Earl Stewart on Cars - 12.07.2019 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Toyota of Hollywood

Episode Date: December 7, 2019

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

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

Good morning. This is Earl, the recovering car dealer in person. You heard my recorded voice in the introduction. And I'm here with a group of, I guess we could call ourselves automobile experts. We are in certain facets of that industry. Retail mainly, repairing, maintaining, servicing cars, leasing, and buying. And I am a recovering car dealer. I am, in full disclosure, a current car dealer.

I have a toilet dealership. But I want to assure all of you listening, especially the new listeners, the ones that have been regulars for many years now, know this. This is not an infomercial in any way, shape, or form. This is truly a consumer advocacy show. We are your advocates as buyers and leaseers of cars, maintainers and repairs of cars, if that's the word. And we try to help you navigate that minefield called car dealerships all over the world. I used to think that the car dealership problem was only in, well, I guess I started out thinking it was only in South Florida,

then it seemed like it was Florida than the United States. But I asked a few questions, and I've done a little stuff. study, and retailing cars is a problem worldwide, with a few exceptions. Therefore, and another justification for this show, if I need a justification, is the fact that the Gallup annual poll on honesty and ethics and professions, Gallup, you know, the great the most respected polling organization of the world, Gallup, every year since 1977, they've been doing a poll of the United States car buyers, not just car buyers, the United States consumers, and they found out that the car buyers rank car dealers the lowest in honesty and ethics.

Out of all the different professions and businesses and retail offerings that you have, when you're buying a car, you consider car dealers almost always last, sometimes next to last, sometimes, a couple pops up from last. Nurses are number one. I mean, you can understand that. You know, what's not to love about nurses? So here we are to help you. And it isn't all about buying and leasing cars.

I've got Rick Kearney in the studio with me. And Rick is going on vacation for a little while. He'll be gone next Saturday, but he'll be back the following Saturday. So you folks out there that have a question on the mechanics, And I use that word carefully because it's more the electronics or the computerization of how a car operates. If you're having a little problem with your car, making a funny noise, rattle, shake, or maybe you had it into a repair shop and they charge it too much money, or maybe you're thinking about taking it into the repair shop, and you're afraid they're going to charge you too much money. If you have any questions about the operation of your vehicle, truck, van, or car, Rick Kearney can answer for you.

He is a certified master diagnostic technician, and that requires a lot of schooling. He's been doing it for over 25 years, so experiences with him. He started out as a kid. He used to take cars apart and put him back together when he was a kid, and he is going to school all the time. A lot of online training. You know, the technology in cars, you've probably noticed.

If you bought a car in the past couple of years, you've noticed the quantum leap in technology. Well, that's quantum leaping technology continues. So Rick really has to stay on top of it. So here we are available by multiple channels. 877 960-9960 is the old-fashioned channel. That's a telephone. Remember telephones?

877-960-9960. And texting, which in my mind is replaced the telephone. I always text somebody if I can rather than call. calling is invasive, so on and so forth. We don't consider it invasive on the show, because we'd love to hear your voice. There's something personal about it, and we would prefer a call. But we have the text line for folks that are little shy, and that text line is area code 772-4976530. That's four, oh, look up at that camera.

Oh. So you're seeing just the top of your heads. Yeah, we're on a new studio. And I keep forgetting that we're visual and we're streaming and that's what I was going to get into. The text number is 772-4976530, and we usually get more text than anything else, and it's very helpful to have that as a backlog because sometimes we'll hit a void in the show where the calls don't come in. We can always go back to the text. And Facebook, that's right. We're streaming Facebook Cloud.

can wave now and you can see my beautiful face and my muscles and I mean I'm quite a striking figure I'm not I'm an old guy but I'd like to think I am I think of myself as being 26 years old in my mind's eye so we're streaming on Facebook we're streaming on YouTube we're streaming on Periscope we're screaming on Twitter I got them all I mean there was a time when I couldn't remember all those but That's what we're doing. It's just natural now. We're high tech.

So I think I've covered everything. I've got Stu Stewart. I got Nancy Stewart. Sue Stewart is my son. He's a general manager of my toilet dealership. And he's been in business, what, 15, 20 years? 23 years. 23.

Holy mackerel. Time flies when you're having a good time. Yeah, you are 23 years older. That's right. That's right. Yeah, I'm all gray now. And Nancy, Stewart, she's my co-o. She started with me.

It was just a man nasty at first, and this was like 16, 17 years ago, right in this physical location. It was a radio station owned by somebody else, and we've been doing it together for all that time. She is kind of like our female advocate, and we are trying to build an audience, and she's done a great job, by the way, of building an audience of female listeners. There's something about cars used to be a guy thing, cars, macho trucks, but females buy most of them. I think it's over half. They also influence a lot more purchases that they don't make, and they drive half the cars. I think they bring them in the for service at least as much, maybe more often. So Nancy Stewart is our co-host.

Hey, tell them about the little special prize we have for new female callers. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We've got quite a talented group here, and I'm losing my microphone. I'd like to let the ladies know that the first two new lady callers, you can win yourself $50 this morning, and this time of year, well, that'll come in handy. So give us a call. Say hello, or if you have a question, feel free to ask. 877-960-99-60, and remember that text number,

172-497-6-530, and also remember that you can remain anonymous and you can ask us all kinds of questions and remain anonymous. So, www. AnonymousFeedback.com. Back to the recovering card you want. www. www. Youranonymous Feedback.com. For some reason, people like that.

We like it because it gives your feedback. Some people just want to remain anonymous. And I think we have some that have come in, maybe some text also. You want to get started to? Oh, yes, sir. Excuse me, guys. We're going to go to Ron, who's been holding from West Palm Beach. Good morning, Ron.

Hello, Ron. Sorry that she had to hold so long. Are you still with us? That's all right. Yeah, still here. What's on your mind? I have a question. Why do I see so many cars

at night without their headlights on when I know most cars have automatic headlights why the manufacturer is still making them defeatable yeah that's a great question what do you think I mean I've thought about that a lot because when you you have the option to turn off the automatic headlights so and if you do that

and you forget then you could risk driving down the road at night without the headlights on why I don't understand why they don't just come I mean, there's a light sensor that they can use. I don't think it's an expensive thing. It's something that should be just the default condition of the car. Lights are on when is dark. Ron, I think you've hit on something important, and I'm ashamed to admit I never thought

about it. Stu did. And why should it be optional to have your lights on a night? It should be mandatory to have your lights on a night. Unless you're, like, following somebody down the country road, like you're, like, doing something. Or unless you're a crook and you're trying to percolourize a home. Or a private investigator.

Of course. Ron, do you have any thought on that? You know what? I mean, Rick, do you have any thought on Ron's comment? I'm just wondering how we got so creepy and dark so quickly. But my opinion on the headlights, well, following country roads, well, my opinion on headlights is I think they should be designed to where headlights and tail lights are on all the time while the vehicle is in motion. at the minimum, if not all the time when the engine is running, especially since we're in South Florida, but other areas of the country and the world as well get areas of lots of rain,

and your headlights should be on in the rain. You should have your tail lights on all the time, in the rain and at night. And you'll see a lot of cars with their daytime running lights on, which means their headlights are on at about half power, but with no tail lights. By golly, I think you've got something. Ron, thank you. What do you think about the discussion so far? You're still with us, Ron. Ron, if you're listening to add my two cents to it,

you know, with all the distractions today with these drivers that are on the road, I agree with Rick. You know, that's exactly, he's right on point. And again, there's so many distractions. I've not only seen people on the road at night with no lights, on but during the day so they should be on all the time I hope we answered your question Ron I see that your line is freed up so we're gonna go to Mimi who's calling us from West Palm Beach good morning Mimi good morning I enjoy your

program very much when I get a chance to listen thank you Mimi are you a first-time caller yes oh very good please text me your information that's your contact information so that I can mail you a check for $50 for being a first-time caller. And that text number is? Really nice. Can I do it any other way? What would you like us?

How would you like us to receive it? Yeah, how about you could call the number, couldn't you, Sue? And leave a voicemail message? Or you could try your anonymous feedback.com. Well, how are we going to know where she'd? Oh, she gives us a contact. Or maybe if you want to give me a call, you can call me on my. My cell phone, do you have a pen?

Yes. Okay, 561, 386, 6498. That will come directly to me and I'll get that check out for you. Okay. Give her that number again, just in case she didn't write it down fast enough. Pardon me? No, I got it. Okay, good.

Okay. What can we do for you? Well, two questions. One is, I belong to Sam's Club, and I notice they have card cards. deals. And I know you speak a lot about Costco. And I wondered, do you feel that Costco is more reliable? We believe Costco is more reliable. And this came up a couple weeks ago, and Stu reminded me that we were members of the Sam's Club program. We seem to, you probably can give the specifics on that. Well, there's not a whole lot of controls put on the deal.

dealers in the Sam's Club program, you know, compared to Costco, Costco, there are strict pricing rules, strict procedure rules. That doesn't mean that the dealers follow them that well. We check them out, you know, periodically with mystery shopping reports. But overall, when the dealers that are adhering to the program, you'll get a better deal with less risk of getting surprised with, you know, just typical car dealer nonsense. But Sam's Club, it was basically you posted your price. There wasn't any follow-up, check-up by the program. It was kind of up to the dealers to police themselves. Oh, okay.

Well, thank you. The second question is we have a van, and it's a converted van for a wheelchair. It has a Dodge caravan, and it has two batteries. So there's a switch where you can have both batteries working, or just one battery. So when I push the switch up, the red light goes on. And that makes me feel that I should leave it down. Is anyone familiar with conversion vans with two batteries?

Rick, are you? I really haven't had a whole lot of experience with them, but I'm guessing that the way this system is set up is they probably simply put in an illuminated switch. But I would actually want to have you contact the manufacturer or look for some sort of an owner's manual to try to find out for sure just where you'd want to have that set. The people that did the conversion. Alternatively, there is a place on 10th Avenue down by I-95. It's right across from the Ford dealership there. I went there.

Right. I went there. Oh, I should ask them. Right. That's what I was thinking. They would probably, I'm sure their folks there, do those conversions. So I'm sure they would be able to give you better advice on what way to leave that switch and how that system will work for you.

Oh, thank you. Another thing is we went away and left it in a parking garage for nine days. And when we came back, it was both batteries were dead. And now, and I had the switch up. Probably by mistake. I probably hit it with my leg or something. something because we bought it if we're not the first owners or the second owners i think we're the third manual has been destroyed already um by someone so it has and also the design of it

doesn't have like a running it doesn't have a place for your feet like the um the the fort expedition did and so that's probably why i hit the hit the little switch thing but i was wondering um when i got in the car after someone came huge cables, but it had to be huge ones. My service had little cables, and that didn't work. But the huge ones did start the car. I ran at two hours back to West Palm Beach. And then I had the batteries checked, and they said they were just fine. So, because I was going to replace them. I thought maybe they were dead, dead. But they said they were fine. We had charged them.

