Episode Summary
In this episode of The Expat Files, Johnny Mueller discusses the real-life experiences of expats living in Latin America, contrasting them with the idealized portrayals in travel magazines and websites. He highlights the limited availability and high cost of Apple products in the region, noting that while Apple stores exist in upscale areas, they are not common and are expensive. Expats often switch back to regular PCs due to the high cost of service and maintenance. Johnny also touches on the cultural emphasis on showing off expensive possessions, including brand-name items and the number of bodyguards one has.
The episode also delves into the outsourcing of digital animation work from Hollywood to Latin America. Johnny explains that while Hollywood studios like Disney and Pixar are often perceived as creating all the animation in-house, they actually outsource much of the work to smaller studios in Latin America and other parts of the world. He emphasizes that these Latin American studios, despite being in the 'third world,' have the technical expertise and are often able to complete specific animation tasks at a fraction of the cost compared to first-world animators. Johnny also mentions the aspirations of Latin American animators to work in Hollywood, but notes that the outsourcing trend has made such opportunities increasingly scarce.
Johnny further discusses the phenomenon of digital animation outsourcing to third-world countries like Chile, Argentina, and Guatemala. He highlights the lack of formal education in animation in these regions and how individuals often learn the trade through on-the-job training. He also touches on the role of first-world individuals who bring expertise and start animation studios in these countries, often using Apple equipment to match Hollywood standards. Johnny explains how these studios operate in low-cost environments, often with minimal infrastructure and low wages, and how this trend is likely to continue, affecting the job market in the first world. The segment briefly shifts to a story about an expat who was scammed when buying a car in a third-world country.
The episode continues with a discussion on the importance of checking for major accidents and mileage when buying a used car, especially in Buenos Aires. Johnny shares the story of a Texan expat who found a seemingly good deal on a 2005 Toyota with low mileage, but later discovered the car had significant mechanical issues. The car had a history of low compression and needed a costly top-end overhaul, which the expat found suspicious given the low mileage. The car's service records revealed it was originally purchased new from a Toyota dealership, suggesting it had been repaired and resold, possibly from the U.S. to Latin America.
Johnny also discusses the phenomenon of odometer tampering, where a car's mileage was rolled back from 134,000 kilometers to 34,000 kilometers. He explains that this was done by disconnecting a wire on the odometer, making it appear blank. The Texas Expat, frustrated, decides to take legal action against the dealership, but faces challenges due to the legal system's reluctance to pursue such cases. Johnny highlights the complexity of the situation, noting that the Texas Expat is in a difficult position, as he either has to manipulate another car, fix the engine, or pursue a lengthy lawsuit.
In the final segment, Johnny discusses the challenges faced by expats in Latin America when dealing with car dealerships and dishonest practices. He explains that if a car's odometer is rolled back, it can be difficult to prove and sell the car in court. He highlights the lack of consumer protection and the limited effectiveness of consumer rights groups in the region. Johnny also mentions the case of a Texas expat who bought a car with a rolled-back odometer and is now trying to take legal action. He notes that even though the expat had some protection through a 30-day warranty, it may not have been enough to help him. Johnny concludes by discussing the expat's plan to use the American Embassy's blacklist and write an op-ed to expose the dealership, but he doubts it will be effective due to the lack of real consequences for bad publicity in the region.
