CHAPTER 16

Make Your Car Last

Most Americans replace their car every five years. That’s right, they ditch a remarkably sturdy vehicle capable of cruising along past 200,000 miles. They treat it like a starter wife and trade it in for a newer, younger model. To me, that is just silly. After all, you will have just spent all this time and effort finding the perfect car at the perfect price and now you are going to get rid of it and start the process all over again? What a waste of time! If you want to SAVE BIG you need to make your car last.

In this chapter, learn to SAVE BIG by:

• Keeping your current car as long as you can stand it.

• Finding a good mechanic and being faithful to him (or her!)

• Keeping the shop from jacking up the initial price you are quoted.

• Not paying the bill—legally—if you have been wronged.

• Searching for secret warranties that get your car repaired for free.

Repair or Replace

There comes a time when your older car needs more maintenance. Belts start to go. Fluids are leaking. Brakes are squealing. Suddenly, you panic and think, “This car is costing me a fortune! Maybe I should replace it!” Wrong!

Here’s what costs a fortune: replacing your car.

Let’s say your old car needs a whopping $3,500 worth of repairs. A rebuilt engine! Transmission overhaul! Sounds awful! But compare that to the cost of getting a new vehicle, even a used one. Here’s an example, using the purchase price of our old standby, the used Ford Taurus:

Replace versus Repair

New-to-you used car	$ 15,000
Repair	3,500
BIG SAVINGS =	$ 11,500

I spared you by not even including the additional cost if you were financing the vehicle, but I’m sure you remember that discouraging waste of money from Chapter 12. Now, before I start to sound like a huge bore, let me say that I realize you’re going to replace your scruffy old car with something new-to-you at some point. That’s fine. The idea is that the longer you stretch out the current car’s life, the more money you’ll save.

In her book Spend Well, Live Rich, Michelle Singletary, the savvy, sassy personal finance columnist for the Washington Post, writes about a woman at a seminar who asked her whether she should replace her car. The woman’s car needed a $1,500 repair, and she had been looking at a $25,000 replacement. What should she do? Michelle wrote the two numbers down on the blackboard as if she was making some kind of careful calculation. Then she asked the lady, “Which number is smaller?” And that was her answer!

Beware of Tow Truck Bounties

If your car breaks down and needs a tow, don’ t let the tow truck driver choose the shop. I once did an investigation and proved that some shops pay tow truck drivers a bounty to bring them business. We went undercover and tow trucks took our car past a dozen decent shops to get to the one where they could make a personal payday. We had to pay more to be towed farther and the shop in question had a terrible reputation.

Bottom line: Keep your car as long as possible. Most people turn their cars over every five years, according to Edmunds.com. Let’s say you get your first car when you’re 18 and stop driving at age 78. That means you would own about 12 vehicles during your lifetime. If you keep each vehicle just one year more, you’ll only need 10 vehicles. Keep it 10 years—twice as long as the national average—and you’ll only need 6 vehicles, which will cut your car-buying costs in half.

So exactly how much can you save by keeping your car longer? Let’s pick a number in the middle for the sake of fairness. If you keep you car seven and a half years, that’s 50 percent longer than most people do and means you will need eight cars in your lifetime. Let’s say each car you buy costs $15,000, the price of the Ford Taurus we’ve been using throughout our discussion. Here’s the math:

Making It Last

12 cars at $ 15,000 each	$ 180,000
8 cars at $ 15,000 each	120,000
BIG SAVINGS =	$ 60,000

Another bonus of keeping your car as long as you can stand it: You won’t have to reread and follow my advice as often on how to find and purchase a good one!

Finding a Great Mechanic

If you’re going to keep your car around longer, you must make it your mission to find an honest and skillful mechanic. Car repairs are one of the most expensive services that we spend money on, so working with an honest mechanic will help you SAVE BIG. Good mechanics are like good husbands. It’s hard to find one, and once you do, you shouldn’t cheat on them. The bit of hassle I am going to suggest is well worth it compared to the angst of wondering if you’ve been ripped off by the mechanic of the moment.

Every consumer book tells you to ask friends and family for referrals to find a good mechanic. I’ve given that advice myself in the past, but it’s not very satisfying. What if you’ re the organized one in the bunch? They’re probably asking you! So here is a list of possible sources of shops.