Yeah, quite often batteries can come back from something like that. But when you go to the mobility place, I would ask them to check and see if there's any sort of what's called a parasitic draw, that something that's left on, that is staying on, that might be draining those batteries, or with that setup, they may actually have a position that that switch should be in that they'll tell you about where it would keep things from drawing those batteries down when the vehicle sits for several days. Oh, okay, then I won't have to, because I was even thinking if this happens again, I'm going to disconnect, like, all the negatives or something.

But, okay, I wrote that down. Thank you very much. Well, Mimi, if that doesn't work and you have any other questions, please call us next week. And we'd like to hear from you again anyway because we don't get enough female callers. Oh, okay. And your $50 check will be in the mail, right, Nancy? That's correct. And again, as Earl said, thank you for calling.

What we're trying to do here is build a platform for the ladies. they are a big part of the auto industry. So Mimi, spread the word and send me your contact information, and I'll get the check out to you. That was 561-386-6-4-99-8. That's correct. Okay, good. Thank you so much. You're welcome.

Have a wonderful day. Give us a call tool free at 877-960, or you can text us at 772-49-30. We're going to go to Tina, who's been holding for a while. for your patience, Tina. Tina Bonita. Hi, how are you guys doing this morning? Hey, Tina. What's up, Tina?

Well, I don't mean to make a pun. I apologize that this Takata airbag thing has blown up to epic proportions. I appreciate a good point. I know. I didn't mean to do that, but the only way now is say it, BMW and Toyota, and I forget who else, 1.4 million more vehicles are being recalled.

Yeah. And the direction from the manufacturers is stop driving these vehicles. It is. It's amazing. I saw a bulletin from the Florida Automobile Dealers Association. In fact, it was on my Facebook page the other day. And the bulletin goes out to all the dealers in Florida. And the president of the association, Ted Smith, is saying that the federal government is trying to make it illegal to sell cars with dangerous

recalls and we're keeping our eye on this situation and I'm thinking of myself what is to keep the eye on the situation they want to make it illegal to sell cars that can kill you and of course the car dealers are becoming it was encouraging to me in a way because at least they're starting to realize that it is so absurd that it is legal to sell cars with dangerous recalls to make a law to make it illegal is the most logical thing in the world. But it's we're losing ground, right, Tina? You're telling us now that there are more cars being

pumped out into the public with dangerous recalls than are being fixed. It's just, it's a losing battle. But you know what? There's an upside to this because we talk a lot about especially used car lots and used car dealerships that are for the most part,

not very transparent and not very honest. Maybe he'll put a lot of the bad guys out of business. At least that's what I hope. so yeah it's that's what the florida automobile dealers association and national automobile dealers association are afraid of they they think it's going to have a huge economic impact and i don't see that either what kind of an economic impact

first of all virtually all of the cars now have a fix available every now and then you find a car without a to cut air bag fix available but 99% of all dangerous recalls have a fix all you have to do, it might take a day, take the car to the manufacturer's dealer's location, they fix it, they get paid for it, you bring it back, and you sell the car. So it isn't going to have an economic impact. All you have to do is get the car fixed. You have to recondition the car. You have to wash the car, wax the car, you know, change the tires.

There's always reconditioning to do on used cars. It is one additional piece of reconditioning that can save a customer's life. And they're saying this is a hardship. economic hardship that's absurd well i think to a smaller car lot i mean maybe not to a big car dealership but to smaller car a lot that strictly deals and used cars it could be but i'm not really sure about that you'd know way more about that than i would that's for sure well it could be so are you it could be a little bit of a delay and say a little car that's all okay so are you saying basically that it would be a nominal cost

to the dealer? Yeah, it'd be a nominal cost to dealer. In a lot of ways, it'll be revenue for the dealers because all the dealers that are fixing the cars that have the recalls get paid quite handsomely. You know, if you get a once you do

multiple recalls, Rick will correct me if I'm wrong on this, when a technician does an operation for the first time, it takes them a longer time. He's learning the process. And when he does the same operation 25 times, he can usually do it so fast that he can sometimes double his pay because he gets paid the same thing for fixing it, whether he spends an hour or half an hour.

So technicians actually make good money, the dealers make good money, and all they're doing is the people that don't make the good money or the manufacturers because they have to pay out of pocket. They're the only losers, if you want to call it an economic thing, the only ones that lose the manufacturers. Okay, so it's not as dire of a situation as I thought. And like I mentioned a few weeks ago for young people that are looking for a career,

good technicians are needed. And if you don't want to go to college, maybe being an auto technician or a computer auto technician is something to consider. Absolutely. I mean, Rick, you know more about this than I do, but we're always looking for good technicians

and there's just very, very few available. We can't find enough. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing, Tina, to find a competent, honest technician today and for, what do you call them, science, Earl, science computer guys. Or do you just refer to it? Computer scientists. Oh, computer scientists. Yeah. It's just an amazing career and we need more of them, like I said, competent and honest. So good point. And we need some ladies, Tina. We need female mechanics, just like anything else. They can do it just as well as males. And if you go, if you look at a thousand technicians today, you'll find maybe one female. And they're just not, they're not entering the trade. It's a great business.

You know, I can classify them in with finding a good doctor. That's how I feel about Rick. and what he does, he does a fantastic job, and he really stays up on the latest technology, that's for sure. Tina, thank you so much for the phone call. Oh, thank you, and I'm so glad that Mimi called earlier, so shout out to Mimi. We need more Mimi's in the world. Yes, thank you.

And ladies, Nancy and I can't do this by ourselves, so please call in. Definitely. I think Stu has something to say to you. Oh, yeah, just on the Takata thing, with Toyota. So we got a notice back in early November. So when the first phase, first wave of recalls went out, there's a bunch of cars going up to the 2016 four runners, I think was the most recent car, and they had to fix them with other Takata airbags. So these are coming back for the second phase. Now they have non-tacottas to fix them. So this was like, that was just a

temporary fix. And now they got to come back in and get fixed again. And the worst part about that, when that temporary fixed, knowing that statistically only one and four, will come back and get fixed after they put them out. Yeah, I'm not defending. I'm just like, what else could they do? I mean, they've got to put something in the car. Exactly. Or they could just make it illegal to sell.

That's true. Tina, have a great weekend. Always. Thanks. Always nice hearing from you. Okay. Thank you. 877-960.

9960. Our lines are lit up. It's an amazing Saturday. Real quick before you jump to them, I've gotten some messages from listeners who are saying that on true oldies. or stream earlancars.com. They're hearing Christmas music. Apparently, we're not streaming online.

So the best way to hear us online, and obviously if you can't hear us, then you're not going to, this message is going to the wrong people. But you can listen on Facebook.com forward slash earl on cars. If you don't have a Facebook account, then you can go on to YouTube.com

forward slash earl on cars, and you can listen to it. And of course, you can hear us in the studio, and if we can ask why we are not having... I've already communicated that with the... Oh, good. at the studio, yes. Okay, our internet advisor is right on top of it, as usual. Okay, we're going to go to Leonard, and I want to thank Howard for holding. We'll get to you in a moment. Good

morning, Leonard. Leonard's calling us from Green Acres. Hello. Hey, Leonard. Yes, I'd like some advice. I'm about ready to purchase a car, and on Earl's advice, I called up Costco, I got my authorization number, and then I went to my credit union, and they authorized me to purchase. However, the lady there said to me, we'd like you to use our buying service, and if you do, I will cut your interest rates by a quarter percent. So I'm ready to purchase, but I don't know which service to use, the Costco one, or the buying service from the credit union. Well, I think, Leonard, that's a good position because get your Costco price, and if your credit union will match that, then you can have your cake and eat it too. But be sure they can match the Costco price. And you're on your way to be sure you get your Costco representative that you're dealing with. That should have been listed on the dealership site when you were listing your zip code and what type of car, make car you want to buy. and be sure that you get your Costco price that's on the price sheet and that any dealer fees or dealer-install accessories are also listed

so that you know what they're full of prices. Then take that price to the credit union and say, okay, meet it or beat it, and we got a deal. Thank you so much, Earl. Well, thanks for a call, Leonard. Bye. Bye-bye. Thank you, Leonard. Give us a call again. Love doing good.

Excuse me. we're going to go straight to Howard thank you for holding Howard hi Howard thanks for taking my call sure hey it's been a long time I propose what that gentleman just said

remember Si used to be on the program with me of course well anyway he he checked he got the price from Costco went to his credit union and they laughed at him They said, there's no way they could meet the price for Costco.

And they were way off. So I just throwing that out, you know, don't expect the credit union to meet the price. Howard, you know, I'm glad, can I say I just, I'm glad you said that because I always tout credit unions. And I always have tout, in a matter of fact, I recommend them instead of banks. But we do know that there's corruption everywhere. There is corruption in credit unions. And we even encountered this where credit unions are on the take with salespeople, with dealerships. And so you have to be careful.

You know, it's a shame. I mean, I could say you could be safe in church, but you're not even safe in church. So there's corruption everywhere. You've got to be. Yeah, there's always like at a dealership. I got a guy at the credit union. Somebody's got a guy. Yeah.

They got the credit union. And there's a kickback thing going on there. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's absolutely correct. I agree with you 100%. I know getting off the topic, going back on to the airbags. I have a friend that is an engineer for NASA, and he said that after 10 years, all airbags are suspect as far as the capability of functioning correctly. Is he correct? You know, there is, I talked to Alan Napier, our collision manager, about that, and everything has a shelf life, right? I mean, if it's not 10 years, it's 20, but I mean, there's a shelf life, and I'm not sure what that is. We need to Google that, or we need to, because there are a lot of cars out there on a road, 15, 20, 30 years old. What about the airbags?

That's an excellent question. Rick, do you have a thought on it? The only thing that I've ever seen from Toyota, which would be an official statement from them, is that they say that at 10 years, they should be inspected. Now, what that actually means, they don't really tell us. So the only thing that we really can do is maybe a visual inspection and a scan tool.

And there's really nothing else. Yeah, I'm looking at Autotrater. I go to it. AutoTrader has an article. on it. It says about 15 to 20 years, but it says the same thing. It says it 15 years have it inspected to see if it's working properly. How do you, if you don't know, Rick, that makes me nervous because if they say inspected, I mean, you know, I'm going to inspect this pen right now. I'm expecting to

it. Looks good to me. But what does that mean? It looks great. Well, you run into a wall. To me, the only way to inspect an airbag to see if it's working would be to deploy it, to detonate it. And then you've got to buy a new airbag. Howard, another great question. Now, all the people out there in the world listening to this radio broadcast in this stream, you know, manufacturers, if you're going to ask somebody to inspect something, you need to tell them how to inspect it.

