see some forerunners that are made in Japan

Preciuses, even some RAP-4s are, you can tell by looking at the VIN. So if it says J, it's made in Japan. Toyota probably exports more cars to Japan from the U.S. than the import. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of a cool little system. They got it to spread out over the world. I think American cars or North American, it's one is in the VIN, and then five for Canada. So it's kind of interesting. We get cars delivered by rail.

All the manufacturing plants taken by rail to the port. facilities and it actually ships will actually dark at the port facilities if they're coming from overseas and then they're sent out on those car carriers you see on the road so back in the day before Toyota had been here too long the smart deal was to buy a Japanese car but you'd have you have the same Toyota model built in Japan and built in the US and the one built in Japan was just a little bit better and word got out and it became a factor and you could look at the VIN number and tell the country of manufacture, and you still can. But right now, it's equal.

The quality is standard worldwide. Yeah. And this is, you've talked about this on the show before, too. She says, does it affect the cost of transportation? Years ago it did, and they standardize it. That's why you have the manufacturer shipping and handling or the destination charge. Yeah, people would drive to Detroit to buy a car because the freight was nothing. So it's the same regardless of the distance.

Yeah. She also adds on. She sent a link to a Gelopnik article with a, there's a ship that capsized right outside of Brunswick. So that's what she wanted, got her curiosity going about shipping practices. She says the capsized ship picked up a cargo in Mexico before coming to several American ports. It was scheduled to deliver vehicles to the Middle East. Obviously, it didn't make it. And she wanted to know how much inventory do we get comes by ship.

Well, about 30% because of the ones that come from Japan. and so those are, that's what's coming in. Excuse me, Stu, we're going to go to the phones. Paul is calling for Missouri, and he's been with us before. Welcome, Paul. Welcome. How are y'all doing today? Happy birthday to you, Nancy.

Oh, thanks, Paul. How's the weather in Missouri? It's cold, cold this morning. I bet. I think I would have got a little, well, I almost did get choked up listening to Earl and the guys sing happy birthday to you, too, so I don't blame you there. Yeah, that was quite a lot. surprise you all need to take that show on the road it was it was bad i'll admit it you should

have said on stage and you said there's one leaving town in two hours that's an old joke old joke yeah um my i went ahead uh this past week and uh put some money down on a a 2021 to Camry and they're getting ready it's in freight I don't understand all this is why I'm calling they it's in freight

it's going to Nashville and they're going to be sending somebody from from the toil of the dealership in Cape Girada, Missouri to Nashville to bring it back is that a common practice no I'm a little surprised

so you're you're buying from a local dealer in Missouri and he's telling you the car will be arriving in Nashville and they're sending someone to Nashville to pick the vehicle up I've never heard of such a thing I would well they're doing a dealer trade is what it is okay well that could be the world's longest dealers rate

how far is it from Nashville to, were you in Kansas City? No, I'm in southeast Missouri. Yeah. In the Booth Hill. It's about a 200-mile drive. Yeah, well, yeah, we trade cars in Jacksonville. That's 300 miles, so it's kind of extreme.

But, yeah, and they will send a guy there. And are they adding, are they charging you for the transportation and the cost of the trade? I don't know. We hadn't really got in. I went ahead and put some money down on it to secure it because they didn't have that many out. She couldn't locate one is what the problem was. It's not common practice to charge the customer for the trade,

but dealers will do it if they can get away with it. I don't think they're charging me. I think they wanted me to put like a department. deposit down to secure the deal, and that's going towards the payment of my car. Okay, well, yeah, okay, that's unusual, but not, you know, never happened kind of a thing, so you're probably dealing with an honest dealer, and hopefully he's treating you right, and did you get some competitive prices from other dealers? Yes, I did, and do you care if I tell you how much they're going to do the deal for?

No, I'd love to hear it. $30,547, that's with the, that's the out-the-door price. Including tax and tag? Yeah, including, that's just the, what they call that the, $9.95 delivery fee? Uh-oh, they got you on the hidden fee, but that's okay. It's the bottom line. Yeah, and $199 on the, uh, uh, uh, all right.

