Re-gifting is not evil...PLUS, asking the right questions is critical when considering an extended warranty purchase

Hey folks, Lenny Lawson, the car guru.

I've got a question to ask.

I know it's rhetorical because you can't answer it.

Well, you can, but I just can't hear your answer.

So I get a lot of nice gifts here as just being a business owner.

I get them from employees.

Sometimes I get them from customers.

Usually, however, they come from vendors, you know, people who I do business with,

I spend money with, and they want to thank me for spending money with them.

So they bring me all kinds of stuff, usually stuff to eat, which is okay.

Unless you're on a diet like I am, I am dropping 25 pounds one way or the other.

When I hit the scales not too long ago, it was, it was not welcome news, but my two

somewhat of a sedentary lifestyle.

So bottom line is I'm doing a lot of re-gifting.

Yeah, somebody gives me a box of apple strudels or, you know, some type of a bunch of muffins.

I got this big box full of muffins and well, I take that back.

Half muffins, half cookies, and I really wanted to, to eat them, but I didn't.

I re-gifted them and it's usually to employees.

Sometimes if it's a whole lot of food, I just give it to my salespeople or to my

parts department.

I put it on my parts counter and then my parts men who do eat a lot and my mechanics

who eat even more just devour them.

You know, what would last at your house maybe for a week and a half, two weeks.

It's gone in about 30 minutes, but that's good.

They're happy.

They deserve it.

So occasionally I'll get something like that I can use on a regular basis.

A Yeti, for example.

I normally get a couple Yetis for Christmas, which those are handy.

I don't re-gift those.

I keep them until I lose them and then I wait till next year.

I've lost, I think three Yetis this year.

You know, I don't know.

I just go, I work in a different spot.

Sometimes I like to just get away from my desk and go work at a desk in the Nissan

showroom or back in another one of the hidden offices.

And I'll just, I'll just leave my Yeti and I go back or I don't even think about it.

And I go back when I do think about it and it's no longer there.

I've been on the search for, for Yetis for the last week and I'm just hoping

I get some for Christmas.

So anyway, I won't re-gift those.

Oh, I've got a massaging tool on my desk right now.

It's from, let me grab it here.

It's from a company called Toloco and it looks pretty good.

It's a massaging gun.

It looks like a, oh, I don't know, like a nail gun or a hair dryer.

It's probably a more accurate description has, I think it has different attachments.

The problem is I already have one and so I'm going to re-gift that.

There's no names on or anything.

I think somebody would appreciate that, don't you?

So I guess the ethical question is when you re-gift something to somebody this

Christmas season, do you have to tell them that you're re-gifting this?

Or do you just act without lying?

Yes, don't really disclose anything that it's actually something that somebody

gave to you and you're re-gifting it to them.

Does that rob the spirit out of the gift for the, for the receiver?

I don't know if it's a nice enough gift.

I won't be okay with it.

I'm not going to hurt my feelings because I didn't expect something anyway.

Oh, I'm not taking it.

How come?

Because it's a re-gift.

You mean you already have a back massager that looks like a hair dryer?

I mean, come on.

So if you do get any re-gifts and it's, you know, you suspect it, just don't say

anything, just accept it and be glad that they didn't need it.

And you either get to eat it or get the best back massage you've ever had.

I'll be back in just one minute.

Okay, I am back.

I sort of used a vehicle yesterday to a wonderful couple from Kingsport and he

asked the right questions.

You know, some people just either listen to the, this program or they just know

what to ask.

So I suggested that they might want to consider an extended service contract

or an extended warranty.

And his first question was, what does it cover?

Now that's a good question, but it's not the best question.

What's a better question?

That's right.

What does it not cover?

See, that's a better question because they can tell you what it doesn't cover,

but everything that they don't mention is covered.

Now, what I always try to offer to my customer is the very best coverage

available in any circumstances.

I have been burned over the years by selling somebody an extended service

contract and they think, and I think they understand everything that is

covered, but then something happens that's not covered.

And then they're not happy.

So make sure if you're buying a new car or you're not buying a new car and

you're, they're inundating you with warranty offers by mail, which you

don't ever want to buy it through the mail.

Okay.

But if you get one and they get you on the phone or whatever, the question

is not what is covered.

It is what is not covered.

That's the best question to ask.

Next question was a really good question.

