EP029: - The Big News – John Gavin & Bagi

[00:00:00] Hey everybody, welcome to True Confessions of a Car Guy. My name is John Gavin. I decided to do this because I've been in the car business a little over 40 years. And as I've been going through all those 40 years, I'm not proud of this fact, but I've worked at 49 different leagues. Over those 40 plus years, I have seen some of the craziest stuff happen.

[00:00:29] Good, bad, the ugly, you name it. I've worked with some real characters. I no longer work for any dealer, so I can say whatever the fuck I want, when I want, about what I want. So I'm going to do a lot of the truth of what happened in the car business. I mean there's stuff that I can tell you that women took their clothes off and offered sex to get discounts. I mean there's crazy shit that went on in the car business.

[00:00:57] It's unbelievable that nobody else would believe. Dumb as fuck. So I think there's a lot more going on in this. But we're car dumb. It's a different type of dumb. You put the disclaimer up that says that we're only allowed to have so many curses in one session. I don't need you. I've never needed anybody. You can go fuck yourself and let's see how your store does in the next six months. I shit my pants. I gotta go. This is the guy from the sales floor.

[00:01:26] I shit my pants. I gotta go. It's 831. He's from the sales floor. Croak and choke. Oh, croak and choke. That's right. I don't remember. Yes. Croak and choke. That's right. It was croak and choke. He goes, your car's on fire. Just like that. This guy went ancient. I had more balls than brains and he didn't, he had a little bit of brains and no balls. Would you believe my used car manager took a 100 milligram Viagra and stuck it in my coke can?

[00:01:57] Bro, I had a call out of work the next day because as soon as the washcloth did it, and I thought I was gonna die. But if it stayed longer, it would have killed me. Because all we did was party. It was just a nonstop party. And all you car guys and gals who are out there who got stories like mine, you want to send them in to me, I'd be more than happy to read them or have you on the show. Send it to confessionsofacarguy at gmail.com and we'll all laugh.

[00:02:26] You ought to print that on our show. Make that a fucking tidbit. That really happened. Welcome everybody to True Confessions of a Car Guy. My name is Badgie, the executive producer of the show. And alongside me in studio is our host, John Gavin. John, how's it going? Hey, Badgie. How are you doing, brother?

[00:02:55] I'm doing good, actually. We have some exciting news that we wanted to share with everybody on air. As you know, this podcast is about the experiences that people have had in the car industry. And it's about some of the most, having some of the most iconic leaders on as well. And we have the honor. It's going to air next Saturday night.

[00:03:21] So it's going to be Saturday, August 22nd. Saturday, August 22nd at 8 o'clock Eastern, 7 Central. We will have a special guest. I'm pretty excited about that. I know. I know. And you know, you want to know who the guest is? Yes. Tell everybody who it is.

[00:03:45] So our very special guest is going to be King Louie 1957, as he's known. Louis Biondi, the owner of Biondi Lincoln in Pennsylvania. He is going to be a very special guest. And you can watch. It's going to be a two-parter, actually. First one's going to air Saturday. And then the second part's going to air the Wednesday after.

[00:04:13] So I'm really excited to have him on. You usually don't have him. He doesn't do many interviews. And you know, it's going to be a chance for us to learn more about him, about his life, his legacy, and also the importance social media plays in his business. So we're really excited about that. It took a lot of work, but we've become friends in the process as well, all of us. Yeah. I'm looking forward to that.

[00:04:39] So that's the announcement we were going to make tonight, keeping nice and short, since we have a lot of work ahead of us this week. But we just wanted to let everybody know. Well, I'm very excited to talk with King Louie. We have a lot in common. I mean, we've come up through the ranks pretty close to around the same time. So I'm looking forward to hearing about him, you know, just how he did it all. And he's got a lot of success online. I'm curious about that.

[00:05:07] So he does everything the right way. And I'm just looking forward to it. But yeah, it's going to be great. I did want to talk to you, though, since we were on about something that happened today, Friday. Today, we're on Sunday our time right now. So Friday, you know, customers today, you know, trying to buy a car, trying to go to service.

[00:05:35] It's really easy, but yet it's still very hard. Even though the customer knows more than they ever did, there's still a lot of pitfalls that a customer can have. And for instance, I'm at the chiropractor getting stretched out. And I'm talking to the chiropractor. And he is my son. One of the guys who works with them has a problem.