Topics
Expatriate life in Latin America, Apple products in Latin America, Cultural attitudes toward consumerism and status symbols, Cost of living and service for imported goods, Outsourcing in the animation industry, Latin American animation studios, Hollywood's reliance on third-world animation, Global labor cost differences, Aspirations of Latin American animators, Digital animation outsourcing, Education and training in third-world countries, Illegal immigration and citizenship in the US
Chapters
00:00:00 Opening 00:00:13 Real Expat Experiences vs. Travel Media Portrayals 00:00:47 Apple Products in Latin America 00:01:14 Apple Products and Their Availability 00:02:22 Cost and Service of Apple Products in Latin America 00:03:24 Imported Goods and the Lack of Discounts 00:03:59 Expats Switching Back to Regular PCs 00:04:40 Apple Computers in the First World 00:04:55 The Myth of Hollywood's Monopoly on Animation 00:05:25 The High Tech Nature of Animation and Outsourcing 00:06:02 Latin American Studios Behind Blockbuster Movies 00:09:44 The Question of Outsourcing in Third-World Countries 00:10:49 Citizenship Through Military Service 00:11:55 The Role of First-World Individuals in Outsourcing 00:13:21 The Future of Outsourcing and Its Impact 00:14:32 Importance of Checking for Accidents and Mileage When Buying a Used Car 00:14:48 Finding a Car in Buenos Aires Classifieds 00:15:59 The Role of a Mechanic in Assessing Car History 00:16:39 The Texan Expat's Experience with a Used Toyota 00:17:24 The Costly Mechanical Issue and the Expat's Reaction 00:18:13 The Car's Service Record Reveals Its History 00:19:19 Introduction to the Odometer Issue 00:19:20 Discovery of the Odometer Tampering 00:19:25 Initial Reaction to the Odometer Problem 00:19:28 Explanation of the Odometer Manipulation 00:19:33 Confirmation of the Odometer Rollback 00:19:40 Discussion on the Impossibility of Odometer Tampering 00:19:45 Clarification on the Mechanism of Odometer Tampering 00:19:50 The Texas Expat's Reaction to the Odometer Tampering 00:24:11 The Legal Challenge of Odometer Fraud 00:24:17 The Prevalence of Dishonest Practices 00:24:58 Lack of Consumer Protection in Latin America
Transcript
Automatically transcribed from the original recording; names and wording may contain errors.
[00:02] Hi everybody, I'm Johnny Mueller and you're listening to The Expat Files, living in Latin America. The show that tells you what it's really like to live, work, play, and or retire in Latin America. I tell it just like it is, not the version they give you in those glossy travel magazines, or the picture they paint for you in those international traveler websites, where they're only trying to sell you something. What's it really like for expats living in Latin America? Well, it's time to take off those rose-colored glasses and find out. So let's get started. For those of you expats and expat wannabes that are into computers, and who isn't these days, even my 81-year-old mother has an iPod, and a couple of 8 gigabyte flash sticks that she has in her purse, right next to the calcium channel blockers in the Zoloft. Who'd have believed it? Anyway, for your information, down here in Latin America, this is not the land of Apple
[00:52] computers. Oh, you find every big city does have its Apple Outlet Store, alright? You find them in all the big upscale malls, and of course there's always that 1% of the Latin elite population that always has to have the most expensive first world stuff, just so they can show off the brand. But I'm talking about mostly the spoiled kids of the idle rich, many of whom just have to have their Apple products. Like, real honest to goodness iPods and Nanos and iPhones and all that, no Chinese knockoffs for those guys, even though some Apple products are made in China actually. But I tell you, you can walk around all day. Even in the high-end coffee shops like Starbucks, where every well-heeled Latin likes to show off his first world stuff. Because you know, down here it's like I said before, you are what you own, and of course, how many bodyguards you have, and believe it or not, even what kind of suits your bodyguards
[01:40] wear. I mean, whether or not they're Kelvin Klein or Walmart, you know? Anyway, you just don't see Apple computers. And the only time it seems that I ever see them, is when I'm traveling around and happen to hit a high-volume tourist spot, and I run into some young hip first world travelers. Now I know up in the first world, Apple computers have their fanatical following, especially for people who work in the graphics and arts. And you know, just as an aside, I've noticed that when I watch any kind of movie that comes out of Hollywood, there's always a scene or two where someone's punching away at a computer, and 90% of the time it's an Apple. And that other 10% of the time, it happens to be one of those Sony VIO, or V-A-I-O, computer. Which by coincidence, is the most expensive non-Apple PC that you can buy. Next time you watch a movie, check it out. Anyway, all you expat wannabes up there, I suggest you forget about bringing your Apple
[02:27] down here, unless you don't mind paying three times as much for service than you would with a regular PC. The thing is, down here you'll almost always have to go to an authorized Apple service center, for anything that comes up. And you'll only find a very few of those, and they'll only be in the major cities. And they'll be in the high-rent districts, because Apple likes to put their stores in high-end malls. So anything you buy there, including service and maintenance. You're going to pay top dollar for. And secondly, you'll never get a deal. It's almost always list price down here for Apple stuff. And that's Latin American list price, which is usually 10 or 20% higher than first world list prices. And on top of that, you're talking about very low volume sales of Apple products down here. So there's no volume discounts to pass on to consumers. And that's the rule down here, when it comes to high-end pricey import articles.