Do I have to bring it back to you when I have a problem?

And 99.9% of the time, the answer to that question is no, you do not on just

about any service contract that I have ever seen, but you might run into

that odd one, you know, that is actually a dealer owned warranty company.

And you do have to take it back to that particular dealership.

I would not buy that warranty for sure because more than likely you're not

going to break down near them.

If you break down, it's going to be at the most inconvenient time and at

the most inconvenient spot.

That's just how things work sometimes.

Now, if you buy a manufacturer backed warranty product, like for, if you were

buying a Ford, it would be a Ford ESP.

If you're buying, I can't remember what GM calls theirs.

But if you're buying one from them, then it's good at any Toyota dealership.

Obviously, if you bought a Toyota warranty or Ford dealership, if you bought

a Ford ESP, but it's also good anywhere else.

The advantage, I guess, of buying a manufacturer backed warranty is that

there won't be any question as to whether it's covered or not because they

don't use adjusters.

They rely on the dealership employees to handle the claim.

And that's far better than having to leave your car and wait for some

adjuster to come in and look at it to determine whether or not they're going

to cover that engine job or that transmission job.

Other than that, you know, you're going to save money on an aftermarket extended

warranty or extended service contract versus the manufacturer backed.

They're just cheaper.

They have to be because people tend to rather buy the, the factory backed

product, even though the others are typically backed by large, massively

large insurance companies.

But so for me, the differences are cost and what you have to go through when

you have a claim.

You know, any warranty or any insurance product is only as good as the

service that you get when you have a claim because I mean, I just, I know

some people and it just breaks my heart.

These are great people and their kids were using the gas grill at their house

yesterday and the grill caught fire.

You know how sometimes if you let a bunch of material build up in the bottom

of a, of a gas grill, sometimes it will catch fire and it'll burn out of control.

And that's what happened and it got completely out of control and started

dripping on their deck and then the deck caught fire and then the house burned

down total loss.

Now what happens was such a tragic thing.

You hope that, that the insurance company will be quick to offer assistance.

But, you know, I mean, you can't replace a house overnight and you certainly

can't replace all the precious things that are in on the inside of it.

My wife and I were sitting there talking about that last night.

I said, can you imagine what a traumatic thing that would be?

I mean, I hope I never have to go through that.

And maybe some of you who are listening have been through that, but to

lose all of your precious antiques and hand me downs from your parents and

relatives and photographs and things like that.

Thank goodness from a standpoint of, I guess photographs for the last 20 or 20

years or so, they're all in the cloud.

You know, they're all digital and they're safe.

But what about all the other ones?

So I don't know, makes you think about it though.

But yeah, insurance claims, extended warranty claims, you want them handled

quickly and, you know, you don't want to have to jump through a bunch of hoops.

Now, if you have a major claim, like on an engine or transmission, there's

going to be a few more hoops.

Sometimes they have to tear down the engine.

You know, if it's knocking or whatever the manufacturer, even if it's a

manufacturer back more, do they want to know what the source of the problem is?

They want to know what caused it.

So they'll, they'll pay us to disassemble the engine.

And one of the things they want to make sure of is what, what do you think

they're looking for?

That's right.

Was it your fault?

Did you not maintain the vehicle?

Did you not use the right motor oil?

You know, I'm hearing a lot of discussions from technicians, shop owners, I'm

reading a lot of stuff in some of the trade publications saying that this zero

weight oil, like zero 15 or zero 30, this, these synthetic oil blends, that

they may not be all, or not blends, but they are actually full synthetics.

They are maybe not all that they're cracked up to be.

And that you might want to talk to your mechanic.

If you're changing oil and you're using full synthetic, zero weight oil, then

should you maybe consider, you know, something more traditional to, to add

better protection to your engine?

I mean, I know why they want you to use it.

One of the reasons is because it reduces friction inside the engine, which

you'd think would be a good thing, but it also doesn't protect some of the

moving parts as well as, you know, that traditional oil does because it's

just so thin and there's just not that much, that many layers of protection

between the two pieces of metal coming together, especially in, in the case

of the, uh, crankshaft bearings because engine failures are all over the news.

I mean, everybody from Toyota to Hyundai to General Motors, occasionally I've

heard some from Ford where engines, bearings and stuff are failing in

engines and a lot of technicians think that it's because of the thin oil that

they're using and it just doesn't give you the engine protection that, that it

should, especially in really hot climates.