[00:06:03] His car has been in service for a week plus. And they're telling him on Friday that he couldn't get it for four more days because they're waiting on payment from the warranty company. Now, I get that. You know, you bring a car in. You don't. The dealer in their defense, they may not do warranty work with that warranty company.

[00:06:29] So it makes sense that they want to get paid. Right. Well, anyhow, I told them, listen, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'm going to get stretched out here. I'm going to take my son to lunch when I'm done. I'll take a ride over because it's only a couple blocks away. And so I get to the dealer and I ask first for the GM. Of course, he's in a meeting.

[00:06:52] I get the GSM and I explain to him, here, you've got an out-of-state customer who just moved here, who's going to stay here. He bought a Ford somewhere else. You guys are holding his car hostage over, I thought, $800 is what the kid told me. So he says, no, that can't be. I said, well, it is. I said, but why don't you talk to service? He said, well, I thought you guys should know because it's a customer that you could have. He's driving a three-year-old truck and he just moved there and going to graduate med school pretty soon.

[00:07:22] You should probably make him a customer, right? That's what you want to do today. Well, he walks me back. I end up talking to a service writer. I don't know if he was service manager or service writer, but he was great. Turns out the young lady handling it, she was busy as heck. I mean, this place probably has at least 25 lifts, 20 lifts. Big Ford store, big store. Anyhow, I said, listen, what's the problem? Well, we're waiting on payment.

[00:07:53] And he explains the whole thing to me like I just said. Waiting on payment. It turns out the bill is $394. So I'm thinking to myself, if I'm the GM, I'd be so mad at everybody right now because for $394, I just lost a guy who was probably going to buy a new car and service with us for the next 25 years. He's going to be a chiropractor a mile away from the store. Anyhow, he tells me, well, we're not paid yet. We need to pay.

[00:08:22] So I said, would you end the ADRO number and let me call the warranty company? Warranty company turns out to be Ally. Well, you know, I've been retired since 2022, not really in the warranty thing, but Ally is a pretty big company. I'm not worried about a check for $394 from them. Anyhow, I call up.

[00:08:44] I get, I don't know if I could say his name or not, probably Tommy Gervino, who was the rep from Ally. He was outstanding. Great. I tell him the situation. Tommy says, well, you know, I sent an email a couple of days ago that the car's in the son's name or the dad's name and they put the claim in the son's name. Ah, no wonder we're not paying it. So Tommy says, could you have him resend it?

[00:09:12] The young lady who I'm going to try to get on the show was outstanding. She did everything right away, ended up sending it over to Tommy and Tommy gave him the credit card number, claim paid. This all took about 40 minutes. The kid was so happy that he's getting his car on Friday night instead of waiting till Monday or Tuesday. And this is all over $394 bill.

[00:09:40] So I come home and I'm talking to my wife. My wife goes, you know, you really should be a customer advocate and get paid and do this. And first of all, I won't do that. I won't get paid to do that shit. I got paid for 45 years in the car business minimum, a lot of money to be a car guy. And I didn't get 40 referrals, 50 referrals a month because I didn't do it right. I did everything right. And I've still continued to do it.

[00:10:08] But I go look up how many people out there do stuff like this. Well, I find car edge, Derek Suarez, Zen, Car Pal, Upfront, Car Hagler, Zach, Delivered, Auto Advisor. And these guys all charge between $350 and one was up to $49.99 for the total package. I don't know what that is.

[00:10:35] But I did something which I think you're going to be pissed off about. Oh, no. What did you do? What am I going to do? I'm going to be an auto advocate. And I put my phone number, my cell phone, online on our website. And I'm going to do it for free. How did you do that? Not very good because I don't know how to navigate our site very well. But it's on there now.

[00:11:01] If you go look for it, it's under car advice or some confession of a car guy advice. I'm going to do it for free. Now, so we're clear here, folks. I'm one person. I'm going to do it for nothing. When you call me, you'll talk to me. I mean, I don't know how many are going to call. Maybe one, maybe a thousand. And I'll do as many as I can. And I'll help as much as I can.

[00:11:25] Now, what I'm not going to be able to do like maybe some of these guys I mentioned do is, you know, go search for a car for you. And what I can't tell you is whatever you're buying, if it's a good price or if the car has a clean car fax. You know, most of that stuff's online. I can, if you've got a problem in service trying to get your car, at least kind of tell you what's going on. I can help you navigate any pitfalls.