I don't believe that visually there's any way, I think Rick just said this, visually, there's no way to tell of an airbag. It sounds to me like it's a way to get you off the hook, liability-wise, C-Y-A, hey, tell the dealers to, tell the consumer to have it inspected. And then if it doesn't work, say, well, you didn't have an inspected right, but nobody ever told anybody how to inspect it. Rick, on the other side of the coin here, could it be possible in the future to inspect a Takata airbag, the detail of it, the technical, the mechanical,

without deploying it, like you said? Can this become something of the future? I don't know. Computer models. No, there is no way. I don't think there is. I think that's okay now because at the very end of the auto trader article, it says our suggestion is not to worry.

So let's speak and move on. Just kidding, that's what it says. Don't worry. It says if your car is manufactured in the middle, late 90s or later, we suspect your airbags will continue to keep you safe. Easy for you to say because you're not driving an old car. Right. Yeah.

I think this is an issue. And it's like, it's an issue. I hate to say it because I don't, you know, I believe in minimal government insurance. but if there ever was a job for the federal government. Mandatory replacement. Manitory replacement. Or a viable inspection method.

In our nuclear arsenal, they don't blow up bombs anymore, and that's what an airbag is. They run expensive computer modeling simulations to see if the nuclear weapons still explode. We can't do that with airbags, so we've got to replace them. Got to replace them. Okay, there we go. Another one for the regulators and the federal government and the state governments. How much does it cost to replace them, Rick? Can you tell us?

Probably a lot. I would say on the average vehicle, it's going to run probably $12 to $1,500 or more. And that would be on older vehicles, newer vehicles like Earl, you're driving a Lexus 500. And I believe your car has something in the neighborhood of 13 different airbags. So take that 1,200 and probably multiply it by four or five. And you can see why they don't tell you the truth about this because it's impossible to do that. So now you have the dilemma of our government regulating the sale of products,

knowing that this product can last 20 years, but in 20 years the airbag may not work, and then they can require the airbag to be replaced, but who's driving a 20-year-old car that's going to be able to afford it? I don't know. I got a guy, Joe, who just texted us. He says, I keep it 1998 mint condition BMW convertible as my Florida car. Is the airbag because of its age dangerous? No. The answer is we don't know.

The answer is it could be dangerous. And we don't know because information, there's not been any study. It's been ignored. And thanks to Howard's question and your comment. This is something the regulators and the legislators should do along with a whole bunch of other stuff that they don't do because they're too busy. to us to get elected. Exactly.

Everything's so vague. Yeah. You know, and I don't know. Is it the wave of the future where this will be brought, you know, to the forefront? And, you know, I mean, they're not taking the recalls seriously. Good stuff, Howard. Good stuff. Here we are.

One other thing before I go. My nephew has a cobalt. I think it's a Chevy. It has only one air bag. on the driver's side I told him get rid of the car and he refused to do it that should be dangerous

in 1985 cobalts with one airbag on the driver's side and why didn't they make the airbag on the passenger side why do they make cars without airbags at all I mean a lot of it the dealers were crying bloody murder and I was crying you talk about a recovering car dealer I can remember very well

I was a Pontiac dealer and they came out with this ridiculous thing that they had to have airbags. We lobbied against it, the National Automobile Dealers, the Federal Automobile Dealers Association. They're crazy. It's going to drive the price of a car so high, nobody will be able to buy a car.

We did the same thing with seatbelts. Seat belts. Are you out of your mind? Nobody's going to lock themselves, strap themselves in a car. It's going to imply the car is unsafe. Yeah, exactly. So it's progress, intelligence, education,

and we're finally at the point now we're educated and aware and we look back on some of the things that we did a few years ago and it's insanity. Well, they should have a system where if you don't put the seatbelt all the car doesn't start. There's no such thing. Easy to do, right? Yeah. They should. Absolutely. Yeah.

Well, and just to speak to the technology of it, that 1985 car, when airbags first were being installed in these cars, there were people that died because of the airbag and I remember reading of one case in particular where a woman was driving into work on a snowy day she drove into a deep drift and the impact caused the airbag to go off and it struck her in the chest hard enough that it killed her and because it was a weekend they didn't find her until Monday morning I mean it was but it's the technology has increased now from one airbag on the driver's side to an airbag on the driver's side to an airbag on the driver's

side one on the passenger side there's airbags for your knees airbags for the side of the vehicle the curtain airbags uh in the roof in the seats for the passengers in the back seat there are airbags that actually come out behind their knees on some cars to push them back into the seat so that you don't lunge forwards in a crash there there are airbags everywhere it's getting to the point where if you remember the movie i think was judge dread or was it demolition man demolition man where the car turned into a yeah well filled with a foam that quickly solidified and you know that you know that you know well not not to beat this to death but there's technology being worked on now where they're going to be using external airbags and that makes a lot of sense right

so instead of having yourself inconvenienced and smacked in the face and the chest when you hit something all the airbags outside the car and you're just like in a big giant uh giant tennis ball and does it does it protect the the body exterior of the vehicle I'm not sure. Well, Alan's not going to like that. Howard, you really started a firestorm here. What a great question. Okay, thank you.

Have a good day. You too, Howard. Give us a call again. Hey, 77-960, 9960, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. Remember, www. Your Anonymous Feedback.com, and I know that Stu is raring to go. I'm shopping. Champing at the bit.

All right, this is from Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Good morning. When will Toyota get the dynamic guidelines for the backup cameras? It appears Toyota is one of the few manufacturers, which does not offer dynamic guidelines. Thank you, and hope all of you have a good day. Well, thank you. The dynamic guidelines are those computer-generated lines that appear on the screen when you're backing up using a backup camera, and it shows you where your car is and where it's going.

Toyota actually does on I think most, if not all of their models with the backup camera do have guidelines. But there is a whole range of guidelines that are available out there in the industry. Like some, there are some to show where your rear bumper is. So you can see if you're going to run into something. Some of them, like I mentioned earlier, will even show you where your front wheels are going to be going. So if you're backing out of a parking space, you can avoid swinging the wheel too far one way or another and hitting the car next to you. So usually you spend more.

It's a more expensive car or more expensive option package to get the more extensive guidelines, but most of them have it. Yeah, Lexus has it. That's made by Toyota. Yeah. And I think eventually, like you say, comes down from the luxury cars to the medium price. It trickles down to us peons eventually. So, yeah. The next one, also on your anonymous feedback.

Hello, why does Toyota put Krola in front of some models when introducing a model, for example, the Krola Tracell, the Krola Matrix? and then the Kroll has dropped in later models. I don't know the actual answer to that I do know that, well, Rick might, but I know like back in the 70s when they came out with the SELICA, they became the SELICA Supra. And I guess if it's successful, maybe it launches its own standalone model. Don't know. I think what Toyota does is they started off as like a child of that car.

Like the Salaura was originally the Camry Salaura, the Kerala, the Kerala, which is spawned. multiple versions and what they do is if that model adjustment of the corolla if that version of it starts to take off they actually make it into its own individual model so it's just a naming thing it's like evolution yeah okay let's move on here uh next one uh i'm not sure if you're all aware the toota echo was called the toyta yuras outside the united states thank you love the show didn't know that i didn't know that either there's a lot of strange models when I do travel Nancy and I sometimes will see

Toyotas with strange names and we'll see Toyotas that we never knew existed because they build models in different countries that you never see in the United States. Yeah, in China there's a lot of strange models, Europe, and Japan too. You know, we just step back and go, wow. Excuse me, what's your name again?

My name is Stu. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to go to Doug and Ollie, they've been waiting to speak to us. I haven't heard from that cat in a long time. Hey, Doug. He's a cool cat. It is.

Hey, how you guys? What's up? I was just going to complain about bad drivers and I mean, I've never seen it as bad as this. Tis the season. Yeah, exactly.

But, I mean, going on 95 now, I'm literally petrified because of the way people are driving. And because, you know, I'm a musician. I travel a lot to the places to perform. And Jim and I are at, like, oh, my God, look at what that guy did. Yeah. Look at what he's trussing over five lanes of traffic. Yeah. And these kids on the motorcycle is absolutely insane.

Oh, my God. I was just going to say that. I mean, a couple of kids killed in this area. I've seen two deaths on motorcycles in the past week, and I see them on these kids on $9.95. I mean, I have to admit, I speed on $9.95 because I have to. If I didn't, I'd be hitting the rear. So if I'm going 65 in the 55 zone, these kids on the motorcycle will pass me like I'm standing still.

They've got to be doing a hundred or more. oh absolutely and then they do that thing where they lift up their bike and put it straight up in the air and it's like really wow so everybody be careful I try to avoid 95 but you can if you're trying to get

you know south or north sure you last few days I felt like had a target on me yeah I mean seriously I had the other day going to pick up my daughter from dance three times people almost ran into me just out of the not even paying attention

but you know it's good for the economy and then the texting too I'm not going to get into that but people I saw this one woman she was putting makeup

on well on 95 unbelievable and Ollie when he saw that Ollie when he saw that he went meow hey Doug

did you see that thing that's going around the internet there is a cat it's currently the most famous cat video out there now. They call it the country cat

because it shows a cat who looks he's scared of the vacuum cleaner, hides behind a cabinet, and then the camera comes around and the cat goes, sees the camera and goes, well hi! That's what it sounds like. No, I'm going to have to look it up. Yeah, just search country cat on YouTube.

Ollie will love it. Well, you know, maybe he just thinks that the vacuum cleaner sucks. I love a good pun. You know, Doug, to your point about being on 95 and the woman that you saw putting on makeup, it's just amazing what you can see whenever you're just driving around, not even on 95. Men and women, they're both guilty, and it is just crazy. The only thing that I haven't seen is somebody scrambling eggs when they're behind the wheel.

and pouring her coffee It's funny, I don't see any of those things because I keep my eyes on the road of old times blinders Do you? Okay, don't tell on me I'm looking at my Google Maps, I confess He's got that Google Map going on

I'll tell you what And we have a special opening in the backseat where I climb into the trunk where I think it's somewhat safe Exactly The cocoon, you call it the cocoon Yeah, there you go Doug, it's always great to hear from you.

Thank you. Have a great weekend. We're going to go straight to Frank, and he's calling us from West Palm Beach. Good morning, Frank. Been a while. What's up, Frank? Yo, Frank. Hello.

Hi. Hello, I haven't talked here for a while. I know. What's up? When you were talking about the high beams and all that, the headlights, my new ray of four, that I got from new guides, I didn't realize it for a few weeks. My high beam is always on, and it's on automatic, and it's a great feeling. When it sets its light, it goes to normal.

I was a little uncomfortable with that feature at first. But it's great, but it is, yeah. Better vision. No, no, it's great. I was, usually, because I'm thinking, is it really going to turn off in time, or am I going to momentarily blind the oncoming driver? Yeah. But it's pretty good.