What's that other fee they've got? Well, they call them the hidden fees. They call them tag agency, electronic filing fee. Yeah. Doc fee. Doc fees, yeah. Doc fee is $199 in Missouri. But the outdoor was $3547.

Stu, how is that on a basic 2021 camera? Which model is it? It's the XLA. $30,547. You're in the ballpark right there with L. seeing the details, but I don't think that you got a bad deal. I think you did a pretty good job for yourself. Yeah. Congratulations.

Yeah. Congratulations. The only thing that I've noticed and I've been, oh, and I also volunteered to be a bit vigilante. I think I can help for people. Oh, thanks, Paul. I really appreciate it. Yeah, definitely. Well, they really went above and beyond for you.

Yes, they did. Yeah. And I think the hours that I've spent listening to your show and listening to other people on YouTube, I think I could point people in the right direction. And if I can, I know I can by telling them to call your show or email you on a Saturday morning away. Well, Paul, you've got a hat coming your way, vigilante hat.

I'll reach out at your shipping address. Yeah. Okay. All right. And there was one other thing, too. The one thing that I've noticed, because I've asked her, you know, And she didn't, we hadn't discussed the monthly payment, but I've got some more money to put down besides that $1,000. And I'm not telling her, I've not told her that how much I'm going to put down.

But it's going to be a pretty substantial amount. Well, she, I'm pushing for 48 and she keeps saying 60. Well, be sure that you get a price from your bank and or your credit union on the financing. You'll save a lot of money if you don't go through the dealer unless Toyota has what they call a subvented rate, which is a 0% or a 1% and sort of thing. We got a 0.9% financing. Oh, okay. That's great.

That's good. You should go with 0.9% financing. financing, you should finance as much as you possibly can. I wouldn't put any more money down than I had to because you take advantage that way of the low interest. Right. Is there a, is there stipulations on that 0.9? Well, you have credit requirements and they have an alternative would be a cash rebate from a manufacturer. It could be $1,000. And then you just have to do the arithmetic to see how you would come out ahead using a 0.9% or taking, financing through your credit union or bank, paying a higher interest rate, and then getting a $1,000 rebate. You just have to do that calculation, depending on the length of financing and how much you finance will determine the answer to that question.

Right. And the one thing that I have noticed that I, well, shoot, I forgot now what I was going to say. But anyway, I have been, I have been really noticing stuff through this deal that I think I can help, but I think I can help with other people. Oh, that's wonderful. Yes. Well, you're our senior, you're our senior vigilante in Missouri. And we welcome you on board. And we'll get your hat shortly, and we're looking forward to your reports. And spread the word that everybody in Missouri can get some tips from you anytime they go to buy a car. Paul, there's your Lanny, Paul.

Yeah, and Paul, you know, you've really done your homework, and you've taken notes, and you're holding all the cards. And, you know, we can't thank you enough for giving us a call and sharing all that. information with us and joining us on the earl's vigilantes it's going to be interesting the one thing that that I have noticed about what even what's on YouTube you know these expert training salesmen right like main salesmen at the dealership and stuff I've watched hours upon hours upon hours of these videos to know what they know

so that I can know what they know and they don't know what I know so for the first time in my car buying experience why I feel like I'm more in control because I know what's going to happen next I know what I figured out like the payment monthly payment at 0.9% financing for

for five years and I can do it for just a few more dollars at four years and it'd be a shorter term and save more money that way and I'm in control if they and I feel good about that I really do that's great so good to hear yes well we're proud of you Paul and we're looking forward to doing some more businesses your vigilante reports come in and call again next week

we'll be looking for your call yeah all right I didn't make I didn't mean for this to be a weekly habit, but I can't stop listening to your show. We love your call. We love your call. That's a great addiction. Okay. I think Paul qualifies for Vegas.

He could be, he could read cards. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, we've got the mystery shopping report coming up and we'll talk to you next week, Paul. One more thing. One more thing. yesterday was my wife and our anniversary. Oh, happy anniversary. And I request that you all go ahead and sing us happy anniversary.

Yeah, yeah, it's not going to happen. I knew that was coming. I sense that, Kevin. All right, well, by-law, we've got to get on the mystery shopping report, and we've got a couple texts here. You have a great week, and we'll talk to you next week. You all keep practicing singing. We need it.