[00:11:52] When I say pitfalls, everybody in every business in the whole world has to make money to survive that business and make business. So a lot of times car guys are selling stuff because they have to, to keep a job, make a living. That doesn't mean you have to buy it. So there will be times I will, if I talk to people and they say, well, what do you think of gap? I'm going to tell you, you don't need gap insurance. You put down 15,000. You got equity today.

[00:12:20] On the other hand, if you bought a car in your 10,000 upside down, 7,000 upside down. Like, I don't know if you've been reading the news lately. That's the biggest thing. I mean, CD, whatever David, I forget his name from CDK was just talking about how many people are trading in cars, negative equity. But badge, I'm going to do this for nothing. How big this will get, how many people get, I don't know. But I'm going to try to help as many people as I can for free.

[00:12:47] Oh, you know, well, as I'm a little speechless right now. As the producer of this thing, I mean, I don't advise putting your, I don't even know how you did that. I mean, you're not. You're going to get the calls too, because I've got this. Oh, no, no. Yeah, yeah. Let me exactly see what you did here. I don't even know. I didn't even know you had access to the website, to the back end. I don't even know how you did that. It was about three weeks ago, four weeks ago.

[00:13:16] Oh, my goodness. I, I, I, this is, you know. I want to help people badge. Out of all due reasons, you know, I have the highest respect for you and what you've done. But you know what? I, I, you know, we're, you know, at some point you were, you want to do these things to, you know, to make some money, you know, to make, to make something and to do this for, you're basically saying if they call you, you're going to kind of help them and not, not charge them. I, wow.

[00:13:46] Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. Wow. I, like I. Complete strangers. Complete strangers. I'm not going to monetize this in any way, shape or form. Wow. I might ask them to refer my show to 10 people. That I might do. But just so more people listen. Let me, let me, let me exactly see what you did here. So hold on. Let me see. I think if you go to the website and you look up, I think I wrote in true confessions of a car guy advice. I think.

[00:14:15] Yeah, I see it right here. No, you put it right. You put it right. You put it right. You forgot to turn off the caps button. It says, here we go. Wow. Yeah. Any questions about there you go right there trouble with the deal. Any questions or problems. Call me. Here. I just call the number. Well, I can't call myself. You want to call the check it out. We're going to show this is a real number you call. Yeah, I'll dial it right now. Here.

[00:14:45] It's going to ask you your name and then it's going to put you through the knee. That's awesome. I know who I'm talking to. I'm going to try it out right now. Here. Let me. Let's go. Here's the number. I can't believe you. How'd you get it? Oh, my goodness. I'm going to have to. Oh, you know what? It might have been through the Google. I gave you access to the emails. That's probably how you got in. But man, this is. This is a good thing. This is a good thing. People. Yeah, but you're going to you're going to make a lot of people upset.

[00:15:12] Well, it's 803-339-0885. You give me a call and I'm calling you right now. Okay. Wait for it to go through. There we are. It knows you because you're a contact. Can you see that? Yeah. There you go. Boom. Okay. We got it. 803-339-0885.

[00:15:39] That's the way it works is I got to accept the call and I will accept as many as I can as often as I can. And I'll probably going to make this so many days a week for certain timeframe. I just hung up on you, bitch. I'm going to do as many as I can and try to help folks out. I mean, there's no reason. I got a lot of experience. I've kind of seen almost everything happen. And so I'm not taking sides for anybody.

[00:16:06] I'm going to do what's fair and tell you what the right way to go on certain things. So just every, everything stands, every story, every deal stands on its own as every customer and every car does. So. But there might be a problem. You might. And I've seen this obviously being, you know, producing this thing. I see what's out there. I see what people are doing. And you're, you might upset people. You might upset people that. That's okay.

[00:16:36] That's okay. You might upset people that do this for a living because now, you know, you don't I can't handle every call. They should be able to get somebody other ones. I mean, there's a lot of people. If they got a business, I'm sure one guy doing it for free isn't going to put anybody else out of business. I'm sure of it. So if they do, then their business is not as solid as they think. Wow.