It senses a light coming, and it turns off and on when you need it. It's great. It turns off one of your time. Yeah. I just want to point that out, I think all cars should come like that. Oh, yeah. Only automatic. No option to shut it off.

If you're going to rob a bank or buy an old car. Put duct tape on the headlights. That's my comment for today. Well, thank you, Branca. You know, I think we've had a more productive show, I think, thanks to comments like that. We're talking to the regulators and legislatures. I hope it's not totally deaf ears, but we talked about some important things. Lights being on all the time.

There should be a lifespan of airbags recognized and enforced by law replacement or viable inspection. And we've done a lot of good. Maybe we're talking about having a guest on next week's show. Maybe we can have a legislator, somebody, a senator or a representative. Yeah. We've done that before. We had Carl Dominoe came on a state legislator. Yeah.

We actually had a debate. It was during an election year. We had a challenger, and it got a little nasty. Yeah. So all you legislators out there and your regulators, Rick is, a currently, is going to have a vacation, finally. He's going to take some time off. And we thought we could fill Rick spot in temporarily just for a while with a guest. So how about a legislator?

out there, somebody in this Florida Senate or the U.S. Senate or Congress or representatives, any kind of a, you know, even a local regular. I want the Attorney General here. Yeah, or the Attorney General. That'd be great. It would, indeed. And who's that again? That is Mooney.

Mooney. Mooney. Come on the show. Okay. Thanks, Frank. Okay. Thank you so much, Frank. We're going straight to Randy in Toronto.

Oh, boy. Hey, Randy. welcome back from your holiday well thank you thank you very much I have a question regarding your article the box

August 26th of this year we have a talk show up here in Toronto on Saturdays roughly the same time it's put on by a car person who buys time

it's an infomercial and he uses it to promote whatever dealer he's working on at anyway he was he was on one of his shows he was advertising that if you finance the used car he uh you you would uh get a three-night stay for uh from toronto to Miami orlando or Las Vegas okay a three nights airfare from Toronto to one of these cities and when I called when I tried to call in and question

him, you know, how does the dealer make money? Because he's always complaining dealers make no money on car dealers on these deals. I was cut off, so can you explain to me how he's making this profit if you

if you finance any use car purchase? Yeah, it's he's trying to get you. Real quick. He had one, and he had one more Oh, it's snow tires. If you finance the used car, you'd get free for snow tires. Yeah, he's doing something that, you know, P.T. Barnum is a sucker born every minute. I think there's a sucker born every two seconds because a lot of these incredulous crazy claims actually bring people in to buy.

A future look Kia down in over on the west coast of Florida does the same thing offer cruises with every vehicle purchase. Yeah, it's just, you get these emails out of Nigeria that are so laughable. I even share them on Facebook. You reply to them. And they, yeah, I reply. And they make these claims that are so absurd that you laugh at it. But you forget, if they send out a million and they do, they get a 1% return. That's what a thousand returns.

And a thousand people, a thousand suckers out of a million. And you can make money that way to give a free trip or free snow tires because you finance. because they make an obscene amount of money when they finance their car. Is that because of the box? If you go back to your article, if you go back to your article in August 26th, the Vox,

so what are they hoping for? They're hoping to put you into the box. Into the box. They're going to pound you into the submission. Is that the idea? Pretty much. That's pretty much it. The average, let's talk about some facts and figures. There's auto-nation.

That's a large, retail of cars. And I believe, are they in Canada? Are they in Toronto? Brandy? No. No. They're the largest retailer. There's hundreds of dealerships all over the United States. And their single biggest source of profit is the box, is the finance. And the average profit is very close to $2,000, $19806. Let's call it $2,000. They make $1,000 or less when they sell a car. In fact, Alderman Nation and a lot of the other dealers are actually breaking even or losing money in their new car departments, and they have to make the money in the finance department in order to survive. So the finance is a single biggest source of revenue

to car dealers, and a car dealer would gladly offer you a trip or a snow tire to get you to come in and put you in the box. Okay. I just want to say that everybody should be reading your articles, Earl, please tout your articles more. People don't know how much of a resource they are. Please tout the articles. It's a tremendous resource to

consumers in Canada and the U.S. Please tout that. Thanks again. Thank you, I really appreciate the endorsement, and I'll do that. We don't give it out off and up. Earleoncars.com. www.orgoncars.com. We have how many?

hundreds of hundreds. You can't even count. We have, let's see, it's 20, almost 2020 now. I think we started the blog in 2005, so it's 15 years worth of articles. Yeah, 15 years, article every week. Earl on Cars.com. Thank you, Randy, and I appreciate that endorsement very much. Yes, thank you. We're going to go straight to Ricky in Melbourne. Good morning. Ricky, don't lose that number. Hi, Ricky. Can you hear us? Hi, yeah, good morning Good morning I just wanted to thank you guys first

For doing everything you guys do With all the advice On cars and all Thank you And I'm glad you guys brought up That Kia store I love the mystery shopping report And

I'll tell you that Kia one nearly knocked me out of the chair You guys said The only way you get in that buyer's order isn't your brand new Kia. So I binge watch those sometimes. But I had a question, I think the last caller might have maybe got it off the top of my head. It was actually about F&I.

And I've not really, I haven't bought a car myself yet, but I did accompany my father on many car purchases new car purchases and I've noticed that is one of the most tooth pulling parts of it when you go to a traditional dealership and I'm not sure if you guys have already talked about it I hope it's not a repeat question but I just wanted to see your guys as thoughts on it and how you would improve it because I speak to a lot of my friends and just like you guys said It's very intimidating, and a lot of people tend to have negative stereotypes about dealerships after leaving that process. Well, yeah, to actually go into the car dealership and go through the process requires a lot of study and practice and expertise.

I have a blog that I put out just recently. It's in today's I'll hold this up for the camera It's today's Florida weekly And it's also available at earluncars.com www.orgoncars.com And it's called

My Word Track for No Hagel No Hustle Car Buying And if you can If you can read this And I hesitate to ask you to go into the dealership and try to remember all this.

The best way to do it is pick your dealership and then use the email, online conversation. And it gives you one, two, three, four, eight steps. I won't read them all to you, but I'll just give you a little hint. It says, dear car salesman, within the next two weeks, I will be purchasing a new, I'll say Honda, fill in the blank, whatever. you say 19 or 2000-19 Honda Civic you should carefully research the vehicle that you decide to buy and I go on like that but I give it it it's really a tutorial eight steps and if you follow this carefully in a dealership or talking to them on the phone or going online if you rigidly adhere to this word track for no haggle no hassle car buying it can be a pleasant and you can't get a good price pleasant experience with a good price thank you for that and if i could ask one follow-up question oh please sure i've since you guys always

can be a nice intermediary between the consumer and the dealers i kind of am a little lost about gap insurance um since it's certainly an ad on when you purchase the car and um would would you guys care to explain on the differences of the dealer gap policy compared to the one that maybe your insurance company provides? Because I've read online, sometimes they're different. Well, Gap, you know, it stands for, it's guaranteed asset protection, and it's just an insurance product that protects you in the event that you had your vehicle wrecked and totaled or stolen and not recovered, and it pays the difference between what you owe to the bank if you're financing the vehicle and what the actual value of the car is. So it's a good thing if it's a

especially if you have a car that appreciates fast or if you didn't put any money down. So I mean the advice that we give for any insurance product is if you feel uncomfortable with the risk, then maybe you should consider it. Some people don't need it at all. There's been a problem recently with gap being forced on the consumers with them knowing that they're buying it. Most leasing companies, as a matter of fact, if you lease a vehicle, the leasing company puts Gap insurance on it because they own the vehicle and they're trying to protect their asset.

But it's a good thing. Typically, it costs between $500, $600, I think it depends on the term. The best thing you can do, and this is kind of like we're beating the drum here, is just get competing quotes. You can call BAS to be there. There are different sources of Gap insurance. And if you put a large down payment or had a trade in down payment and down payment, and especially if you buy a car with a high resale value, all these variables are important. And chances are you wouldn't need gap insurance if you have a significant trade in down payment and you buy a high resale value car.

We've had people come to us who bought cars at other dealerships where they had in the box. They sold them every available product they had, including GAAP insurance. where they had a trade-in with 100% equity or a large down payment, where in a million years, they would never run into a scenario where they would need it. Yeah, one of the very reasons gap insurance isn't required is because those dealers that will add so much to a car that doesn't add value to the car. And if you pay for things like nitrogen, the tires and stripes and other things that do not enhance the value of the car, but you paid for it anyway when you get ready to get your gap insurance

or you know you're not it's not going to you know that's a really good point because a lot of times banks will not even finance those things so you might put down a large down payment thinking that you might be protected and having equity in your car but really your down payment is going to pay for the unnecessary stuff like the tent and the appearance packages that the banks won't finance at all so you might find out that you're in a negative equity situation yeah down the road no thank you guys for answering all my questions and I hope you have a a great rest of the weekend. Thanks, Ricky.

I appreciate the call. Thank you, Ricky. 877, 960, 9960. And remember, ladies, I have $50 left right here in the studio for our next lady, new lady caller. So give us a call. And don't forget our text number 772-497-6530. We're going to go right back to Stu. Okay.

Anne-Marie texted us. She said, good morning. My car is over six years old. and the driver's side seatbelt doesn't retract the way it did when the car was new. Is there a simple and or inexpensive fix for this other than just making sure to put the belt behind the seat before I close the door? Thanks for your help. Looking at you, Rick. Really, the only fix for that is replacement.

There's a big spring inside the seatbelt assembly, and overtime, that spring metal starts to lose its tension from being wound up and released. What's the warranty on seatbelts? Most cars that I know are five-year-60,000 on seatbelts, but it may be eight-year-80,000 on some. Ann, Mary, what I would recommend is that you insist, and you strike me as a type of woman that can insist, go to your dealer and say this is a safety-related item, and even if it's not within the warranty, I want you to fix it, and you can take it to goodwill, or you can take it to the manufacturer, but I demand that you fix my seatbelt. Safety items like that should not be held to warranty items, a safety item. They should be able to build a seatbelt that last for it. as long as the car lasts. I agree with that, 100%. Okay, about a year ago, you guys were recommending rubbing a turnip on your headlights to prevent

bugs from sticking to them. You were going to test this. I missed the follow-up to that. What happened? I think we confused our tubers. Rick ate the turnip, and we never did. We're confusing our root vegetables. I love turnips.

Yeah. Okay. It was a potato. Oh, potato. And it was a windshield. And it was to, like, to create a rain-ex sort of rain-repellent effect. Well, I think Rick did, though. We did it.

I honestly tried it. And then you ate the potato, have you did it? No. Cook that thing right up and chowed down. No, you didn't do that. It didn't work. No, it smeared. No, potato is not the way to go.