Thanks so much. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. It's a real comedian. Okay. Like Earl said, we do have that mystery shopping report coming up, and that's from Al Hendricks, Toyota. Hendrickson.

Pardon me? Al Hendricks. Al Hendricks, yeah. And his son. Son. We're making a play in words. He's starting to throw you off because it's your birthday season. All right.

I got a few more texts if you want to get to before. Yeah, we got time for some more text. We got from Steve. New Jersey says good morning Earl happy birthday Nancy are the car deal or the car manufacturer is trying to eliminate the DIYs I just changed my neighbors 2011 Subaru outback headlights had to remove the front plastic bumper cover then removed the headlight assembly to replace a 10 bulb took me three hours the dealer wanted 450 bucks is this crazy it's crazy and of course I mean I don't

know if there's a an actual department in the manufacturers eliminating the do-it-yourselfers, but obviously they want you to do it with the dealers. They want you to come back because for retention they want to sell parts. So, yeah, but Rick, they don't design them that way to make them intentionally complicated. They're just the way they're aerodynamic and integrated with all the other systems. What do you think? Well, just before Rick answers, the average, think about what your time is worth and think about what the car dealers charge.

and they charge, not by the clock hour, they charge by the flat rate hour, and most good technicians beat the flat rate hour. The average labor rate, correct me if I'm wrong, Rick, is probably, I'll pull this number out of the year, but it's about $150 an hour. So the average technician can do a $150 an hour job in probably less than an hour, so he's effectively getting paid over $200 an hour in terms of a clock in turn of the clock. The shop is getting paid that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Rick only gets a piece of it and the dealership gets the rest of it, but you're paying all of it. So think about what your time's worth, and unless you use another round number here, if your time's worth more than $200 an hour, and the job is of a skill that you can deal with and not not screw things up and create more of a problem. But if you can fix something like put a headlight assembly on or take it off or whatever this issue was, and you're skilled, you're good with your hands, and you're not making more than

$200 an hour, you're saving yourself money by doing it yourself. On the other hand, if you don't have the skill, then you just have to go pay the Piper and have someone make good money. I say Rick Rick doesn't get all of that The dealership gets a big chunk of it But you pay all of it That's what I'm saying

It's expensive, you know $150 or $200 per hour I mean that's a lot of money to pay To have something fixed But to go with what Stu was saying Yeah cars are getting so Tight and fit now On anything that you do

There's a very good reason That my hands are covered in scars from scratches and cuts because I try to shortcut things by shoving my hands into places they shouldn't ought to be just to change the light bulb and I honestly think there may be a conspiracy

among the designers and the builders of the cars to make every plastic or metal edge as razor sharp as they can do it because there are some cars that it literally is like shoving your hand into a nest of razor blade just to change a light bulb.

It's silly, but it's what we do. Okay, text. John in California says, good morning, everyone, and happy bee day. Nancy, he sent a picture of a bee with a balloon. This is happy birthday. Oh, thank you. He's following upon the Corvette question.

If the manufacturer did a design that fails and they're responsible for their design, why won't they take responsibility for certain product failures? In my case, is the Dodge Ram exhaust manifold studs that break, and that's their design failure. What can be done to take care of this? There's a lot of RAM owners that have this issue. But RAM, and they say RAM because I believe they separated from Chrysler, if I'm not mistaken,

and they won't do anything about it. What can be done about this? And once again, he says, happy birthday, Nancy. Well, the answer is that every failure is basically a design failure, and the warranty limits that. So you have a three-year warranty, and they design the old, alternate or wrong, and it failed in four years instead of three years. It's still a design failure, but it's out of the warranty, and legalese, legal trumps

reality. I've always taken a position as a dealer with my customers. If it was a design defect, the manufacturer always bears some responsibility. It's silly that you would have a car that was three years or one day old, and you have a transmission failure, and you have to pay $2,000, but the day before yesterday, it would have been free. To me, there should be a gradient measure of responsibility. And if a car has a lifespan of 10 years, anytime during that 10 years, there's a failure because of design, there should be some element of responsibility on the manufacturers part.