You Don’t Have to Use Premium Gas

If your owner’s manual recommends regular unleaded, premium doesn’t do a darn thing to help your car. Even if your owner’s manual does list premium, is it “recommended” or “required”? That wording is key. Ask your mechanic if you can just use regular.

Ways to Find Mr. Right

• Ask a mechanic. One creative alternative is to ask a mechanic about mechanics. Huh? Find a reputable shop that doesn’t work on your kind of car, and ask them who they would recommend.

• Check Consumer’ s Checkbook magazine. If you are fortunate to live in one of the large metropolitan areas served by Consumer’s Checkbook magazine—Boston, Philadelphia/Wilmington, Seattle, San Francisco, Minneapolis/St. Paul, or Washington, D.C.—you are in luck. Checkbook surveys hundreds of consumers in the area and uses their responses to rate shops for quality and price. Learn more at www.Checkbook.org.

• AAA-certified auto repair facilities. AAA shops are another possibility. They’re required to offer members a 12-month, 12,000 mile warranty on their work. Their estimates are guaranteed. And if you still have a problem, AAA will investigate your claim and resolve it. Visit www.AAA.com to find a member mechanic in your area.

• Automotive Service Association. Another source of shops that have pledged to uphold high standards is the Automotive Service Association (ASA—not to be confused with ASE, Automotive Service Excellence, a series of exams mechanics take to prove their competence). I have often turned to ASA mechanics to be the good-guy experts when I am doing an undercover investigation of crooked mechanics. Check them out at www.ASAShop.org.

• Better Business Bureau. Continuing through the alphabet, you can test out mechanics who are members of the Better Business Bureau (BBB). There are certainly some bad businesses that join the BBB to camouflage themselves, but most are good companies that have pledged to uphold a code of ethics. If you have a problem, the BBB will help mediate it for you. Go to www.BBB.org to search for members. Check the shop’s reputation while you’re there.

• Car Talk. Do you ever listen to Click and Clack and their hilarious talk show Car Talk on NPR? Car Talk listeners swap referrals with each other at www.Cars.com in the Car Talk section. Just search by zip code and then read with a critical eye.

Google ‘em

In addition to checking the reputation of a shop—or any kind of company—with the Better Business Bureau at BBB.org, I always suggest that people Google ‘em. This is a technique I use for any new company I’ m about to do business with. Google the name and city of the business with words like “scam,” “rip-off,” or “complaint” and see if anything comes up. It’s a quick, easy cross-check and could help you SAVE BIG.

The Estimate

Once you’ve chosen a reliable mechanic, its time to talk to him about the anticipated cost of your repair, the estimate. When you tell your mechanic what sort of problem you’re having with your car, be sure to describe symptoms, not diseases. For instance, say, “It’s stalling at stoplights,” not, “I think there’s a problem with the alternator.” Remember, you’ re not the mechanic! You don’t want to end up paying for some goofy repair that you dreamed up yourself.

Your mechanic should be the one diagnosing the problem and that diagnosis should be in writing. Most states require mechanics to give you a written estimate. That estimate should state the problem to be repaired plus the parts and labor needed for the job. You don’t want an estimate that just lists the work the mechanic is going to do. The reason? What if it’s the wrong work? You want the mechanic to be obligated to fix the root problem rather than performing some specific procedure that may be off-base. For the same reason, avoid estimates that are just a long laundry list of parts, because who’s to say those parts will fix the problem?

Red alert! The number one problem people have with car repair is that they are expecting to pay the price the mechanic estimated and then that price goes up—way up. In many states it’s actually against the law for the mechanic to perform the extra work without your approval, but it happens all the time. You can avoid this by knowing the law. In most states, once the shop gives you a written estimate, it’s required to contact you if that estimate is going to rise more than 10 percent.

Put a Stop to Upcharging

If your state doesn’ t require shops to ask your permission before doing additional work, take the law into your own hands—with a pen! Write on the service ticket either “Not to exceed X dollars” or “Mechanic must contact customer if price is going to rise more than 10 percent.”