[00:17:03] I'm just a retired guy who wants to help people. And that's the truth. Anybody who's worked for me knows me, hangs out with me and knows. I'm very passionate about the car business. I'm very passionate about my customers and I'm very passionate about doing the right thing. And I think this is the right thing, bitch, is let's just use this show to try to help some people along. If we get a lot, do I have a reason behind it? Yeah.

[00:17:32] I'd like to get a lot more followers so I can get some bigger guests. You know, I'd like to get Marcus Lamonis on and in my work for the guy. I love the guy. But you know, he doesn't want to go on a show that's got 10,000 people. He wants to go on a show that's got 100,000 or 300,000 or a million. He will. It'll do something like that. And I don't even want to bother him with 10,000 people, but that's what the reasoning is behind it.

[00:18:01] If there's any, but I can't help people. I can help people. There's no doubt about it. Yeah. I'm still, I'm at a loss for work. Yeah. I think I dumbfounded you finally. I never thought that would be possible. Yeah. That you put the number on the website. And I think, you know what, since you're going this route and since I heard you out, I need some time, but I don't know what you did on there.

[00:18:29] I think it's maybe, maybe even a better idea is, is to build something out properly. So, uh, it's on there now, but, uh, I can in the next couple of days or so maybe build it out properly so that, you know, people can read more about it and contact and contact as a proper page. Right. So in the meantime, Wednesday, we got King Louie. Yeah. I'm excited about that.

[00:18:55] And, uh, let's just, uh, let's, let's be ready for him and make that the best show we can. In the meantime, anybody got a problem that they haven't been able to figure out or they're trying to do something in the car business and they're not getting anywhere. I'd be more than happy to give you my two cents. Yeah. And you know, you can find us online. We're everywhere. True confessionsofacarguide.com is where the phone number is currently listed.

[00:19:20] You can call John directly and, you know, tell him any issues or problems and maybe, you know, Don't badgy sent you. Yeah. You could not. I guess I can do a lot, but I think today's salesperson, um, really uses social media. In ways that I would have never imagined would happen.

[00:19:45] You know, uh, our social media presence was auto trader cars.com car gurus, uh, uh, et cetera. You know, we never thought that, you know, Joe would be on, uh, 10 times a day getting 500 to a thousand views on, on Facebook. You know, just the pitfalls of that for those guys is that the dealer is responsible for everything they say. So they gotta be real careful what they say.

[00:20:15] Yeah. There's a lot of FTC regulations coming into play. And then, you know, some places, you know, like you mentioned before, it's, it's a dynamic that, you know, that's bad, that's playing out live and it's interesting to see where, where it's all going to go, but you know, the fact that you can help out people for free, I, I, you know, I just hope, um, that it doesn't upset some people because, um, I don't really care about that. Okay. You know, not too many people. All right. Not too many people.

[00:20:45] We're, we're, we're, uh, we're Chicago guys, right? And I heard that statement too. If you can survive and work in Chicagoland. Yeah. You can, you can, you can do it anyway. I'm not too concerned about hurting somebody's feelings or their business or, I mean, cause it's, I'm just trying to help people. So if, if you don't like that, fuck off. I don't really care. So. All right, then we'll, we'll see how this plays out. Absolutely free, not a dollar.

[00:21:12] So you will not be monetizing this, this part of our show. No, no. You said it and you know, you're the, you're the one behind this. Um, I'll be answering the phone. Yeah. You'll be behind the phone. So, uh, let's see how all this plays out. So again, the phone number is on the website. Go to true confessionsofacarguy.com. That's where you'll see John's number. You can call him directly. And, uh, let's see how this plays out. The next time.

[00:21:41] Call me after 10 o'clock central. Cause that's 11 o'clock Eastern and I'm old guy. Usually go to bed around 11 o'clock Eastern. So yeah, we don't want to do that respectfully. Hopefully they'll, they'll be contacting me a little bit, but you know, I'm, I'm here for you. I swear I am. All right. Go to our website and the next show you'll see is next Saturday. You can go to YouTube and sign up. It'll be a YouTube premiere episode, uh, next Saturday at 7 PM central is when we'll show the show with King Louie.

[00:22:11] But until then, thank you guys for coming on. Um, I need to go get a good drink of water. I just was, I was blindsided by all this, but, um, nice. Let's see if this works. All right, Badgie. See ya. Bye. Thanks for listening to true confessions of a car guy.

[00:22:39] Download this podcast on all your favorite podcast platforms and follow us online at trueconfessionsofacarguy.com.