In fact, there really is, and most of them will accept that, but they don't want to call it warranty because they don't want to have their hands died. They call it Goodwill. Rick? On the Corvette issue there, I looked at a little more research into that. They're saying that the wheels on these Corvettes are made with cast metal instead of forged and that they are therefore more brittle and they're having hundreds of these wheels breaking even while the cars are still in a warranty.

So that'll be a class action suit. And GM is saying that it's that the drug. drivers are hitting too many potholes. Of course. And somehow I see Corvette drivers as being the type that they're just going to, you spent how much money on a Corvette, and you're going to go out on a road and find every pothole you can find? I want a piece of that class action suit because General Motors are going to get hammered on that. I hear this every now and then from Toyota and some other people. Well, it's because the way you drive the car.

Do you polish your car every month? Do you park it in the garage? I mean, come on. I bought the car, and maybe I don't have a garage. So, yeah, people drive cars, and sometimes they drive them in Arizona. Sometimes they drive them in Massachusetts. You sold the car. You didn't ask me where I was from, or if I had a garage, would you sold me the car?

And you should be able to take care of it. Anyway, I'm getting emotional. That's okay. We've got a lightning round of anonymous feedback if we could get through it. Okay, yeah. Now, here we go. Mark Twain, if you tell the truth, You don't have to remember anything.

Seems like few car dealers or salesmen believe this based on your secret shopping reports. As a matter of fact, that's one of your favorite phrases in your recovering phase of your career. Yeah, it's amazing how much I can see anything I want to know because I don't have to think first. Sometimes I sound silly like right now. Okay, here's another one. Can a dealer with multiple manufacturer franchises sell all their brands at each other's location? In other words, can a Toyota dealer sell as a keel dealership, sell a key at their time? Toyota location. No, you can't do that. You'll get, you'll get in trouble. Not as a new car.

You can sell any used car you want, but you can't sell a new car except in your franchise location approved by that manufacturer. Okay. Lightning Round continues. Check out the fine print with those insurance trackers. You are giving the insurance company free license to spy on you anytime, all the time. Also, once you're labeled a high risk driver, according to their bias and subjective data, then kiss any good rates goodbye. So basically, you turn over your privacy to Big Brother and get shot in the foot for doing so. Why would you do this again for a few dollars back from the insurance company? Really? Deal with it. 21st century. There is no more privacy. Accept it and move on with your life. Okay. With the future of car dealership

seriously in question, with the future of car dealership seriously in question, what are your plans, Earl, ever think about radio full-time? Radio full-time? You're saying with the future of car dealerships in question, would you consider radio full-time? I know that's meant to be a joke. It's true that car dealerships are an endangered species, and I don't worry about as much as my sons do. And yeah, it's going to be a lot of things are changing, folks, and some people are not going to be able to deal with it. Some people are going to hate it. I roll with the punches. We feel, we know that there will not be a franchise dealership selling Toyotas

in Palm Beach County the way we do now 50 years from now. We know there probably won't be one 30 years from now. And as you come down to 20 and 10, you know, the probability varies. But

yeah, it's, it's, things are changing and they're changing radically. Those who are best equipped to adapt are the ones they'll survive and the ones... Exactly. It won't. So, more anonymous feedback why haven't helmets been given consideration as mandatory safety

equipment when driving a car everything is a measure of degree and certainly you could build a perfectly safe car by requiring helmets and other things but the the comfort factor we have to we have to trade off comfort and practicality with safety and there you are so it's that's the reason we have the media that's the reason we have consumer advocates If the manufacturers had their way, we wouldn't have airbags or seatbelts today. I was a car dealer when we didn't have seatbelts or airbags, and when they came out with the airbags of the seatbelts, we fought it, we fought it, we fought it, we fought it. It's crazy, it's terrible, and I wouldn't get into car today without a seatbelt or airbag.