Get a Second Opinion

Remember how I said not to cheat on your good mechanic? The idea is to build mutual trust, but sometimes I can be a fickle woman. If your mechanic says your car needs major work, it might be time for a quick affair. I’m not saying your mechanic is lying to you. It’s just that mechanics, like doctors, can diagnose more than one problem from the same set of symptoms. So pick a price that’s comfortable for you and resolve that you will get a second opinion for any repair over X dollars.

When Mark L. of Florida noticed his car was pulling to the left, he went to a shop that recommend complicated, expensive repairs to the tune of $1,400. Since Mark was skeptical, he decided to get a second opinion. So he took his vehicle to another mechanic who simply recommended new tires. That bit of extra legwork helped him SAVE BIG. Here’s the math:

Getting a Second Opinion

Complicated repairs	$ 1,400
New tires	400
BIG SAVINGS =	$ 1,000

Deduct the Deductible

Ask if you can skip the deductible when you need body work. If you get in an accident, you have the right to choose which collision repair facility you use, so negotiate. Some body shops will do the work for just the amount of your insurance company’s payment, without charging you the deductible.

Two Ways Not to Pay

If you take the wise and wonderful steps I’ve described and still have a dispute with the shop over your repairs, pay with a credit card. Then drive your expensively repaired car straight home and dispute the charges. Often you don’t have to pay the bill while the card company is going to bat for you.

There’s also another way not to pay that is truly novel and creative. In some jurisdictions, you can go down to the local courthouse and post a bond for the price of the repairs. The law varies from place to place, but either you or the mechanic must then file a small claims suit over the money. In some states, if the mechanic doesn’t bother to file, you automatically get your money back. Talk about a way to SAVE BIG!

I know some of these steps sound over-the-top, so just remember, the more time you spend finding a shop, the less time you’ll have to spend fighting one.

Secret Warranties

There’s another way to SAVE BIG on your car repairs and that is getting them gratis. There are about 500 secret warranties available at any given time, according to the Center for Auto Safety. Secret warranties are agreements by automakers to fix a particular problem in a particular car because that particular problem is happening in a lot of those particular cars. It’s a chance for you to SAVE BIG—but they don’t tell unless you ask.

Automakers sometimes offer secret warranties in order to avoid issuing a full- fledged recall. The manufacturer alerts its dealers that if customers complain about the problem, the manufacturer will pay for the repair. A few states require automakers to alert consumers to these opportunities, but if you obeyed me and bought the car used, the company won’t have a record of your ownership, so you’ll need to ask.

As you can imagine, the people in the auto industry don’t call them secret warranties. They use euphemisms like goodwill adjustment, warranty adjustment, and after-warranty assistance. They also refer to them as extended warranties, because your car does not have to be in its initial factory warranty period to be covered.

Getting In on the Secret

How do you find out about a secret warranty? One way is to bluff. My buddy, Michael Finney, the brash and brilliant consumer reporter at KGO TV in San Francisco, says in his book Consumer Confidential that he just assumes there’s a secret warranty. Michael suavely drawls to the service manager, “I think there is a warranty adjustment on this repair.” And often there is! He gets the work done for free.

Here’s an example of a recent secret warranty. A certain European luxury carmaker now equips its vehicles with run-flat tires. These are tires that can limp along for several miles, allowing you to get to a service station instead of changing your tire by the side of the road, but they’re a newer technology that hasn’t been perfected yet. The luxury car company’s customers started complaining that the run-flat tires on their swanky cars were failing after just a couple thousand miles, giving the vehicles a rough ride like a diesel dump truck. The manufacturer instructed dealers to replace the tires for free if customers asked and, voila, a secret warranty was born. For the savvy customers who inquired, look at the savings:

It Pays to Ask

Cost of new tires	$ 1,200
Cost with secret warranty	0
BIG SAVINGS =	$ 1,200

The more mundane way to sleuth out secret warranties is to look up technical service bulletins on cars. These are notices that automakers send to dealers alerting them about emerging problems and giving guidance on how to handle them. You can find technical service bulletins on Edmunds.com.

BIG TIPS

• Squeeze as many years out of your car as you can.

• Do the work to find a good mechanic.

• Cheat on your mechanic and get a second opinion for pricey repairs.

• Write “Not to exceed X dollars” on your service ticket.

• Inquire about secret warranties.