So I don't know, I'll try to keep you informed on this, but yeah, talk to

your, your service advisors at the dealership where you get your service done

and see what they're, if they're on top of it, they, they may not be, the

service manager would probably be, and some of the master technicians that

work for them would, would know about some of this.

Sometimes it's hard to get to talk to those people.

It shouldn't be, you know, typically if you go into a dealership and you

talk to one of the service advisors and say, yes, I'd like to speak to your

service manager, please.

You know what they think?

You're there to complain.

And what, what can I hope you with, you know, and, and you go through all of

that, say, no, I really, I just want to talk to your service manager because

he's the most experienced person or he or she in the dealership when it

comes to recalls, when it comes to what they call technical service bulletins.

Sometimes the service advisors aren't as aware of some of the things that are

going on behind the scenes.

And the best people to talk to are the master technicians that work on them or

the service manager or the shop foreman.

Some dealerships have a shop foreman.

Shop foreman is the guy that works in the shop with the technicians.

And sometimes they actually assign work to the technicians.

Sometimes they're called a dispatcher.

Service manager is the guy who makes all the tough calls, maintains relationships

between the dealership and the, and the manufacturer supervises the warranty

claims process, which is a big deal.

I mean, at any time during the month, we'll have anywhere from 75 to

$150,000 worth of warranty claims.

And we're just waiting on the money, you know, because we have done all this

warranty work over a period of a week or two.

And we have to submit those to the manufacturers in order to get paid.

And over the years, I've heard customers say, well, you just don't want to do

the warranty work.

Yeah, well, we do.

We get paid to do it.

You know, there's no reason that a dealership wouldn't want to do something

under warranty unless they feel like, you know, the customer has abused the

vehicle in one way or another.

And then they don't want to do it under warranty, because if they do and the

manufacturer requests the parts so that they can inspect them and they see that

it was a result of lack of maintenance, they'll charge it right back to the dealer.

And very rarely will the dealer be able to collect anything from the customer who

actually caused the problem.

So dealers do, you know, all of them don't like to do warranty, but because it

doesn't pay as good as customer labor, but they're required to buy their dealer

sales and service agreement.

I had a customer the other day said that they took their tractor to a tractor

dealership.

They didn't buy the tractor from them, but they sell that same brand.

And that dealership refused to work on it because they didn't buy it there.

Well, they obviously are taking that action, but that is against their sales

and service agreement, just like ours is.

If you buy a Ford for me and you take it to Johnson City Ford and they say,

we ain't working on that thing.

You didn't buy it for most.

They can get in some serious trouble.

Now they wouldn't do that anyway.

I certainly wouldn't because if somebody bought their Ford, let's say somebody

bought their Ford at Johnson City Ford and they want to come to Gateway Ford to

get their service done, which we do a lot of work that way.

To me, that's a great way to earn their business in the future.

I mean, we're going to get paid to do the warranty work.

If they get all their oil changes done down here, we're going to get paid to do

that. And then when it's time for them to buy a car, hopefully they'll be sitting

around the dinner table saying, you know what, those guys at Gateway Ford did such

a great job taking care of us, even though we didn't buy our car from them.

So we're just going to buy our next one from them.

See, I mean, I think that's a, that's a no brainer.

So you'll never see me running off service business.

I see it as a customer retention tool or a new customer gaining tool.

And we just make it a great experience.

It's not wonderful when you have to take your car in for service.

There are other things most people would rather do like getting your teeth pulled

or maybe a colonoscopy.

No, having automotive service isn't that bad.

But you know, you can really tell when people just don't have.

Well, do you call it a skill set or do you call it just sheer personality?

Some people just don't have that spirit of service, do they?

I mean, I think it's in rare supply in our current society.

I think a lot of that is called, of course, I blame a lot of things on the cell

phone. Lord, I just believe that that cell phone is the greatest evil that was ever

foisted upon mankind because it is one of the most distracting and destructive

things to true human communication.

And when people have to actually talk to others face to face, a lot of young

people just don't know how to do it unless they're friends.

I think there is a natural disdain that has developed for strangers.

I mean, if you don't know somebody, then why should you have to be nice to them?

It's a disease that is infecting society.