I remember it made a real mess. Yeah. I think the problem is you're supposed to be using a turnip. Well, I prefer Rain X. Okay. You can't make this stuff up. Okay. Toyota makes more than half of all hybrid vehicles on the roads today.

Why are they so behind when it comes to plug in all electric cars? That's a good question. They made a mistake. You know, all the manufacturers had to, you know, make a decision years ago. Toyota made an ingenious decision in the late 90s when they said, I'm going to build a hybrid. So in 1999, I think, they built the first hybrid, and everybody laughed. And I can remember the Executive Vice President of General Motors' name escapes me right now,

saying what a foolish thing, that Prius was a joke. And suddenly Prius owned the world, and everybody said it's going to be all hybrids, Rick? 97 in Japan. 97. Yeah, we got it on the road. But then Toyota said, okay, hybrids are going to be the name of the game forever. They got caught up in their own success. And then others started talking about all electric vehicles.

and then Toyota made another mistake and said, oh, I know what we'll do. We'll have a fuel cell car, hydrogen fuel cell, and that didn't fly. And suddenly the world has gone to electric, and Toyota's playing catch-up. There's a thing known as economists called The Innovators Dilemma. And they have spent so much capital, so much time, invested so much in that thing, that they're kind of married to that technology. And then more competitors come along, and they're trying to innovate to, to take that market share and you become the behemoth.

The other thing is I do believe that the board of directors on Toyota is, I'm not going to know his name, but he's known as the father of the Prius. So there might be a little, you know, bias in there with that guy thinking that's the direction they want to. Papa Prius. Papa Prius. They might be forced to innovate, though, because I also read an article that said that China, and they didn't announce what year, but very soon, is going to ban the cell of

combustion powered vehicles in China. At that point, and Toyota sells a ton of vehicles in China, they're going to be forced to come up with something for the Chinese market. So who knows, down the road, they might be forced to get real. There is something to be said for dictatorships, right? Exactly. Next one. Well, another thing is also, I do believe, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, because

you read more about the stuff than I do, Toyota has like some of the highest profit margins of any manufacturer out there. Yes. And right now, I do know that, like, battery-powered electric vehicles aren't that powerful. They have to keep it at a reasonable price point, they have these expensive batteries. So maybe Toyota just doesn't want to lose the money. Actually, I wouldn't say so. Toyota has something else going forward.

They really look to the long-term, and a lot of manufacturers look to the 30-day cycle. Toyota looks to the 30-year cycle, but that doesn't make them always right. And they made a mistake with electric, but, hey, they're catching up fast. And when you make as much money as Toyota does, they got a lot of money to play ketchup. That's right. Okay. Next one says, why do you risk the employment status of salesmen at the dealerships you go into by using their names? Wouldn't pseudonyms be more appropriate?

Well, that's an interesting question, not a bad question at all. I think that we look, maybe we're being overly optimistic, we look at these mystery shopping reports as being something educational for managers and dealers who truly care about ethical, transparent operations to learn. We mystery shop our own car dealership every week, two or three

times. And we found out, we find our salespeople that are doing things that we don't want them to do. And we coach them. We don't fire anybody. I mean, I guess we'd fire somebody. We have. We did, yeah. That was a sexual harassment.

No, that was just a blatant lie to a customer about the Costco program. But we try to coach and improve. And so we hope the other dealers that listen to these mystery shopping boards will know that Charlie did something bad or Charlie did something good and it helps him manage the company. If they doubted the veracity, the truth of the matter, they could contact us and we would be glad to discuss it with them.

But we're trying to improve the overall operation of car dealerships all over. we're trying to make it easier for the buyers to buy. But the way to do that is to make the card dealers more user-friendly, more customer-friendly. And in the past, we have used a pseudonym if they said something that was directly against their employer. Something like that, that would be probably an automatic termination. But I understand your question. I'm not going to put you down for that question. Be honest with you, I feel a little bit nervous sometimes when I mention salespeople's names.

I will say this in 17 years, I know of no salesperson. that I heard about ever being fired. I would think that a salesperson were fired because we named his name, I might hear about it, but I've never heard of it in 17 years on the radio. Yeah, and if they were fired for being honest, then we would hire them.

We would hire them. In fact, we have called salespeople who impressed us by their transparency and honesty, integrity, to see if we could hire them. Yes. All right. Next one, this is Bob and Jupiter texted us,

says, can you clarify with the Costco buying program? Is the entire dealer inventory a part of the program are only certain vehicles covered under the program? Bob from Jupiter. Costco would like you to cover your entire inventory. There's some things about Costco we don't love, and there are certain models, high-demand, low-supply models, that the manufacturer will come out with.

And the other dealers, I'm speaking for our, Toyota dealership right now, and this is how I know about this, and I am a car dealer. Because the other car dealers will hide their dealer-installed accessories and their hidden fees, they'll have multiple hidden fees, they can post a price on Costco and deceive the customer, because most times when the Costco customer goes in the dealership, they don't deal with the Costco appointed representative, they don't look for the Costco price. invoice that they should look for, they don't ask about the hidden fees, and they don't ask about the dealer installed accessories. So these dealers can afford to take a high-demand, low-supply car,

advertise it at a price that he, that dealer knows, will be enhanced by his hidden fees and his dealer-installed accessories, and we cannot do that. So we hesitate sometimes to put prices on cars. We will hold cars off Costco from time to time. It's just if you price them a certain way, if it doesn't meet, it doesn't fall in the range that they say it just won't appear on the site, then they'll send a threatening email to us saying your car is priced too high and we'll make a decision at that point. And that's a very good question. And it's something, it's a negative on the Costco auto buying program because they don't fully appreciate and understand how people buy cars. They need to go

and actually walk the talk and go with the consumer and just follow them through the process of trying to buy a car and the Costco auto buying program. And you have to, it is so rigorous and detailed that if you skip or trip

the dealer can take advantage of it and sew the car way over the price. That's right. The Costco price. Here's our last text. How do you get cigarette smoke out of a car? I bought a youth civic that smelled great when I bought it, but about a month later, the smoke smell appeared. A difficult question.

We have a sublet company that we have come in to, what do they do, Rick? We actually use, as crazy as this sounds, ServePro, the company that does the fire and water damage for your home repairs, and they will come in and basically they do like some sort of an oxidation thing in the car. Give me the name of that company. Serve Pro, S-E-R-V-E-P-R-O. If you have a fire in your house or a flood, they come and they clean it up. They're like a, they probably do crime scenes.

Yeah, I don't know. Well, anything like that. But the idea is that they can clean up the messes that a lot of we don't want to touch. But yeah, smoking, heavy smoke in cars is a really, that's tough. It's really hard. When they get the smell out, does it come back? or once they get it out, it's out? From what I've heard, once they get it out, it's gone.

What's the cost? That I don't know. We had vendors that came to the dealership. There were different, you know, supposed to technologies that they use. Like there was one, I think the name was Mr. Wizard, and there was like a fog or a mist. I know Mr. Wizard. Well, not the guy on the TV show. This is other, well, by the way, bought a car from us.

He moved to Mexico. He just moved back. So Mr. Wizard had a machine that. he put in the car and it fumigated the car. Then there was, and I might be confusing them, there was another one that used like some sort of ozonator, like it was another machine. Preserveco is the one we use now.

Yeah, they're like a serious national outfit. And I think, I mean, typically, I think a dealer who actually cares about selling decent cars and they use cars on a really bad smoke car, I hate to say it the best way to deal with that is to send us to the auction and don't retail that car because when it's thick, when it's really bad, it's really hard to do it.

So you can just spray a little home? Yeah, I think if you buy a car that's going to come back, they're perfuming it, they're using febrees or some sort of temporary fix. But, you know, I can't vouch. I don't know. You know, there's all sorts of tricks that our car dealers use when they send cars to auction.

And you can, if you have an oil leak, there's stuff you could put in stop leak or something. And it'll temporarily stop it from leaking. And you can, when people, when you talk about buyer beware, when a car dealer buys a car at auction, he has really, really got to know what he's doing because dealer pitted against dealer. As long as it lasts for a day, you're good.

Back when I was a used car manager, I was told you take a half of an orange, you cut an orange in half, you dip it in ground coffee, put it on a paper towel on the floor and leave it overnight and then we'll get rid of cigarette smoke. That don't work.

Rick, my question is, in regards to the company you were talking about, could that be, could surf pro eliminate mold inside the car as well as silver? That's actually our number one, what we number one have them for is when you get water leaks inside the car and the water gets into, down in the carpet, it starts getting that mold and mildew odor. And rather than replace the entire interior of the car, we clean up the mold and mildew, bring

in serve pro, and they get rid of the odor. that has worked its way into, like, the headliner, the seats and the carpeting, and those cars are, like, brand new. Well, we should be in the referral fee from SerbPro. I mean, we're driving up a lot of business. And if you go directly to Serbpro, it'll probably be cheaper than what we call them. We charge because we probably mark it up. Well, we do it for in warranty cases.

We have them for warranty concerns and insurance. Is there an expiration date on that? Is that permanent? Do you ever have anybody come back and say to you, hey, listen, you know, you eliminated my mold smell, but after a month, it's right back. We haven't had anyone return with that, so it's pretty permanent. Very good. I have a text, and it's from Jennifer, and Jennifer recently purchased a vehicle, and she noticed

in her contract that she paid for nitrogen, and she wants to know why. Why are car dealers still doing something like this? she paid over $500 for nitrogen. Can't she go back to the dealership and ask them to prove that they put nitrogen in her tires? Well, nitrogen was proven worthless by consumer reports, and a lot of car dealers sell it to make a profit. They may even be, I started to say I was going to be funny and said I can answer that, and I was going to say because they're lying, cheating thieves. But I believe they're probably car dealers that have been fooled. There's quite a, the nitrogen companies that sell nitrogen to the dealers, they've got quite a pitch.

And they'll tell you that NASA uses nitrogen in their race car tires and that, or NASA in the space shuttle, and then NADA or the race cars, airline airplanes that fly at high altitudes have nitrogen in the tires. And they really do a good selling thing. The point is that for the use of an automobile driving on the highways, nitrogen is worthless, and consumer reports has proven that, and that's all I need to say. Yeah, and you can even go to Costco, and that's their way to get you right back. And I believe, what is it, 25 cents that they charge? Costco probably believes that nitrogen is a good thing, and they're wrong. But that's okay.

I mean, but we advise all the people that listen to Earl and cars do not buy nitristen, certainly for 500 bucks. Because you already have nitrogen in your tires. 78% of the air you breathe. The air that goes in your tires is nothing. 78%. It's silly to pay for it. Yeah.

