1. If Carvana makes you an instant, sight-unseen offer on your car, and you don't think you are being ripped off with a low bid, well, insert some cliche about a bridge in Brooklyn here. Earth to these morons: Carvana is NOT in the business of losing money. Carvana will NOT offer you one penny more than it thinks it has to for your ten-year old Toyota Rav4. If the offer was $16,000 (yeah, right) there is something seriously missing in this story. This isn't 2020 with COVID shortages.
2. Why do these people "need" to sell these cars? It's safe to assume they are paid for- there's no talk of negative equity or paying off bank notes. Why are you selling a paid-off car? Is it the obvious, depressing reason- because you want a new one to show well for your neighbors? It's like we are addicted to making payments. If the car is in such good shape that Carvana wants to offer you $16,000 why don't you JUST KEEP DRIVING IT YOU MORON?
One day, someone decided to make slippers that could be worn outside. On that same day, we collectively decided that the Hardest Thing To Do Ever was putting shoes with laces on our feet. It was like our 10,000 year Nightmare was Over and we had been rescued from the Agony that is Bending Over and Putting On Actual Shoes and Tying Them.
Some time later, we decided that Latin Women with explosive tempers are funny and entertaining. And some time after that, we decided that the whole Outdoor Slippers and Volcanic Latinas should be put into an ad to be shown during a Very Very Important Football Game because Reasons.
"Have you ever stopped to think why the average new car warranty is only three years or 36,000 miles?" Um, no- not really. But I'm willing to take this as something more than a rhetorical question and just answer it: The reason why new car warranties generally run three years or 36,000 miles is because that's the time and distance in which a new car can reasonably be categorized as "new."
Coincidentally, it's also a perfectly reasonable length of a car warranty. In three years a new car loses more than half it's value, but at 36,000 miles most cars are still fairly "new" in terms of wear and tear. The warranty is a nice shiny but basically worthless trinket that in the vast majority of cases will never be used. It's a Peace of Mind thing but if you get the oil changed and the other fluids topped off and the tires rotated once a year or so there's no reason why you should EVER need to use it, and I bet more than 90 percent of new car buyers never do.
Now, if you've got a car you bought new which is now out of warranty, you can do one of two things: You can put $99 per month into a special savings account as an emergency fund to deal with maintenance and keep your insurance up to date to deal with accidents. Or you can hand $99 a month (for the base-level warranty) to CarShield and kiss that money goodbye forever, because even if you do have a claim your chances of getting this scammy, regularly-sued company to pay out is next to Zero.
One ad has a guy tell us that he's "saved $2700" due to CarShield replacing his water pump and engine or something, but I bet that $2700 doesn't include the years of $99 payments. Because when you look at how much this "warranty" costs and how little it actually pays out, well, the Math doesn't Math.
The warranty that comes with the new car is fine. But buying a new warranty when it expires is just stupid, even if it's NOT CarShield (but it's especially stupid if it is.) Just take care of the damn car and save your money and stop handing it to a company that seems determined to hire every washed-up B-lister to pitch it's crap to the gullible and math-deficient. Times are tough. We have to do better.
A) has been scammed. She thought she was marrying a guy with loads of money, but as soon as they got back from their honeymoon found herself ordering furniture from Wayfair. I mean, come on- look at this guy. This is a seven-figure transaction.
B) is suffering from severe self-esteem issues. Again- look at him. And then look at her. What the actual hell? Is he hiding her passport? Can a neighbor call the authorities?
I lived in the suburbs of Buffalo from 1991 to 1995 and watched the Bills lose four straight Super Bowls. The Bills then went into complete collapse and could not get out of the shadow of Tom Brady. Brady ultimately exited the stage, only to be replaced by Pat Mahomes, the Bills' current nemesis blocking the team's way to the Promised Land, always there to knock Buffalo out in the playoffs.
Then Mahomes has a bad season, the Chiefs don't even make the playoffs at all, and the path is cleared for the Bills- only to have Buffalo inexplicably lose to a Broncos team which loses it's Quarterback to injury at the very end of the game (if he had gone down ten minutes earlier, the Bills certainly would have won and gone on to paste the Patriots in the Championship game a week later.) This is Babe Ruth Curse level stuff.
The Buffalo Sabres are the oldest franchise in the National Hockey League (established 1970) to never win a Stanley Cup. They've been in the Championship round twice, losing in six games in 1975 and getting swept in four in 1999. They make the playoffs pretty regularly- but have never lifted that cup in celebration. And last night they lost Game 7 to the Montreal Canadians- in Overtime, because that's how you maximize the pain- so fans are back to talking about Hope and Faith and Belief in Next Year.
It's always next year in Erie County. Next year, the Bills will go all the way. Next year, the Sabres will get over that hump. Next year, it won't snow nonstop from December to April and the sun will come out more than twice between Thanksgiving and Easter and the gas pedal won't stick to the floor because it's -20 again and you won't wonder "how the hell did I end up in this godforsaken place, and why can't we at least celebrate a winning team as compensation at least ONCE?"
"Hey Paris, who are you wearing?" Hmm. That's not even in the top three of the list of questions I had when I saw Paris Hilton in a commercial Not for Carl Jr's hamburgers. Here's how I responded to seeing this person appear on my television screen:
1. "Wait...you're still a thing?"
2. "Why were you ever a thing?"
3. "Could you please stop being a thing now?"
Honorable Mention: "Can I assume that we aren't getting a sequel to The Hottie and the Nottie?"
This is like watching a bunch of seamstresses being shown a Spinning Jenny and thinking "wow, this is absolutely amazing, what a wonderful time to be alive!" Never mind that the machine they are being shown was literally built to make their skills irrelevant.
What we are watching here is people eagerly embracing an App that will very quickly make them an expensive, obsolete burden to their employers-- and, ultimately, Unemployed and Unemployable. Well, I guess at least that will give them more time with their phones and something to do while doom-scrolling LinkedIn, desperately searching for an AI-proof job that will allow them to keep food on the table.