So, time's your changes. Speaking of seatbelts, here's a question for Rick, Anonymous Seaback, Rick. My old car's seatbelt has become crusty and hard, and it's difficult for it to retreat. when I unbuckle. After I clean it with some warm water, it works a little bit better for a short while. I also have a new car. Its seatbelts are silky smooth. What can I do with my new car to keep them smooth and easy to retract over the next decade? You can try to keep them as clean as you possibly can, but for that older car, replace that seatbelt. Okay. Anonymous feedback. California is going to ban the sale of gas-powered vehicles beginning in 2035. How are they going to handle this? Won't Californians just get their gas cars in Nevada?

What about private sales? Is this going to happen in other states? Earl, do you agree with this sort of government action? Yes and no. I wear two hats. I wear my business hat. I wear my consumer hat. Sometimes I get confused with two hats on.

And, yeah, California irritates me. You've ever left the house with both hats at the same time? California irritates me in a lot of ways, but they've led the charge. And California is the biggest state, most populous, and they set trends, like it or not. And I think a lot of the trends they set have been very positive, and some of them weren't so positive.

So they're a powerful state, and I have mixed emotions about California. Good answer. Two more. More anonymous feedback. How can I buy a new car from my wife as a Christmas present? I want it to be titled in her name. So how do I do this without tipping her off? I want to surprise her.

forge your name don't do that you did not hear that here folks probably the best way to do it is go ahead and do it in your name and then after the surprise and all the good feeling then you can transfer and get her on the title so how many people don't forge names of their spouses how many people don't forge names period I mean the whole signatures are silly obsolete they're silly anybody can for and you should be careful when you go into the business office at a car dealership

is your signature will be forced I guarantee you. Oh, we've had that, but we've been scanned before. Without a warning, he pulls that hat out. Right. But to answer your question, seriously, just go ahead and buy the car, put it in your name, then come back after the facts, so then you get the surprise. And don't forget that red ribbon.

That's right. Last anonymous feedback, don't you think that if we were able to communicate with other drivers, wirelessly and hands-free, of course, the roadways would be safer. Don't aircraft do this? Imagine being able to communicate a road hazard or your intention to do. change lanes or even explain why you're driving slow like you're transporting a post-surgical patient home. Yeah, I would love to be able to. I'll go to you one better. Your car will communicate with other cars. Autonomous cars will, and it's a lot better than you because maybe

you're a super sharp person, but there are a lot of bozos out there driving cars that you don't want to be communicating with. But if your car is built to strict specifications, they will all communicate very, very accurately. I'd like to, I'd like to communicate personalized messages to other cars, though. Well, not to mention the fact that the computers can communicate with all the other computers within a half mile range instantly, whereas it takes us how many seconds to make one statement to one person? Exactly. That's right. I just want to say, type a little message. You know, when I look in my side view mirror now, when I go to my side view mirror and I have the warning of my blindside warning thing.

I never realized this, and Rick probably knew it, but it warns me of the person of my blind side at varying distances based on the velocity. So the thing that gets me, I do a double-checked the review mirror and the blindside warning. I'll have a car two blocks away,

and I get a blindside warning. I say, what the hell is that? Well, what the hell is that? He's doing 100 miles an hour. Uh-huh. And he's in my face before I know it. So these cars have got artificial intelligence now, and they are, the computers in the cars are far better to protect you than you are.

You don't want to communicate, let the car communicate, and we'll be much safer. That's right. Okay. Hey, we're all caught up. Fantastic. Congratulations. Mystery shopping report. This is of Al Hendrickson, Toyota, and it's a Costco-style shopping report,

and we're doing this because my latest blog is a, called Costco Auto Buying Program, Your Best Bet for a Lower Price. And you can access that by earluncars.com. You can read it in Florida Weekly and The Hometown News. And I have, I think I'm looking at it right now, I think I have seven or eight tips. Yeah, I have seven.

And you can identify, as the shopping reports goes by, that these have to be observed when you're using the Costco Auto Bine Program. And you can, excuse me, you can also go to Erwin Cars to read that report. Very interesting. Best late plans of mice and men. I'm going to skip this first part. We ended up, Stu covered that at the beginning of the show,

and we were going to shop one dealer, we shop another dealer, but it was a toilet dealer. The motivation really was we wanted to emphasize the Costco auto buying program, which is really your best bet. And if you're not a Costco member, a spring for $60 and become a Costco member, $60 a year is dirt cheap compared to what you can save 10 times that when you're buying a car on the Costco Auto Buying Program.