[03:17] Whether you're talking about perfume from France, imported beer from Belgium, or high-end cars and machine tools from Germany. Down here, nobody gets a deal on any of that kind of stuff. Now I know a lot of you expat wannabes are Apple fanatics up there. And due to your loyalty, you just wouldn't think of switching to a PC product. What a slap in the face that would be, right? Well I have a lot of expat friends who started out in the first world as die-hard Apple users. And they brought their Apple computers down here, and everything was fine for a while. But every Apple user also loves to upgrade to the latest and greatest Apple technology. And they're willing to stand in line for hours at the Apple store to be the first one on their block to get it. Well guess what? About 90% of the expats I know, eventually end up switching back to a regular PC product.
[04:05] Even if they were absolute Apple die-hard fanatics up in the first world. And most of them were, until their Apple finally died or they needed an upgrade. And still, they can't bear to part with that old Apple, and it's sitting out in the garage next to the old VCR, or serving as a nice expensive doorstop. Funny how we grow attached to certain things, even when they're absolutely no good anymore. And it's funny how we overestimate the value of our own things too. But that's another story. And you know, speaking of people who are absolutely nuts about Apple products, well up in the first world, as you might know, almost all studio, animation and art departments use Apple computers for video manipulation, because they claim the Apple software is the best on the market. That seems to have always been the case in the first world, and everybody seems to take it for granted that Hollywood, and maybe Japan, have a lock on the digital animation market.
[04:55] But they don't. And I'm sure you're going to be surprised to know, that down here in Latin America, there are tons of video animation studios that are of absolute first world quality. With top notch video and animation departments that have been outsourced from up in the first world. And it all started about 10 years ago, when the cost of digital animation up in Hollywood was so outrageous that they just had to find ways to cut corners. And though the labor is so damn cheap down here, it took a while for the parts of the puzzle to come together. Because after all, digital animation is a very high tech business, and super specialized. And down here in the third world, they can barely keep the power on for 24 hours a day, or keep the water running through the faucets. So when I mentioned to first world people how many high tech animation studios there
[05:41] are down here, they just don't believe it. Frankly, I didn't either, at first, until I actually walked into a place and saw it for myself. In fact, I know video animators who work down here in Latin America, on first world projects all the time. The biggest studios in Hollywood have been outsourcing their animation for years now, way back to when the Lion King first came out. Now you might find this hard to believe, but there's an animation studio down in Guatemala that's done some of the animation for blockbuster movies like Cars, The Lion King, Finding Nemo, Shrek, and the Chronicles of Narnia. And some of the Guatemalan animation artists have actually made the trip up to Hollywood for the Oscars, because they were a part of the team that was up for the Oscar for best animated full length feature for the Chronicles of Narnia.