Jennifer, sorry for that. I can advise you that maybe going back to the dealership in arguing your case, you may be able to get, you know, some of that money back. I'm not quite sure. But good luck and stay in touch. Give us a call toll free at 877960, or you can text us at 772-4976530. I think we're going to go to Rick now. He's got a few response on YouTube.

I've got one from Guy Larrabee from YouTube. He says, the only reason we have airbags is because people were negligent putting on their three-point seat belts. Why not delete the airbags completely? And Guy, the best answer is that airbags were originally intended to be used in conjunction with the seatbelts, not as a replacement. And even today, you are warned, if you do not wear a seatbelt, airbags can actually become more dangerous than good. So, folks, keep the airbags in your car, but always, always wear your seat belt when you're driving the car. Yeah, I don't think today's modern airbags, especially he described the airbags in the most advanced cars today, multiple airbags. I think you said my Lexus had 13 airbags or something like that.

The safety of those airbags is so far beyond the safety of a seatbelt. Seat belt is a dinosaur. It has to be used in conjunction. They're designed to be used in conjunction. But if you were in a car today with just seat belts and no airbags, and you're in a serious accident, there would be no comparison. You'd be a dead or no doornail without the airbags. Some of the airbags are just designed to prevent injury, like the knee airbag.

I mean, you could live, but have both your legs broken, even with the seatbelt on. Yeah, exactly. All right, here's what this might be a follow-up from what we were talking about earlier. This is from Kevin in Chicago. It says, hello, Earl. How do I retain the new car scent in my vehicle forever? Forever. Forever.

Forever. Nothing lasts forever, Kevin. Nothing lasts forever. Well, you could probably get freshly injection mold and plastic things to put in your car and just breathe the off-gassing. You know, I read somewhere, here's something for you, Googlers out there. I read somewhere that the new car scent was dangerous. Yeah, toxic. Well, that's what I was kidding around.

Oh. Yeah, whenever you have freshly molded plastics and polyesters and all the stuff. The fabrics and the carpeting. Yeah, it's, some people get headaches from it. Some people associate it with a new car and the emotional experience are buying a car, so they like it. You can buy a spray, I think, like at Pet Boys, right? Some kind of... And do you remember Scotch Guard?

Yeah, a.k.a. Toyo Guard. Remember, don't they still have a scotch card? Well, yeah, but the original Scotch Guard product, as I recall it, when you put that on seats, it would almost get a nutty smell. And it would, it was very odd, but... I drink a scotch that has a... Nutty Smell. Yeah, the McAllen. It's a P.D. P.D. Nice.

All right. Yes. Okay. We digress. Yes, you can get a spray. You can buy a car every other year. Those are the ways you can have that smell forever. But it's probably not good for you. Jonathan in Wellington says, asks, what is the incentive for a salesperson to be a Costco representative for a particular dealership?

Well, that's a very good question. And it's funny. You know, the reason I love callers and textors because they make me think. The profit on a Costco deal is virtually nil. The prices are so good. And Costco hammers the dealers to keep their prices down. And they actually bring them down to a, in the net effect,

and I use the word specifically net effect, a losing proposition. If a car dealer makes $500 on a car and what we call gross profit, I'm talking inside talk now, gross profit, that dealer lost money, net profit. And if he continued to sell those cars making only $500, he would go out of business. Because he has overhead. He has semi-fixed and fixed expenses that would actually cause him to go bankrupt. So he has to sell the cars for more money.

Costco dictates to the car dealers that they sell a car at such a low price that the salesman doesn't make a very good commission on them. They probably are paid by the dealer a what we call a flat commission. Instead, if I sold a car to Rick and Rick was a layaway and he comes into the dealership and I sold him a car, I can make easily and not always easily, but sometimes I might make. $1,000 on that car. And if I sell Rick a car and I make a $4,000 profit, I'm a salesman. I get 25% of that. I make $1,000 when I sell Rick a car. $1,000. Now, if Rick comes in and buys a car on the Costco program and I stick to the rules, then I might make a flat amount. It could be $100. If they were very generous, $150, maybe only $50. So I don't want to sell that

car to Rick because I'm making so little. I might even, if I were a Costco salesman, I might even try to not go through with the program. And if I certainly was not a Costco identified representative, I would definitely not go along with a program. So these are all the realities of the Costco auto buying program that Costco appears to be unaware of. So you have to be so totally rigorous when you go through the process. I didn't mean to get carried away But it was a great question. Costco salespeople representatives don't make enough money when they sell a car to a Costco member. Typically, like when we mystery shop, the Costco representative isn't like a typical floor,

you know, like the salesperson you see waiting out in front of the showroom. They're in the Internet sales department or the, they call the BDC, which is the business development center where they're looking for found business. I guess just trying to drive volume. So I guess that's part of the whole. That's part of it, but the Costco rule says, and if the dealer adheres to the rules, which they don't, but if the dealer adheres to the rules, Costco requires that they sell the car at a lower price than they do to anyone else. So even if you're an internet salesperson, the profit that you make normally to a non-cosco member is greater than the amount that you make to a Costco person. So there could be a tendency to compensate the salesperson less, even on an internet sale.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, even at dealerships that pay on the commission will have, like, volume bonuses, so maybe that's an incentive. Like, well, it's just a, they call it a mini, and they might not make much money, but it counts to another bonus. Yep. All right, here's a really good one. If you, I can't wait on this one. Okay. This one's too good.

In 1985, you ripped off my mother when she bought a Grand Dam. I came and asked you to give her a break and take the car back. You refused to come downstairs and speak with me. That's what the lady said. That's the reason I'm a recovering car dealer. I remember your mother. No, you don't. No, you don't.

I'm only kidding. No, you know, shamefully, I probably did. And I say, I don't think it was me personally, but it was my dealership, Stuart Pontiac and South Dixie Highway. And I did business the old-fashioned way. And when I sold cars the old-fashioned way, it was to make as much money on every car as I could. And if customer A came in and I could make a $2,000 profit, I would do it.

If customer B came in on the same car, if I could make a $4,000 profit, I would do it. We made a lot of money on some people and very little money on other people. That's the absurdity of the old way that car dealers do business today. And your mother could have been one that we made a lot of money on because she wasn't. able to fend for herself and understand what was happening. And my salesperson probably made as much money as he could when he sold her the car, and that's what he gets paid for. I probably padded him on the back and maybe he even gave him a plaque.

We had a plaque that we would give to our salespeople. It was called a slam dunk. Is that what it was called us to? That was a slam dunk. A slam dunk. A slam dunk. $4,000 for his profit. If we made $4,000 on a customer,

that was a well hold on it there's more to it that's on the front and that's on the sale that didn't count the money you made it in the box exactly in the box and we made more in the box so i sinned uh forgive me and i don't do it anymore and uh i was a i was not a good person in my mind i recall the stairs and they definitely have been demolished yes so we're we all we all apologize for that way of selling cars uh we're going to go to uh jessica and Stu, did you have another? No, no, no. Okay. I won't. Okay. Later. Jessica is asking, how can I get the best deal on a car loan?

Well, I'll answer that first, Jessica. And I would suggest to you that you apply to multiple lenders. And that would be your local bank, your credit union. And this here will, well, put you ahead of the game. And then you can move on from there and contact some other sources. Now I'll turn it over to the recovering car dealer. That's exactly the right answer. And the bank that you do business with personally, I mean, your checking account, your savings account,

they're generally a good bank to always get a loan from. And then your credit union, even if you are not a member of a credit union, you can join a credit union. Credit unions typically have lower rates on financing the banks do. I'd get maybe one or two more. Absolutely. Once in a great while, a car dealer will have a better deal than the credit union or the bank once in a great while. That's when the manufacturer has an incentivized special low interest rate. And you see these advertised as 0% financing or 1% or something like that.

And when that happens and it's sponsored by the manufacturer, it is a legitimate deal. and the only time I would offer to finance with the dealer is when I had incentivized financing. Also, I'll add to this, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but go for a four-year loan or less, no more than that. You're going to get yourself into high cotton if you do. That's right. Also, be aware when you have zero percent manufacturer financing that opens up an opportunity, they put a harder sell on you. Well, you're not paying any interest.

You've got to buy the warranty. Well, it's just a... Yeah. And the most important thing, when you're purchasing a car, please buy something that you know you can afford. Not just today, but for the future, because that loan, four years, I want to tell you, you've got to be sure you've purchased the right car,

and it's within your means. A lot of people make that mistake. I hope I answered your question, and we are going to go to Bob, who's been holding, and he's calling from Minnesota. Hey, Bob, what's up in Minnesota, other than snow? Yes. Very, very cold.

Yes. Cold this week, below zero, so we're waiting for it. Wow. Good question on Toyota Highlander, 2020. I was told that it was supposed to be coming out to dealerships in December, and I've seen nothing of it. I'm just wondering, are they oversupplied on the 19th? Is that why?

Is there a problem with the vehicle? No, there's not a problem with the vehicle. I think the first allocations are happening now, so they're inbound. So it will probably be later this month when we see the first ones. I don't think the hybrid will come a little bit later, but as far as I know, there's no delay. And if they have a launch plan, it doesn't matter how many remaining. you know 2019 models they'll incentivize those more

they'll be more bigger rebates and you know better financing things but they're still coming and how long do I have to wait in order to get a special deal on the car high at the beginning of course you're talking three months before they get the prices down a little better well I'm going to ape Earl's advice I think wait that's what I'm going to suggest especially because it's a brand it's a complete redesign and so you know some of the issues haven't will be shit well-shed- How long should he wait?

Oh. Well, I'll let you answer that. No, I would say conservatively 30 days, but I would start looking right away. And I would use online searches and check prices online with other dealers. You'd be surprised how quickly they do discount cars. Some vehicles, some dealers will discount cars sooner than others. Larger dealers typically that have a larger supply allocation. will tend to discount them more sometimes in the small days.

I've only got one Islander. I'm not going to discount it, but I've got 10, but I might discount a couple of them. But online and just keep on checking, look at the Costco, look at the true car price, and you'll know when. It'll probably be no longer than 30 days. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm a user of YouTube quite a bit for research, and they have a lot of people reviewing vehicles. You usually get these ahead of time, and there's been no discussion. about the Highlanders side that's what I was wondering too because they get them before we see him so it's always a good idea to get a few people that have had

experience with them because the new models when something comes out there's bugs in them and whether it's a Toyota or a Chevrolet and consumer reports and advisors that you don't buy a car and the first when there's a major changeover in the model

wait till the next year wait for the 2021 but a lot of people just like to have the new model but you are going to have a greater risk of bugs. Well, very good. I appreciate your program, and I enjoyed very much. Thank you very much. Thanks, Bob.

Stay warm. It looks like the soonest ones were about 11 days out before the first ones. 11 days, yeah. Okay, where are we on? How about anonymous feedback? Have we had any of those? Just the three earlier this morning, and so we're caught up on text and everything.