So Costco AutoBine Program, we want to show you what you have to do. The challenge, we love the Costco Auto Buying Program, but we don't like to, it's too complicated. And so this is a simplification. And as Nancy just said, go to Erlandcars.com, and there's a blog article, and you've got it on Florida Weekly, you've got in hometown news, and use it. Join Costco. Let me tell you, the car dealers don't like the Costco Auto Bike program because they have to sell you the car too cheap.

They have to sell you the car by contract at the lowest price. that car cannot be sold to anybody else lower has to be sold at a higher price to anybody else Costco members have to buy it at a lower price and let me tell you something if a car dealer had to sell all those cars at the Costco price he'd lose a ton of money in the new car department so they don't like it

and you have to be careful follow the rules and you can buy the car dirt cheap at a Costco one-o-bide program dealer Okay, the program can best be summarized as a car buying referral service for Costco members. Participating dealers agree to sell vehicles to Costco members for lower prices than they will give to all other customers. And, of course, that's on the same vehicle, you know, comparatively speaking. Costco members are guaranteed the lowest price. There are shares of steps that the Costco member must take beginning with a visit to Costco Auto.com.

Costco Auto.com. Go there. And my blog, this week, current blog, I describe each step in detailing in my newspaper columns. You can read the whole thing by going to wrongcars.com or picking up a copy of the Hometown Newsweekly. I just said that. Back to this week's original plan. Our goal was blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't want to go through all that. We ended up at Al Hendrickson Toyota. And Nancy just gave me a note. We're running. of time. Okay. Okay, let's go down here. Yeah. Getting the real, we went to Al Hendrickson Toyota in Coconut Creek and they are huge. Al Hendrickson Toyota is one of the largest toilet dealers in the world. They're located, as I say, in Coconut Creek that's in the Fort Lauderdale area west out there, around the sawgrass, I think. And, and they are like number three or four volume in the world. Been there for a long, long time. Last time we were there,

it's been a while, they had a huge number of hidden fees, and I think they hold the record for the most hidden fees. Yeah, but then they backed off it, so they had, like we say, we're 3,500 fees, now it's a little bit less.

Yeah, they don't have this number of fees. At the time, we shopped them, it might have been three years ago. Something like that, yeah. They, get this, $3,543 in hidden fees. I mean, that is mind-boggling. And they don't have that anymore. They drop their hidden fees to much less than that.

So we had Agent Lightning, our female shopper, except the referral to Al Hendrickson, and proceeded as if she would have gone to the other dealer that we didn't go to. Okay, here's the report. I'm speaking as if I am Agent Lightning, the female shopper. When I agreed to work with Al Hendrickson, Toyota, the Costco Auto Program representative informed me, because I went to the www.coscoa auto.com.

Is that what it is, if I give that out right? Yeah, CostcoAto.com. To inform me that my contact information would be sent to them and to expect to be contacted soon. So that's true. They will contact you, the dealer that's certified. Well, in a few minutes, I received an email from Al, interestingly, Al Hendrickson himself, I don't know. Of course not.

I'll never know it was signed simply Al. The email just informed me that he was excited to see my interest in a new Rav4, Toyota Rav4, and they hoped I would give the information I would need to help me on my journey. Another reason we're picking on Toyota dealers now with this Costco thing is because we know the cost on Toyota, and we know the profits on Toyotas because we're a Toyota dealer. And so being familiar with that, we can tell you, are they being honest about their Toyota pricing? And so that's another reason.

Just then I received another email from Suzette, after I got the ones from Al. One, no, if I wanted to keep emailing or if I'd prefer a phone call. That was a nice courtesy. I replied that I'd hope to receive some information about the RAV-4 I wanted to buy, I waited two hours for reply, and then Suzette emailed to say she would send a Costco price sheet shortly, Costco price sheet. Something in my blog article, I tell you you need to see. If you're going into the dealership, whatever it is, on the Costco Auto Buying Program, always ask to see the Costco member-only price sheet.