[06:28] Now I'm not saying they do whole animated movies like that down here. The funny thing is, they just animate certain things in a movie. They just do very specific parts of a scene, like the sky, or explosions, or things that simulate liquid, like lakes, waters, and rivers. Whereas a similar outsourced animation studio in India, or Malaysia let's say, for the same movie they might end up doing the faces, the animals, and flying objects like birds, bats, and insects. Now get this, there might be 20, or 30, or even 40 animation studios all over the world doing separate little parts of an animated movie. And I asked one of my Latin friends, who's a project manager at one of these studios, he said they get their jobs from Hollywood based on a bidding process. Every Hollywood studio will break a movie down into hundreds of separate animated pieces,
[07:19] and any animation studio throughout the world can bid on some or all of those parts. And of course, usually the lowest bidder gets it, as long as they can do the work according to spec. And he told me that every little animation studio, like the one in Guatemala, usually picks up at least a couple of scenes out of every big animated movie. And each little outsourced animation studio has its own specialty, like explosions, or flight, or underwater scenes, or whatever. So that's what they bid on. And the fact is, he said it's all a lie when you see a documentary by Disney or Pixar, and they're showing you how they do all the animation process over there. Well they don't, only a tiny bit of that movie is done in house. The studio up in the first world comes up with the major characters and the storyboard, and they farm all of it out to little 10-man companies like his, down in Guatemala, Argentina,
[08:08] Peru and Chile, Indonesia, India, wherever. And they do the work for about 20-25% of the cost of animators up in the first world. So don't be fooled into thinking these big studios in Hollywood like Disney and Pixar are giving you an all-American product, because believe me they're not. They too, like the first world manufacturing and service sectors, are outsourcing everything they possibly can. Now when I asked my latin friend what his top level animators are making, he told me they make about $500 a month. Which is about twice what the average guy down here makes, but less than 20% of what an animator makes up in the first world. And he also told me that all the animators down here, their dying wish, is to get up to the first world and work for one of those big Hollywood studios as an animator, making
[08:55] 50-75 grand a year. They figure they should be able to make what the big boys make in the first world, since they have the required skills to do that kind of work, and they know it. But like my friend said, they're outsourcing all those jobs now to the third world, so there's very few jobs like that available up in the states. But that's still a latin animator's fondest dream. In fact, my friend, who like I said is in charge of one of these little animation studios down here, his English is nearly perfect, and he's been back and forth to Hollywood a number of times regarding the movies that his little studio does animation for. And he himself has had that very same dream to go to the United States and work as an animator up there, or as a section producer or production chief, because he's eminently qualified for that kind of work. But he too has found that it's nearly impossible, because these days, everything is getting
[09:43] outsourced. And you know, that begs the question, how do these guys down in Chile, Argentina, Guatemala or wherever, learn the very high tech game of digital animation down here in the third world? Well, they don't teach it in schools and universities down here, and if they do, it'll be like everything else third world, 20 years or more behind the state of the art. Well, my friend told me that the guy who started his company used to be an animator up in the first world for Walt Disney, and his parents just happened to be immigrants from Guatemala to the United States, and they brought him up to the US as a very little kid, of course, as illegal wetbacks. But as you might know, a lot of illegals end up getting their residency and finally, citizenship. There are a number of ways in which you can do that, including sponsorship by an individual, a business or a US family, or believe it or not, by joining the military.
[10:33] And by the way, did you know that if you're an illegal alien in the United States, a man between 18 and 30 years old, you can actually sign up for the US military, and if you do your tour and get honorably discharged, you'll actually receive your US citizenship after that and it's 100% legal. And that's why if you look at the composition of the US military right now, you'll see at the recruitment and grunt level a greatly disproportionate number of Latinos. Now to all you expats and expat wannabes out there, doesn't that sound just a little bit twisted to you? We chase them down at the border and deport them right away, but if they speak pretty good English and apply for the military, we'll give them a gun, send them to Afghanistan, and promise them citizenship. I don't get it.
[11:18] How about you? Anyway, my Latin friend at that animation studio told me how his boss started the company. It seems that when he was working for Disney, he saw that the big studios were starting to farm out animation pieces to places like India and Indonesia and he decided to get in on the act by starting a studio down in Guatemala and with his contacts, he was able to bid on work right away. And that's how these little satellite animation studios start up in the third world. And my friend told me that because there are no schools for animation down in the third world, they hire people who have art and computer experience and train them to be digital animators on the job. And that's how the Hollywood connection for outsourcing works down here. And the other thing is Hollywood studios aren't just going to take your lowest bid, accept
[12:04] it and expect you to deliver a great product, not if you're coming from a hole in a wall studio in the third world. You've got to show them that you've got the right stuff before you even get the job and get paid. So basically, it takes a first world person cracking the whip to run a studio like that and make it work. Now I was also told that most of these outsourcing studios use Apple equipment. I knew I'd eventually get back to that. Anyway, they use Apple equipment and software because the final product has to match exactly what they're using up in Hollywood so they can mix all the pieces from all the different outsourced studios together and get the final product right. In one day, my friend actually invited me into his little animation studio down here and what I saw was pretty much a miniature of what you see in any confined area occupied
[12:49] by a bunch of computers and computer nerds. Except that it was a little dirtier, a little more ragged around the edges, the toilet didn't flush, some of the fluorescent lights were burnt out, they had bars on all the windows and an armed guard with a shotgun at the front door. Which is pretty much par for the course down here in the third world. And I might add they're in a kind of a low end industrial part of town where the rents are dirt cheap, about 600 bucks a month for the space. Add that to the fact that their 10 or so employees only make, at maximum, about $500 a month each. So, based on all that you have to agree that first world outsourcing is here to stay. It's not going to go away, it's only going to snowball. And unfortunately, that means that for average first world people, the future does not look very bright at all.
