Overcoming the CURSE of Lifetime Warranties!
Chris Collins and Christopher answer two listener questions. First, Tom (a new OEM service advisor) worries about fairness in night-drop/customer assignments; Chris advises observing, adding value, and letting management see your worth rather than protesting. Second, a Reddit user reports excessive hold times and denied coverage from a lifetime/extended warranty; Chris suggests pre-calling early, delegating warranty calls to a warranty administrator or non-customer-facing staff, documenting details for claims, and framing customers up front about what the warranty will likely cover.
Chapters
Read a question. We have two today.
Yeah, two questions. The first one comes from Tom. He says, are there any written workflow and service lane operations and fairness, things that are written or best practices that I can be informed on? The reason I ask is because I believe I should have every right as a new advisor at this facility to have a customer drop their vehicle off as the next rider. But all of a sudden, the 10th training day of my new OEM rider position, they tell me the one other advisor gets the drop off in the morning. I am genuinely concerned that I'm being taken advantage of because I'm the new advisor. I love having the drop offs at the resale and prefer it. But I'm scared about the new position on day 11 when my survival is dependent on my ability to retain my customers. Any advice or podcasts or leads would definitely help me.
Well, Tom, first of all, what does an OEM advisor mean?
Guess he just means he's at a manufacturer, so maybe came from what it is or something. I don't know. Yeah, maybe.
Okay, so the first thing, Tom.
We got to have a deal that we're going to be honest with you, not placate. Like, we appreciate that you that you submitted a question, going to send you some swag. We'll send you a little service driver revolution care package with a T shirt and mug and all that. But bro, you sound entitled, like you just started this new job. And what does he say off the top?
He says the reason I ask is because I believe I should have every right as a new advisor at this facility to have a customer drop the vehicle suddenly. Now I'm in day 11 of my new position and my survival is dependent.
So I understand that it's a little scary starting a new, a new gig, but you need to come in there and observe. Every drive is different, every manager is different. You know, I don't. Everybody handles night drops different, all that. But I bet you 90 days from now you can beat all that. Like, I remember when I was an advisor, I used to come in on Sundays and write the night drops because there were so many of them. And then my manager, who.
I changed his name to Dick in the book.
Which book is it?
The.
It's the advisor one. Right, the millionaire Service advisor. I changed his name. I wrote the book with his real name in there and then I changed it to Dick at the end. You know, in word you can find a name and then change it in the whole book.
Yeah.
So like if Chuck was his real name, I took Chuck and Then I changed it to Dick, which felt really good because he was a dick. I remember he, he was a moron. He used to do lines of blow and smoke weed on his three hour lunch. Like we would clean his demo when I was a porter, when I was a law attendant and smoke weed, did blow, Just, you know, a complete moron. So he comes out one day and because this idiot service advisor that couldn't write seven ros in a day to save his life complained that he didn't get night drops. They took all the night drops away from me and they made the warranty administrator, who was also a piece of work, come in and distribute the night drops evenly to all the advisors. That was the new rule. How long, Christopher, do you think that rule lasted?
Not very.
And why do you think?
Because the warranty administrator didn't take care of him.
Because Dick, in his laziness, didn't understand that he was going to start getting a bunch of calls from customers whose cars had sat there for a day and nobody had called them. Because when I came in on Sunday, I called everybody. I told them I had their car. I told them they had to give me money to work with if they weren't in warranty. I, I told him what was going to happen and I touched him and I told him what to expect. So they distribute them to all the advisors. And this idiot that, you know, complained about it, they would sit there on his desk, you can see him, people would call to check and you would go, oh, you know, Thomas, that was the guy's name, Thomas has it. And they would leave voicemails for him and he would never call them back. And so my boss, Dick, would rather not deal with the customer complaints that and have me come in on Sunday and write them. But in the moment, I could have quit, I could have complained. I could have been entitled. I just kind of let it happen, watched to see it didn't last two weeks. And I had all the night jobs back and I was writing them again on Sunday. So the little blurb in my little timetable, it was okay. It made the point. It made me more valuable to my boss in the end. Right?
Yeah. And I think that's one of the things you hit on right there at the end that really strikes me with this is value. Right? Right. And I've heard Kris tell a story several times about his grandfather, and his grandfather used to tell him. And when you hear Chris share this story, he's like, hey, it's words I really try to live by. His grandfather taught Him. You know, no matter what you're getting paid to do something, if you try to give more than that, it'll always work out for you. Right.
You'll always be in demand.
Yeah. If you give them, you know, more than what you're receiving. So I would ask you, Tom, just flip your script a little bit, bro. You're right there. You got a handle on some of this. I see. You see the value in it, but, you know, whatever opportunities you are given, if it's not night drops, you know, give. Give your employer more than what they're paying you for. If you'll flip the script on yourself a little bit and reframe yourself there, you know, I think it'll bring a lot of things into focus for you and it'll always work out for you.
If you.
If you. If you're willing to give more than.
You get, it's good. So give it a little time, man. You're going to be okay, Tom. Relax. Concentrate on connecting with the customers. And what value can you. What value can you add to the department, not want what's in it for you and your perspective, and your luck will change.
Yeah.
You'll see it different.
Yeah.