I thought there was an older anonymous feedback that, did you? Let me see if I can find one. He'll look back. I think it was one after the show last week. Okay, we're going to go to Mary Elizabeth from Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and she asked how often she should check the pressure in her tires. Well, that is a pet peeve of mine, and Mary Elizabeth, I check the pressure in my tires a lot. I check it, well, maybe two or three times a month.

That might be a little bit too much, but you'd be surprised. Is that maintenance on your tires? It means so much in the time, the longevity of your tires. The amount of gas that you use, there is so many reasons to check the pressure in your tires. And I'll turn this over to Rick. You hit it on the head. The cost of gasoline that you'll save plus the cost of the tires by making your tires last longer. Tires are expensive.

and so saving that money where you can and it only takes a few minutes to check your tire pressures and bump them up and keep them where they ought to be I recommend at least twice a month oh okay great and also I stay away from gas stations I don't really there's so much traffic in the gas station and they use these pumps air pressure pumps and I really don't think that there is

is good to use as your own. Well, buy a good quality pressure gauge, tire pressure gauge, a good high quality one. Use that gasoline pump or whoever to put air in it, fill it up quite a ways, and then just bring it back down using your gauge to make sure you get at the level you want. Great idea. I have a question for the auto manufacturers of the world. Why in this high-tech 21st century, haven't you come up? up with a way where we don't have to curl around our hands and knees and measure the pressure

in our tires and then sand in line somewhere to get something to put air in our tires, why don't you come up with a damn tire that doesn't need to have air added all the time or if it does have it where the air is added automatically from the car. There's air all over the place and you just take the air, you compress it, stick it in the tire, there's got to be a way and people will pay for anything, right? If I'm buying a Rolls-Royce or eventually, start starting out with Rolls Royce. I mean, add an extra 100 grand. I don't know.

If I'm going to buy a Roy, if I'm going to pay $500,000 for a Bentley, I'll pay $600,000, and I'll never have to add there. Rickness. One of the things that they're working on right now are airless tires, where it's actually going to be a honeycomb pattern inside. And these tires actually, this is the part I love. Instead of taking that tire off and throwing it in a pile for junk, they'll take that tire off

send it back to simply have more material added 3D printed right back on it and then re-groved and put right back on another car but will the ride be smooth that's the part they're working on with that honeycomb pattern to make it works

different kind of rides you know you can you know depending on the tire you buy with anyway it's just to me convenience user-friendly build it and they will come this is where we solve all the problems of the auto industry you know

If we had the manufacturers listening to us, but they don't care. Right. Yeah. We should call this the think tank. Okay, one more tip, Mary Elizabeth, that I find helpful is that you check the pressure of your tires when they're cold. That's number one. And please check all four tires.

I hope that we helped you out today. All five tires. If you have a spare. Don't forget the spare. Well, they're getting more and more rare. I got a text that just came in. It's an update from last week, actually from October, update on the 2018 Ravrefour with the tires wearing unevenly.

After fighting with the dealer for two months, they finally agreed to put four new tires and check the alignment for free. The alignment was off by a lot in the front. Round little applause. Fantastic. Success story. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, we have closed our lines just in case you're trying to call because we have the mystery shopping report coming up.

But you can still text. And you can expect to hear from the mystery shop of Toyota of Hollywood. So stay tuned for that. And also don't forget that you can read Earl's latest column, competition, car dealers, Achilles' Heel, and so many more columns. Unless you're reading Florida Weekly. That you can check out in the hometown news. And we've got the Florida Weekly and the latest column there. There, word track for no hassle, no haggle, car buying.

So pick those two up or go to Earl and Cars, and you can find all the columns that he's written and so many tips. It's all free. Okay, mystery shop of Toy Love Hollywood. I just want to say, because I know people tune in, we have new people, mystery shop, unique in the world. We go into car dealership and do it for 17 years,

pretend to buy a lease a car on an advertisement. Sometimes we're checking them on Dakota Airbag replacements and things of this nature. We name names, we named car dealerships. We don't get sued because we tell the truth. And here we go. And the car dealers hate us for this,

but they should learn from this. Now, this is a unique shopping report because Craig Zinn is a friend of Stu's and mine and Nassies. And we've been on trips together. We know Craig we like Craig he's an amazing guy he has several dealerships

but anyway in full transparency we do know this guy and this does not dissuade us from telling the truth and Craig if you're listening you ought to listen because you're going to hear some things that you're not going to like but you know us I believe

to know that we are telling you the truth and when you have multiple dealerships you can't always be in the trenches and know what's going on and what everybody's doing and saying and that's what's all about it's like the hokey pokey right foot in Toyota Hollywood wants to be the biggest toilet dealership in the world at the rate they're growing they just may achieve that goal I'm not kidding this is kind of exciting to have the second largest toilet dealership in the world in South Florida. And that is Toyota Hollywood. They're real close to Miami. You know where Hollywood is.

It's a huge metro area there. And only Longo Toyota in Los Angeles region sells more new Toyotas than Toyota of Hollywood. Last year, listen to this. I mean, folks, this is big. Last year, the score was for the full year, 2018. Correct. 14,406 vehicles were sold by long ago. 14,406 new Toyotas were, that's over 1,000, well over 1,000 vehicles a month. Yeah, that's just new. Yeah, new.

That's new cars. Hollywood, this is Craig's Inn store that we mystery shopped yesterday, 9,465. So he's closing fast. Hollywood's closing, they're closed very fast. Its 2018 sales were up 20%. Yeah, 19.9%. Yeah. I double-checked the math.

Unbelievable. Long-go sales, Longo, losing ground. They were down 5%. I started to digress into a story about Longo Toyota. They were one of the first Toyota dealerships. They were found. They started by Dominic Longo. Google Dominic Longo, if you want to laugh,

he was a very interesting man. it's no longer owned by Longo it's owned by Penske and Roger Pinsky of racing fame of trucking fame who also owns Palm Beach well he doesn't own

Palm Beach Toyota but he owns 30% of the United Auto Group which is a public company which runs the Palm Beach Toyota also this year Toyota of Hollywood has about beaten already at this point with one month ago beaten what they did

last year and Longo was down by about thousand so they're continuing to close the gap anyway you're hearing stew and i as toyota dealers this is amazing to us the number of cars that toyota hollywood sells yeah we sell about we sell about three thousand i mean he there's nobody close in south florida and uh it used to be kendall used to be yeah used to be yeah okay um hollywood toilet is a part of a small five-store dealership group owned by Craig Zinn that includes Lexus of Pembroke Pines and Lexus of North Miami.

Mr. Zinn is a rather colorful character and his loud style is reflected in his advertising which he spends a lot of money on. And his father was the first Toyota dealer in Southeast Toyota. No, he was the first toilet dealer in Miami Beach or Miami. And many, many years ago. And there's another story there. You know, at my age, I have so many old stories.

I have to do another book. Toyota Hollywood's ads dominate the airways, both TV and radio, the Internet and even the newspaper. Although we've never mystery shopped this dealership, we've commented on this type of newspaper advertising. They run. It's really unique. He invented this. This is the Craig Zen creation, this type of newspaper advertising. Hollywood specialty is advertising used Toyotas cleverly styled to make them appear at a glance as a new Toyota.

As crazy as it sounds, these ads are legal in the eyes of Toyota Motors of North America. That's the main company. Southeast Toyota is a distributor for Toyota Motors of North America. And there's a marketing covenant that allows this. The marketing covenant is ostensibly supposed to mean that the dealers advertise honestly and transparently. Actually, it doesn't accomplish that at all. It accomplishes other things, and that'll be another book when I write my other book. We picked up one of these advertisements from Hollywood Toyota for Agent Thunder to investigate.

It was a full-page beast of an ad that was littered with various sensational claims and offers imprinted in radioact, colors and eye-popping fonts. Stu really got into it. I like, right-sees, by the way. I'm reading, Stu's writing. I like that. He's a creative, he's a creative writer, yeah. A little radioactive colors and a beast of an ad.

Thank you very much. Eye-popping fonts. Thank you. Well, well done. Some of the claims were just funny. If you have a job and make $400 a week, we want, doesn't say can, we want to approve your credit. I laughed out loud at home.

I was like this, if you have a job and you make $400, I want to improve your credit. I googled poverty level. And in the United States, a family of four making $495 a month is poverty level. So it's about poverty level. There was also a vague pay up to 50% less.

and we didn't know what that meant. It was like somewhere off to the side. Nancy asked me, it just sounded good. 50% less than what? That's the point. I said 50% less than what. I think there was some disclosure.

I don't know, but it didn't matter. Just made the ad look good, you know? Yeah, exactly. And that's puffery. And we go to puffery. Buffery. And see, our laws allow advertising to say something

that's not true as long as it said in good spirits with a smile, And you're just exaggerating. In other words, you can exaggerate saying, I'll sell your car 50% less than you can buy another car for when you really can't do that because it's just exaggeration or puffery.

All your lawyers know what puffery is out there. The ad list of all the languages spoken. You'll like this in Hollywood, Toyota, down there near Miami. They speak all these languages. At least they say they speak all these languages. They have Google Translator Spanish, of course, Creole, French, oh, okay, Portuguese, obviously, Russian, Hebrew, okay, yeah, I mean, yeah. Arabic, maybe, Vietnamese, might, Chinese, Chinese, Japanese, Japanese, and then Pakistani. Yes.

And Stu pointed out that. they don't really speak Pakistani. It's called Urdu. Yeah, there's no language called Pakistani. It's like in Brazil, they don't speak Brazilian, right. They speak Portuguese. We don't speak American here. In Pakistan, they don't speak Paganese. They speak Urdu.

Urdu. That's one of the tribes. Exactly. I'll email Craig and let them know to change that in his next ad. Okay, but the main part of the advertisement listed 2019 Toyota models with prices too low to believe. Now remember, they started advertising these 2019s when the 2019s first came out and that's when it was really really crazy because you know the 2019's been out for a couple of months Craig puts his 2019s in his rental

car company and then he advertises them because they're used cars once you're title a car it becomes a used car and he continues that through the year and then 2020 uh in January he'll have used 2020s that he will advertise and people think there are new cars. Okay. To give you an idea, the ad promotes a 2019 Corolla for $12,775, which is absurd, a brand new 2019 Corolla would go for $18,000 to $19,000. Or more? Or more, yeah, I mean, depending on accessories.

Agent Thunder chose to target the 2019 Toyota Tacoma of Hollywood, with a listing for just 18,000, 775. New ones run around 25,000. So, I mean, that's a, to die for a price. You couldn't possibly buy a new Toyota Corolla for that. And so you come in, you come in. Before deploying Agent Thunder, we noticed something very interesting in the fine print disclosure of the ad.