[13:35] So you better hunker down and think about what you and your kids are going to do, because those jobs just aren't going to come back. Not when you can set up a high tech business in a hole in the wall and pay 600 bucks a month rent in the third world. In these days it's getting easier by the day, because when it comes to high tech, you can do everything by internet. And you don't have to depend on shipping anything by truck, mail or air. Okay, let's move on to a different topic. Now a few shows ago I talked about whether or not it was a good idea to ship your car down here, buy one when you get here, or drive your own car down. Well wouldn't you know it, right after I made that report, I ended up at one of those expat bars that I told you never to hang out in, but sometimes for me, that's where I get my best stories. What's good for the goose is not necessarily good for the gander, you know?
[14:21] Anyway, a good old expat boy from Texas comes up to me and says, Johnny, you gotta hear my story about how I got taken to the cleaners when I recently bought a car down here. And here's how it went. Now everybody knows when you buy a used car, two of the most important things you have to check for are for one, has that car you're looking at ever been in a serious accident? And what kind of mileage does that car you want to buy have on the odometer? And down here, that would be kilometers and not miles. Anyway, this guy says to me, one day some months ago he was scanning the Saturday edition of the local classifieds of a newspaper down in Buenos Aires, and Buenos Aires by the way is a huge city with about 13 million people. Anyway, the Saturday newspaper has a lot of ads for cars where they show actual photos along with the price and the relative details, like the model, the year, certain accessories,
[15:11] the kilometer reading, and if it's ever been crashed or not. In that case, it'll say Nunka Chocalo, which translates to never hit, which believe me is a big thing down here, because there's so many accidents and so many twisted cars, and mechanics that can fix them good enough so that the average guy never knows that they were actually hit, unless of course you have your own expert body man take a look at it, which I highly recommend. Of course, when I'm talking about accidents here, I'm talking about big disabling accidents, not your little fender benders or parking lot nicks and scratches, because any used car could have some of those. I'm talking about the major hits, where the car's been completely put out of commission or the frame has been twisted, which can lead to serious problems after you've bought that car. Anyway, if you bring a good mechanic or a body man along with you, they'll be able
[15:57] to tell you just what kind of crap that car's been through. So anyway, this Texan expat guy says to me that he found a car in the paper, a 2005 Toyota, which is six years old, but it only had 34,000 kilometers on it, which is about 20,000 miles, a very lucky find. That means the car's just been broken in, it's almost like new. So he took a body man down to the car lot with him, and it came out clean, it had never been in a bad accident. So the guy took it for a test ride, everything was okay, he wheeled and dealt with the salesman for a while and bought it. In fact, he even took it down to the local Toyota dealership and had him check it out mechanically. And he paid about 50 bucks for that, and the mechanics there said there was nothing wrong with it. Fine. So far, so good. Now about two months later, this guy brings the car to the Toyota dealership because the
[16:46] idiot light goes on on the dashboard that shows there's a problem with the engine. You know what I'm talking about, every car has a row of little lights that go on when you turn the ignition key, and once you start the car, they all go off, or they're supposed to anyway. Well in his case, the light that depicted the little motor stayed on and wouldn't go off. So he took the car down to the dealer, just like you're supposed to do in a case like that. Now a day later, when he came back to pick the car up, the people at Toyota said that the car was showing that it had low compression, that sooner rather than later he was going to need a top end overhaul on that motor, and that it was going to cost him between $2,000 and $2,500. And since he only had that car for two months, and a top end overhaul is unheard of when a car only has 34,000 kilometers on it, 20,000 miles that is, he blew his stack at the service
