It’s smart that there’s a #thisisajoke tag on the recent TikTok clip from auto dealer advice guru Mia (@mialivingg) since she’s advising customers who are underwater on their vehicles to test the bounds of their insurance coverage.
It goes like this. In the brief video that has been viewed almost 800,000 times, she tells us that a customer owes $15,000 on a Jeep that needs a new motor. Since there’s going to be barely any trade-in value on that vehicle and much of that $15,000 would end up rolled into the financing on a new car deal, Mia’s advice comes via lip-syncing the chorus “I think that you should let it burn.” The clip is set to "Burn" by Usher.
There’s a lot that’s unspoken here. Some quick and broad research shows that a new motor for a Jeep is probably going to cost around $6,000 or $7,000, though the number could go up to $10,000. A salvaged or rebuilt motor could be less but then there’s the dice roll of how reliable of a piece of machinery that will be.
Mia’s “advice” seems to presume that the customer has some kind of gap insurance, which covers the "gap" between the amount you owe on a car loan and the car's actual cash value if the vehicle is totaled or stolen. It's designed to protect against depreciation, which is often significant early in a loan.
Were some unfortunate malady to unexpectedly happen to the Jeep, like Mia’s fiery bit of happenstance, then the big financial headache could be cleared up and our beleaguered motorist could be behind the wheel of a new ride in no time.
Some legally solid options for the Jeep owner include refinancing and extending the loan to free up money for repairs, selling the Jeep privately “as is” and possibly getting more than the trade-in value, or finding a manufacturer trade-in program if they’re a loyal Jeep customer.
Commenters on the clips were certainly sympathetic to the underwater owner.
“2022 Hyundai sonata trans went out at 40,000 miles and it’s been one thing after the other so I feel this... paid way too much for it to be acting this type of way,” one of them wrote.
Others were more than happy to offer some wink/nod ideas for how to put the troubled vehicle out of its misery.
“I had a salesman tell me to take my car into a tree and put a helmet on so i don’t get hurt and just total the thing,” one of them recalled.
And from another: “Sooooooo most insurance companies consider a vehicle totaled if water happens to get high enough to enter the cabin of the vehicle.”
The Daily Dot reached out to Mia via direct message, and to Jeep/Stellantis via email.
@mialivingg I think that you should... #carsaleswoman #dealershiptok #trending #dealertiktok #cardeals #usedcars #carsales #carproblems #letitburn #thisisajoke ♬ original sound - Harry Adamson
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The post ‘Always where my mind goes’: Dealership saleswoman encounters customer with $15,000 Jeep that needs a new motor. Now what? appeared first on The Daily Dot.