And it will have your specific car as prescribed by Costco and the price. And on Earl on cars, there's a picture of it, so you can see exactly what it's supposed to look like. Yeah, I actually have, I brought them with me here. I'll let you, you can hold these up over there. And, yeah, Stu's got that, you can see that. You have to ask for that, and you have to see that. Okay, we've got to Suzette. I replied that I'd hope to receive, okay.

Eight minutes later, I received a PDF, a file, picture of what appeared to be a official Costco member-only price sheet, and it was. It was for a new 2021 Rav4 LE with an MSRP of $27,869. It also had the VIN, and that's very important. That's a specific car, so you know exactly the car you're looking for. card deals in general love to switch you to something else. If you know the van, they're not going to switch you if you verify that.

The price and she displayed a discount of $2,289 plus a $1,250 toward a cash incentive identified as a limited time discount. And that's how they treat those. That's how Costco treats the dealer cash. Yeah, exactly.

The Costco has to give you the dealer discount or the customer incentive. Any incentives they get from the manufacturer, to the dealer or otherwise, have to be passed along to you. And the bottom line, there's got to be the lowest price they sold that car to anybody. Costco members get the lowest price. Total price was $24,239, too, which $1,59,000 in extra fees. And I said earlier, Al Hendrickson and Toyota used to have over $3,000.

dollars. So they've come down to only, I say only, $1,599 an extra fees. That was broken down by an $8955.55 cent electronic filing fee and $144.455 private tag agency fee. You add it all together and you got $1,59. But that has to be shown to you on the Costco price sheet. And it is. So you get the Costco member only price sheet. They have to show it to you if they're a Costco dealer. Otherwise, they get canceled. So they will show it to you if you insist. And everything they're going to throw at you, like these $1,59 in fees, is going to be right there for you to see. I replied to Suzette and said I'd be in to see them around 11 o'clock in the morning the next day. The next morning I took a trip to Coconut Creek, arrived at 11 a.m.

The scene in front of the dealership was intimidating. They had a ton of salesmen. Woke back, waiting by the doors for fresh customers. It was very intimidating when I became aware I'd been noticed by the group. And I'm a female. It's even more disturbing. And there were all guys, you know. Michael had broken from the pack and was ready at my cars.

I opened the door to climb out. He wore a mask and offered me an elbow bump. He asked me what brought me in. I told him about my Costco inquiry. and the emails with Suzette, I asked if I could speak to her. That's the other thing I say in my blog article. Always deal only with the designated certified salesperson by Costco. They will always try to get you to talk to somebody else

because they get to commission, they sell you the car for more money, always have the member-only price sheet, and always speak to the certified Costco designated salesperson. They even have pictures on the website. You can see their picture, and you know their name. So I asked to speak to Suzette. I'm speaking as Agent Lightning now, and the salesperson from El Hendricks at Toyota laughed and said

that she worked upstairs. As a salesman, he would do his job and all the legwork. He said after he helped me find the vehicle, he would notify Suzette. I played along. At this point, you should have said, no, sir, I'm out of here. If I don't talk to Suzette, I'm going home. Stay by your guns.

Suzette never came up. Okay, on my blog, that's number four, on my seven things. Always deal with the Costco member certified. Michael led me to a cubicle, offered me a seat. I gave him my contact information, which he used to locate my inquiry on the computer. Then he asked the last six digits of the Venn and the Rav4 I was quoted on. I found the email from Zett

read the digits to him. He found it on the computer and then said he needed to go check if it was still available. You'll hold your breath then. He left me. 20 minutes. He returned. He seemed to be out of breath. Must have been on the North 40. He finally found the car, I guess.

But he was excited to report that he finally found it. We both went outside for a test drive. We found the vehicle exactly the one I inquired about. It was black. 2,021 RAP4 LE, MSRP of 27,869. There was no addendum, no phony Monroney, but Toyo Guard Platinum was listed on the Monroney. That's $699 that's added by Southeast Toyota distributor, and they put it on there

and they call it part of the Monroney label, and that's always bothered me, but they do it. We took a short drive around the block with little conversation. When we returned, Michael asked, well, is this it? said it was, meaning it was the RAV-4 that was looking for. Back at the cubicle, Michael proceeded to handwrite the figures on a document that worked a lot like a buyer's order, except on the part of the top of the document, it said, worksheet, not a contract, along the top. Not a legal document. Anything agreed upon at this point between you and the salesperson means nothing in court.