[17:35] counter and demanded to know how something like that could happen. In fact he thought, like any expat would, that these guys had dollar signs in their eyes, and they were going to shaft him because he was a captive gringo. And here's what happened next. The mechanic he talked to, that was looking over at the diagnostic results, and the printouts that came from the analyzing equipment, well he suggested that they look at the repair record on that car, because they have files that go way back on any car that's bought new from a Toyota agency. Most of them have some kind of service record, and all Toyota agencies had access to those files. And it turns out it was bought brand new in 2005 at a Toyota agency. Now you remember what I said in my past show, that it's a good idea when you buy a car down here, that you buy one that was bought originally from a bonafide dealership, like Toyota, Nissan,
[18:23] Mazda, Volkswagen, whatever. And when it's a used car, they always advertise that fact if it is from an agency. They always like to put in the ad, de ahincia, which means from the agency. Because if it's not from the agency, there's a good possibility that it was a rack up in the United States, bought at a car auction, repaired, driven down to Latin America and resold. And in that case, you could be buying a pack of troubles. Anyway in the case of the Texas Expat, this was a car bought from the agency, so Toyota had a file on this car and a record of every time it came in for repairs or maintenance since the day it was purchased. Now when the Texas Expat was whining loud and giving them hell at the front desk at the Toyota maintenance shop, screaming about how a car with only 34,000 kilometers could
[19:09] possibly need an overhaul, well soon enough in the commotion, all the other Toyota mechanics on the floor gathered around the maintenance desk to listen to this guy's complaints and offer some opinions. And as they all looked over the computer print out files on the car, going back to 2005, one of the guys blurted out, hey there's something wrong here. Look at the mileage, this car doesn't have 34,000 kilometers, the last time the original owner brought this car in, the paperwork we have says the car had 134,000 kilometers. In other words, somewhere over the past year, 100,000 kilometers were somehow wiped off that odometer, making it look like it was a very low mileage car. And the Texas Expat said, in his broken spanglish of course, wait a minute, how is that possible?
[19:56] All these cars in the last 20 or 30 years have digital odometers, it's impossible to turn the mileage or the kilometers back on one of those things. I remember you could do that back in the old days, when those odometers weren't digital at all and they were mechanical, and a slick mechanic could get his hand up under the dashboard and rotate those wheels with the numbers on them back a little bit, and there was a lot of prosecutions of dealers back in those days when rolling back odometers was kind of an epidemic. You used to see that in the court report in the local papers all the time. And the Texas Expat repeated it's impossible, there's no way anybody can roll back an odometer on a digital display, unless of course their crook was really sophisticated with computers and had tons of just the right equipment. Just the right equipment he repeated, just like a Toyota dealership like you guys have.
[20:46] And at that moment he had no choice but to think that the guys at the Toyota dealership just might have had something to do with the rollback. Then one of the mechanics offered to check something, and he jumped into the front seat. It took him about a half an hour to disassemble the instrument panel, and when he opened the backside of the odometer readout, he found out how someone had pulled off that scam. Someone had yanked the little wire clip off the back of the first digit on the readout, the one that indicates the 100,000 mark. So being disconnected, the digit 1 on the 134,000 mark never had the power going to it to light up the number 1. And so because it was unlit it appeared blank. So instead of reading 134,000 kilometers, it was just reading 34,000 kilometers.