That's my personal opinion. How do you get it beyond that?

You can train your people, you can educate them and make sure that they

understand where the dollars come from that go into their pocket.

It's coming out of the pockets of the consumer.

And so you have to make them understand that first and then teach them the

skills that they need to be able to deliver high level customer service.

It's just not a natural thing anymore.

You know, unless, well, even with folks who own their own business, I've seen

some of the most horrible customer service from people who actually own the

business. And why is that?

I mean, why have they lost sight of what's really important?

Maybe they have so much business that they can afford to run off customers.

I'll tell you what, in a car business, you can't do that.

You cannot afford to lose anybody.

You've got to keep them and get more because there's a large percentage

that will just drop off automatically.

You know, if you don't stay in touch with people over the long term,

they forget about you, you drop off of their radar.

And in many cases, you've not given them any reason to remain loyal to you

because when they brought their car in for service, it wasn't that special.

Nothing great about it. You didn't have comfortable waiting rooms.

You know, you didn't have coffee for them.

You had 10 year old magazines out there for them to read.

The bathrooms were dirty.

There's just, there was nothing special.

Couldn't find a place to park.

Couldn't get anybody to wait on them.

Stood there at the sales counter for 10 minutes and finally somebody walked by

and then they acted like they were irritated that you had interrupted their day.

Well, Merry Christmas to you.

I'll be back in just one minute.

OK, I am back.

You know, another thing that has really changed over the years is advertising.

Where do companies advertise to get the eyes of consumers?

Forget about what the message is.

But just to get somebody to see that you exist

and maybe put you on their shopping list.

Now, when we first got into the car business, I mean, as far as retail car

business was 1971, you either advertised on newspaper, radio or TV.

That was it. I mean, if you weren't on one or all of those forms of media,

you didn't exist unless you had to drive by traffic, repeat and referral business,

which is the best kind of business anyway.

Well, it's different today.

I would say that probably 75 percent of the average car, well, maybe even more than that.

It may be 85 percent of the average car dealer's advertising is online.

Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, all kinds of email marketing,

just trying to get some type of message to their cell phone.

Now, you'll see a lot of car dealer ads on TV around sports.

But I tell you one thing you won't see.

Well, you won't see a lot of printed newspapers and you won't see many ads in them

for car dealers.

But the only thing you'll see is real estate plumbers and the obituaries.

And most of them have switched to online and it's understandable.

I mean, all of the print cost and people just don't want to hold a newspaper.

Well, old people do like me. We like it.

It's a kind of a nostalgic feeling.

But young people say, why would you want to do that?

I just got it right here on my phone and it is easier.

You know, you don't have to struggle with the newspaper to drink your coffee.

But the paid subscriptions, I always want to say prescriptions,

but the paid subscriptions for our local paper have dropped off probably 75 percent.

Now, the digital version has gone up from zero to whatever it is now.

But I mean, how are you going to get your local news?

I mean, I did find out that that house burned down on Facebook.

So I mean, you can learn some things there.

But that's where the eyes are.

And that's where the advertising has to be if you're going to reach the eyes.

And the more eyes we reach, the more chances we have of somebody coming in

and buying a car from us.

Well, thanks for listening to this edition of My Car Guru.

I know sometimes we veer off the path of car life topics,

but, you know, that's just that's my fault.

I'm willing to accept full blame for that.

And if you want to call and complain 423-552-2020,

or you could just submit your request for the My Car Guru guidebook,

which will save you thousands of dollars buying a car wherever you buy it.

You don't have to buy it for me.

Just wherever you do business, car business, service or sales, body shop, whatever.

You need a copy of the My Car Guru guidebook and just roll it up,

keep it in your glove box and get ready to buy a car or get an automotive service.

Just pull it out and read that chapter and it will keep you from spending money

that you shouldn't. It's that easy. So call me 423-552-2020

or send me an email to Lenny Lawson 2020 at gmail.com.

And I'll see you on the next edition of My Car Guru.

Re-gifting is not evil...PLUS, asking the right questions is critical when considering an extended warranty purchase

About this episode

Skoda Yetis

extended service contract

extended warranty

manufacturer backed warranty

Ford ESP

adjuster

transmission job

engine job

synthetic oil

zero weight oil

friction

crankshaft bearings

thin oil

warranty work

lack of maintenance

service agreement

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