It indicated the prices excluded tax tag registration and title, but included the 800, $199 Dealey fee. Now that's Florida law. And I believe, knowing Craig Zinn, I believe Craig Zinn has instructed his advertising agency to advertise only legal. Don't bait the tiger and advertise something

that's patently illegal because you're going to have a regulator somewhere that's going to send somebody in from the Attorney General's office. They're going to mystery shop me and put me in jail. They're going to find me. Don't want that. I want my advertisers to be sure to state everything is legal. The funny thing is, it's not funny, it's tragic. The other car dealers know it's illegal, and they don't care.

They advertise excluding their dealer fee, blatantly excluding their dealer fee. Hollywood Toyota, I mean, I got to give Craig a pat on the back. His advertising is legal. He's saying at least at this point in the mystery shopping report, but stay tuned. it's not all legal. Could this be real, including the dealer fee and the advertised price of a car is exactly what Florida law requires

and is exactly what we never see adhered to by other dealers? We couldn't wait to see if Toyota of Hollywood would add their $899 dealer fee to the 1870, 18775, or the price would really include it. Of course, we were pretty sure the $899 fee, $899 dealer fee

wouldn't be the only hidden fee. agent thunder would see that day. There's nobody anymore that has just one dealer fee. And that's the reason I know I'm calling them dealer fees. We call them hidden fees because that's what they are. Here's our report. I pulled into the big dealership, big, yeah, huge, on State Road 7 around 11 a.m. In park, I'm speaking like I did the shop, it was really Agent Thunder.

There was a group of salesmen standing near the entrance. They all took notice of me. I was acutely aware of being targeted. It was an uncomfortable feeling. We call that the Wolfpack syndrome. We have a picture of it in the report here. We know it's a very good picture. You know how you feel when you're pulling to a car dealership?

If you have recently, it's like all eyes are on you and you're afraid to get out of the car. Our salesman will bunch up and we get nervous about that. And we say, go inside. You're scaring the customer's off. It's just not a good thing to do. One broke away from the pack and walked in my mind. direction. I instinctively walked quickly with my head down and passed him as I didn't want to make eye contact. I entered the building before he could intercept me. I had no time to

breathe. The second I went in, Lamont got me. At every turn. I just had a flashback. Lamont Cranston. Who knows who Lamont Cranston was? Was that Fred Sanford's son? The shadow. The shadow. The shadow do. The shadow. The shadow. The shadow. The shadow knows. The shadow nose. Lamont Cranston. You oldies out there will remember that. Isn't it funny how these things?

You're triggered by the answer. Yeah, I just, yeah. Lamont. Kind of a word association. How many people do you know Lamont these days? I think Fred Sanford's son. That's what my first thought was. LeMond was a veteran salesman.

He was wasted no time trying to determine my purpose for being there. I showed him the newspaper ad and said, I'll want a new 2019 Tacoma Access Cab, SR for 18775. Lamont said, oh, yeah, that's pre-owned. snapped it right back at me. That's pre-owned. It's probably on our other lot. They used car lot, right? He asked if he could hold the ad.

He looked at it closer to it. It's a little tricky. It's on a specific truck. We may not have it. Like he used to saying that, okay. I expressed my irritation. I asked Lamont, how pre-owned is it? What's the mileage?

Lamont replied that he didn't know but said it would have low miles since it was a 2019. If this was January, 2019, it had real low miles. It had 13,000 miles. Yeah, yeah. That average miles.

I said I didn't have the time of patience to get into a big back and forth. I asked him to confirm that the ad price would be the best price and they wouldn't add anything but tax and tag. Here we go. Lamont said they would have to add their dealer fee and e-filing fee.

Now, let me repeat that. they would have to add their hidden fees and the dealer fee is a generic term and e-filing fee is just a dealer fee so translate that I said that the ad said the dealer fee was included

and that's what Craig Zen wants to do because that's what he told his advertising agency and his lawyer to see that they did it to advertise the car legally so what he did was he advertised the car legally except for another hidden fee.

He didn't put in there, the electronic filing fee. And the salesman tried to sneak in the real dealer fee or the obvious dealer fee, and that's just not right. Lamont asked me to wait while he went to get the truck. I waited. After 10 minutes, I got a tuna sub at the subway restaurant. They had right there in the showroom. This place is so big, they have a subway restaurant inside the showroom.

That is really cool. I finished my sandwich, got a refill, and I assume this is free, or did he buy it? I got to ask. I got to find out. But usually if you have, like, the fountain drink thing, you can just go do it. You got a refill on a Diet Coke.

Isn't that silly you're eating a submarine sandwich with a thousand calories, and you have a Diet Coke? I do that. Yeah. Reminds me the old joke, Diet Coke's cause your gain weight because every coming to the restaurant, all the fat people are drinking Diet Coke's. All right, come on.

Okay. I'm sorry. I'm digressing him not today. I might have been my outpatient surgery. Oh, boy. I asked another salesperson to call on and they did and reported back that it was just about to walk in the front doors.

I turned to see Lamont approaching him with another man, Juan Carlos. This is kind of an international thinger. Lamont, the shadow, Juan Carlos. The jackal. And introduced me to Juan Carlos and explained that he had an appointment, arrive early.

well Lamont did, Juan Carlos would take me on a test drive. We walked outside, Juan Carlos led me to a Corolla, asked me to get in, then he drove me to the used car lot across the street. The used car lot was a circus. Old school style salespeople smoking cigarettes. Hard to bleed smoking cigarettes in front of customers. A live audio feed of a car auction. I can't imagine anything more irritating than that.

But I love it. I mean, I know. I mean, I just, but I like it. I mean, it's just old school. Just old school, old school. I wish I'd done this report myself. Blared from my outside loudspeaker. It was intense.

Inside the used car building, we ran into a snag. No one knew where the truck was. Juan Carlos, another salesperson, a manager, searched for the keys. The manager checked a computer. They called another salesman on the phone. The manager asked to see the ad to confirm a stock. number. The chaos continued for several months. I hope

Craig Zinn is listening to this. He will be furious. I mean, heads will roll. Oh, we had a text about that, but I'm sorry. I mean, we're helping Craig's in clean up Dodge. Yeah, he needs to improve. He's only the second largest Toyota dealership in the world,

and he's probably making more money than anybody's ever seen in their life. I mean, he's got two Lexus dealerships, and the second largest Toyota dealership in the world, and I'm worried about his business. Okay. Finally, the manager informed me. I was in luck. I found the keys. Juan Carlos led me outside to find the truck. Of course, we couldn't find it. We searched for 10 minutes before him back inside to tell the manager, he said, go back, he said to go back to new cars to look. Man, I'll tell you, talking about chaos. I mean, you just don't do this to customers. But what am I talking about it? I'm making a fortune.

I think we have four minutes. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. I've got to stop digressing. You're having too much fun. We drove back across the street. The truck wasn't there, so we drove back to use car along. Finally, we found it behind the building, tucked away between two other trucks. Juan Carlos handed me the key,

told me to drive it back to the new car showroom so that Lamont could finish up with me. I did as he asked, but when I got there, Lamont was still tied up. He said I would have to get another salesperson over and used cars. I drove back. I think that... Did you count?

I think that Craig Zinn just put his fists through the wall. He's watching on your Facebook page. The manager, Tony, came over. Tony won Carlos and Lamont, came over, apologized for how I'd been handled. He said he'd be taking me over from this point forward. He asked me how I'd like the truck. I said I drove wonderfully across State Road 7 twice.

Tony didn't pick up into my sarcasm. Great, let's write it up. He put it out of Buyer's Road, the top line red sale price, 28-458 with a sharpie scribbled ad misspelled price below that next came a discount of 9,663 the next difference was 18795 the ad price almost then he added an $899 pre-delivery service fee that's a hidden fee and a $599 electronic filing electronic processing fee e-tag that's a total of

can we ground that out to $1,500, $14.98. Next came tax in 388 for a title of registration. Out the door was 22-1-211. I told me, Ed said the dealer fee was

included in the price. Tony didn't blink. He said, okay, took a Sharpie, cross it out, then he ran out the new price, 21-222, below the out-the-door price. Tony also warned me that the Carfax

report, indicated that it had been in an accident, he wanted me to sign something to indicate that he disclosed that trucks out of bad Carfax. Shouldn't that be a dirty carfax? I don't know, but it says it on the buyer's order. It's printed bad Carfax. Oh, okay. I thank him. I said, I need to think about it. I took the barrage order left. I was drained. Oh, man, I'm drained. And I just read the report. There you have classic bait and switch. It's the second largest two-ed-go ship in the world. And I'm telling you, folks, that is incredible to me. And I just don't, I drive my son's crazy.

I drive stew crazy. I says, we've got to find out what Toyota Hollywood is doing. And we, anyway, I'm digressing again. We haven't got time. We need to vote. They're open 24 hours. Maybe that helps. Are they?

I thought it was still midnight. They're open 24 hours. I think they're 24. Yeah. That's what I heard our advertisement. Vote on this mystery shopmer report, folks. What do we have? We have three submissions.

Bobby gives them an F. Mark gives them an F. Ed Gizum and F. It's not that unusual, just on a grander scale. I'm going to give them a D. I'm going to go with the D in agreements with Stu here. Unfortunately, we've lost sound on our YouTube feed, so we haven't really got any grades coming in.

Folks, for anyone that will hear this, hopefully, look for our podcast on SoundCloud.com, but we've got no sound going out on the YouTube feed right now. Yeah, it's been that way for a while. James said that he wanted Earl to move his, excuse me, his microphone, so he could read his lips. Okay, so back to the mystery shopping report. Deception isn't a pretty word,

and that's what I found, this mystery shopping report of Toyota of Hollywood. and there's so much tap dancing here and so much deception that I give it an F. You know, I'm really on the horns of a dilemma here because I'm torn between the fact that I'm friends with Craig Zinn and I like the guy. And he's a sharp dresser. And I'm also impressed with the fact that he does so well. He sells so many cars. And there's something to be said for that.

There's something to say for the fact he tries hard. very cleverly to advertise legally. Yes. I'm like Stu. I almost want to fail him to prove I'm not favoring him because I know him. But I'm going to give him, I'm going to pass him with a D. And I'm going to hope that he calls us. And I hope that he will say he's going to take some measures to clean up things in the way.

What he wants to have done is not being carried out. Right. And the early word for fail is in the calm, Hona. Oh. But we did not Nakam Hona him. Oh, that's good. And that's Pekinese?

That's Urdu. Interesting. Well, I give Menef on behalf of the consumers, and there are so many consumers out there that are being taken advantage of. Ladies and gentlemen, we've come to the end of our show, and we want to take a moment and thank Nick and Jonathan for all their help. And happy birthday, Nancy. Oh, thank you.

That's right. Happy belated birthday. We'll be back here next week at the same time, so stay tuned for that. Have a wonderful weekend. Bye, bye, everybody. Oh!