Is the Extended Warranty a $3,500 Paperweight?

Hey, Aaron. How's it going?

Doing great today, Chris. How are you?

Good. I like the beard.

We.

We got a lot in common there. Mine's maybe a little bit longer.

Yes, sir. I'm getting there.

So you're.

We.

We came on to you because of a comment that you had posted on LinkedIn, which was very articulate. There's the.

Overtone of a polite Midwest gentleman in the way that you wrote this. But it's also punchy.

It's very punchy. It's sassy.

It's a nice balance of the two. But it's very diplomatic but on point. It's right on the nose. And so maybe is it possible, Aaron, you could just read what you wrote and then we can talk about it?

Yes, sir.

Read it like you're narrating, like a documentary or something. Like in the cold tundra on a Sunday in Green Bay or whatever.

Like he's narrating a Michael Bay movie theater movie trailer.

But then you have to have explosions in the background and things like that.

We're gonna do all that in post. It'll be great.

Dear Carvana, I want to send this letter as a thank you. Thank you for treating your customers like a number and not a person. Thank you for creating an environment to drive customers back to real, real dealerships, sales departments, because nobody likes buying from a machine. Thank you for ignoring customers concerns about the vehicle that they purchased from you. Thank you for sending them to us to do repairs, because obviously you don't fix what you sell. I mean, why would you want to provide a great experience to a customer that spends money with you? Thank you for creating a new way to buy cars that can, but not always, turns people back to the idea of buying a car from a dealership and not a vending machine. Yes, we are partly to blame for your existence, but you done messed it all up. So I'll be here with my team ready to fix the vehicles you sell to unsuspecting but trusting consumers. Sincerely, most service departments that have had to deal with the crap that you pull on people.

Give him a hand.

Very, very well written and diplomatic. And so.

What. What were some of the comments and responses you got from that? Oh.

You know, first of all, I mean, I never really expect for it to kind of take off like that. You know, I more or less wrote it out of frustration. Had a customer recently come in with a Silverado they purchased, and.

You know, when the. When the vehicle was dropped off to the customer, the check engine light was on, vehicle head, mechanical problems. And.

Customer tried to pursue Carvana. Well, Carvana, basically it said, well, that's the reason why you have an extended warranty that you get with the vehicle, so take it somewhere else.

Wow.

So, I mean, it, you know, it's a silver rock extended warranty, which is hit or miss, but, you know, they. They did end up paying for the repairs, which is. Okay, that's. That's great. But.

You still bought a vehicle that you had to automatically almost turn around and take it to get repaired.

Yeah. Mia has described the Carvana extended Warranty as a $3,500 paperweight.

Yeah, pretty much. At least from my experience.

She said that not much is covered.

No, that's not. They, you know, there was, you know, like, some of the extended warranties will cover, you know, some of the parts labor, stuff like that, but then they'll start cutting out. They could cut out tags, they could cut out shop supplies. They could cut out, you know, some of them will even have literature saying that we don't cover seals and gaskets. Well, if you have a powertrain extended warranty, and you don't cover seals and gaskets, then what do you cover?

Literally what.

That was exactly Mia's point earlier. She said that it's a powertrain warranty, but it really does nothing.

Yeah. Because it. They say it's a powertrain extended warranty, but then it's like, but this doesn't cover oil leaks or seals or gas. I'm like, then what. What does it cover? Because that's like the number one, you know, problem of a failed powertrain is that.

So, so don't. Don't you think, Aaron, that this brings up a bigger conversation? Because I like how you say in there that, you know, we're partially. We partially created Carvana, right?

Yes, absolutely.

So as an industry, we're not. We're not blame free on this. Our hands are dirty too, and we've. We've had our failures. But.

But I think, for the most part, it does show that. I think our intentions were better right in the beginning.

Oh, definitely. I think that. I think that we as the industry.

Definitely, we definitely did create Carvana because, you know, it's kind of like Amazon. They. They saw a need and they filled it.

Yeah.

And look at what they've done. So if you. With the auto industry, if Carvana is filling that need, then what is it that, you know, we are doing to.

To try to be able to kind of cut Carvana out of it, but they're still feeling that need and that's something that the auto industry is lacking at. They're, they're just not filling that specific need that every consumer out there is looking to, looking to do. And the dealers that are actually.

Filling that void, as far as, you know, the, the just buying online.

Stuff like that, that's where we really need to start.

You know, changing the way that we're doing our business because the Carvana saw that need and that's the reason why they filled it, because we let them.

Thanks so much for watching this clip of Service Driving Revolution. We're uploading new stuff every day, so make sure you subscribe and click the bell icon so you don't miss out. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on the show, call 8333 Ask SDR and we'll answer your question on the show. That's 8333 Ask SDR. For special deals on our books and training, head over to offers.chriscollinsinc.com now that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins and I'll see you in the next video sa.