Okay. Question number two. This comes off of Reddit.
Yep. Reddit user Rebels of Hell. Who has issues with Lifetime warranty? I keep getting one hour or greater hold times. As you can imagine, CSI scores tank out and customers get upset when I don't contact them. But what other choice do I have? I had to take work home with me a few times because of the whole times. I had to call on four different ROs and was on the phone for at least five hours all the way until 8pm when they closed. What do you guys do? I've been doing this for three years and Lifetime has thrown me in circles. Also, how many customers are getting pissed when Lifetime doesn't cover parts anymore? How do you deal with that? I give them the number for customer complaints, but I would like to see what you guys do. Thanks a lot in parentheses. No sarcasm.
What's that mean?
That just means when he says thanks a lot at the end, he's not saying like, thanks for nothing.
Okay, so there's. There's a couple things there with that. One is that I used to get in when I had extended warranties. I would get in really early and call early in the morning, and I'd be on hold before we open. So I would sit there. Now I would probably dial the number when I was headed to work and just be on hold because you could be on hold for 40 minutes, like you said, to an hour. Right. One thing that I've done in service departments that have a lot of a warranty like that is I'll have the warranty administrator call and get it approved, because the warranty administrator sitting at their desk and not customer facing. So I'll make it part of the process that maybe just because a warranty administrator can sit there on hold while they're doing their other work. And it's hard, like, when you're on hold of an extended warranty to take another call to update somebody to talk to a customer, because you're listening for that music to stop. Like I remember, like, the music would stop, and then you'd be like, hello. Hi. Like, you know, you're like, I've been waiting for. Okay. You know, so maybe there's somebody else that can do it as part of the process. And I understand as an advisor, you might not be able to make that call, but you could propose it that the warranty administrator would make those calls for you while they're just sitting there. And then also, they can do more than one at a time. So if the warranty administrator called, they can do three at a time. Like, hey, I got three claims for you. Here's the first one. And they can kind of knock them out, which also saves time. So if they were doing all the advisors that way, and the way that I implement that is I have a sheet that you fill out that says, you know, what. What the causes, the correction, the parts price is broken down, the labor, where the labor came from, what book, everything is on there. So the warranty administrator has everything they need when they pick up just to. To get the. Okay.
Yeah. Yeah, I think that's good.
Now, if you don't have a warranty administrator, maybe there's a cashier or somebody like that, or it's just gonna be you. You have to do it. The. The other thing. And it was funny when Tequila was in the emergency room hospital, you know.
Mm.
So he. They kept him two days, but when we went to pick him up on Sunday, I was sitting in the waiting room because he wasn't ready, and this. This guy comes in. He was Asian, and he had a. It's so funny. The dog looked just like him. Like, people say I look like my bulldogs, but this dog looked like this guy. Like.
It'S funny. So he goes up to the desk, and I don't know, there's something going on with this dog. But I heard him say, I have health Insurance on my dog. And the lady behind the counter was like, oh, okay, good. So here's how we're going to help you with that is at the end we're going to give you a detailed receipt that you can call them, but you're going to pay and then you're going to call them, but you're going to have a receipt.
I don't think you can give them.
Everything you need to take care of this.
Everything you need to, to call them. But we don't take insurance. It was pretty fun.
So that's your suggestion?
No, no, no, I'm just saying it made me think of that.
Yeah.
What was the, so what was the last part about them not covering parts anymore? Yeah, so I, I personally would address that up front and I would do some sort of thing at the time of write off. Write up. Okay. So you have lifetime insurance. So understand that lifetime isn't going to pay for the diagnosis. And in some of the policies they don't pay for parts. I'm not sure what policy you have. Do you know? Because they're like, no, I don't know. Like you know, okay, well I'm going to do my best to get, you know, I'm going to do my best to get whatever I can claimed and covered for you. And then I'll tell you what, what is left over, what the balance is. But get your bluff in right up, up front that, hey, I'm here to help you. I'm here to be the liaison. But it's not my car and it's not my extended warranty. Even if your company sells the extended warranty, it's an outside warranty and you kind of gotta, in a very soft, subtle way let it know that you know, they're administered somewhere else by somebody else and you're going to do your bestie, get them as much as they can. But yeah, everything isn't covered. It's not a bumper to bumper warranty like on a new car for sure.
More you can frame the customer up front with what's gonna happen, you know.
With what's the term for an extended warranty that covers items not like, you know, how they would have a detailed list of everything that was covered. Yeah, there's a term for that, but I used to say that like, okay, you have a policy. What was the name? I forget the name.
Not named. Inclusion. It's something along those lines though. You have a something policy.
Yeah, included or excluded or something like that. But if you use a term like that up front, then you know, you're, you're just educating the customer to the process and what's going to happen more than anything else. Yeah, it's a good, good question, though. Thank you so much for watching this clip of Service Drive Revolution. Now you can catch the full episode on YouTube, iTunes, or Spotify or wherever you consume your podcast. If you have any questions, go ahead and post them in the comments below. Make sure you subscribe and hit the bell icon so you're notified when we post new episodes. I'm Chris Collins, and you can find me on Facebook and Instagram at Chris Bulldog Collins, and I'll see you again on the next episode.