It means nothing in arbitration, I should say, because you can't take him to court anymore. the top line label vehicle price was 31 869 and amount 4,000 over sticker that appeared out of nowhere. We don't know where that came up. There's no addendum or anything. Just popped up. He just used that figure to subtract $7,450 discount. I guess where it came from and makes that discount sound huge because he just pulled it out of nowhere

slapped 4,000 on there and he took it off again. Did it for the fields. Yeah, to make his discount look great. and a sale price of 24, 329, which was the same price on the Costco member-only price sheet. So you know now why I tell you always get the Costco member-only price sheet, look at it on your car, on your VIN, and you're safe, you're protected. So things are going okay now. He went on to have the same piece that were indicated on the price sheet,

and they were on the member-only price sheet, $1,599 in hidden fees that are not hidden anymore because Costco makes them bring them out. And there they are. If it were in a Costco shop, you wouldn't see this. I object to the hand-written worksheet. I explained that I was getting a disbursement from a family trust to purchase the vehicle. I love that. We'll have to use that again.

I said I needed an official buyer's order to give to the trustee manager of the funds. Michael said, the only printed documents would come from finance, the box, the finance department. He said the worksheet shows a complete amount due for the purchase, and I should be able to use it. I pushed back and said in past vehicle purchases, I was provided with a printed buyer's order. Michael encountered that the only way to get a printed buyer's order would be for me to actually sell the car, for him to actually sell the car, have it pulled from the computer's inventory, and have financing printed. He can't do all that unless I actually buy the car. Catch 22, right?

What are we going to do? I asked to speak with the manager. Michael left, returned with a man, who was either a defiant manager or sales manager, wasn't clear. The manager began by suggesting that I provide them the contact information for the trustee. They would send them all the necessary paperwork

while I completed the sale in finance. I was getting nowhere. I excused myself so I could call the trustee. So Agent Lightning called Stu and you know the spy master. It was funny. I pretended while we're on the call that I was the trustee. I'm like Explain the situation.

Stu says that he felt that he'd push hard enough she had pushed hard enough on this to go ahead and accept the handwritten document and return to the desk. So she filed Sue's directions. Before I could start, the manager turned up the pressure. He said that it was unable to guarantee the vehicle would be available by next time that's standard pressure I return with a check by the time I returned with a check from my trust now this is this is

humorous Michael says ask what rate I was getting from the trust and then the manager looked at him angry said dummy that's not a bank it's a trust yeah I tried both I tried both them I was uncomfortable taking my chances with the rab getting sold and pointed to the Bottom line, 27, 534, I asked this would change when I came back and said it would not change, maybe get a little better. I thanked him and left. We're short on time here. I'll summarize this.

Costco Albuying program was adhered to strictly by Al Hendricks and Toyota. Kind of. Well, the member only price sheet, they didn't have the certified salesperson. Right. They passed on it. They violated the program by not letting Suzette come down the stairs and handle the deal. But that's Suzette's problem. Well, especially if she gives no commission.

Anyway, there we are. Whether you vote for Al Hanks and Toyota or don't, it's a big vote and a big hearty endorsement of the Costco auto buying program. Just got one grade came in. It's from Mark. Amery gives them an afts I said math a for mass eff for high fees I'm gonna go with a C pass them I'm gonna go with a C minus and I believe that Rick has some I've got a B minus a C and a C myself I'm gonna go with a C passing grade but watch yourself I'll give them a say I can't believe we're gonna recommend them yeah I mean well we recommend them on

If you're a Costco member down there in the Coconut Creek area or wherever you are, if you get the same treatment, it works. And that's a hell of the price that Agent Lightning got. We're endorsing two Toyota dealers that we compete with now. There you go. Folks, thanks for tuning in. Don't forget to go to Erwin Cars and read that blog column Costco Auto Buying Program, your best bet for a low price.

Very important. Have a wonderful weekend, everyone. and we'll see you right back here next Saturday. Bye-bye.