[21:32] Nice trick huh? And a really clever rip off if I say so myself. I never heard of it, have you? So naturally the Texas Expat gets on the phone and calls his lawyer. He's a gringo and there's going to be a whole lot of suing going on. In fact now he's got all the proof in the world. A printout right from the agency that says this car had 134,000 kilometers. And he's got a newspaper article from a big daily newspaper that shows an advertisement for that car stating that the car only has 34,000 kilometers in black and white. Somebody stripped off 100,000 kilometers along the way, so somebody was going to get sued. Now later that day the lawyer called up the used car dealership and they claimed they knew nothing about it. That if the car was rolled back 100,000 kilometers, they said it must have been the doings of
[22:18] the original owner, which meant they were fooled too and were innocent. So sue him. But you see the lawyer said, you guys, the car dealers, are the experts. You sell cars for a living. Over the years you must have sold thousands of cars. You're the experts and you know all the tricks. So you must have known something was fishy here when somebody brings in a car like that with such low mileage. But you know, they weren't going to budge because the people at that car dealership knew damn well that lawsuits as a rule down here don't mean diddly. Everybody knows that if someone takes you to court, that case could go on for years. And on top of that, lawsuits with any kind of decent outcome are rare. And the average Latin guy doesn't like fighting City Hall. They don't like to hire lawyers and they can't take off work time and time again to go down
[23:03] to court in person and watch their case get postponed over and over and over and watch it drag on for months and even years. They usually end up licking their wounds and accepting their losses, knowing that life is tough down here and everybody gets taken once in a while and you live and you learn. But that Texas expat was a different case. He was a gringo who wasn't used to getting screwed like that. He wasn't going to take that one sitting down. Even though the first thing his lawyer suggested was to look for another car that he liked at another dealership and trade in that car with a rolled-back odometer. In other words, screw the next guy in line. And with that, the Texas expat said, but what about the engine light it's on? They're not going to accept that car as a trade-in when there's something obviously wrong with the engine. Then the lawyer winked at him and said, well, someone pulled a wire on you, didn't they?
[23:50] Which of course was a sly insinuation for him to do the same thing on that motor indicator light. So now that expat Texan good old boy is stuck between a rock and a hard place. He either has to pull the same thing on somebody else and play musical chairs with that car or throw good money after bed and get that motor fixed. Or waste a year or two screwing around with lawsuits. And as long as they drag that suit through court, he won't be able to sell that car because they'll need it for evidence. Now as for me, I have to wonder how many times car dealers and dishonest individuals and mechanics have done that kind of thing. Because think about this for a minute. Suppose you had a hundred and fifty two thousand kilometers on your car and you pull that wire on the odometer and it only read fifty two thousand. Now if your car is six or seven years old, that's low mileage, but not out of the realm
[24:37] of possibility. And that'll hardly raise a red flag with anyone. Unless of course the rest of the car is beat to crap and really shows a lot of wear and tear. Then you might have some question about it. But the average person on the street, especially down in Latin America, they are not critical buyers and customers at all. They rarely look up any consumer site on the internet, compare cost or quality. And like I said before, there's no real consumer protection agencies down here. There's just no one to complain to when you get screwed. Though you do see people calling for those kind of organizations all the time. Because people down here are aware that those kind of organizations exist in the first world and they actually help people. And though there are actually some consumers rights groups down here, even the ones that do exist are brand new and have almost no teeth at all.
[25:22] So it's buyer beware. And the only exception to that rule is when you buy from a first world transnational like Toyota directly and you get a solid guarantee backed by the manufacturer. Or you buy from a first world franchise like Walmart, Office Depot or Sears. So as far as our Texas expat is concerned, he wasn't even protected by buying a car that originally came from an agency. Which is about the best protection you can get down here. Though as you can see from this case, that didn't help him much except for the fact that he was able to pull up the past repair record. And by the way, the used car dealership that originally sold that car to the expat, they actually do give a written 30 day warranty on every car they sell. But he didn't find out that the odometer was rolled back until he'd had the car for two months.
[26:08] So it was just bad timing for him. And anyway, who knows if they would have honored that warranty if he'd have found out about the problem within the first 30 days. He may have ended up fighting with him anyway and getting into a lawsuit. And then he'd be right back in the same boat that he's in now. So anyway, his story doesn't have an ending yet, but I'll keep you posted. His latest idea is to pull in some favors and to get that car dealership blacklisted at the American Embassy. Because they have a list that's available to all visitors, US tourists and citizens, and Americans working or stationed as military down in that third world country. It's a list of local hospitals, doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc. and businesses that new expats, long term American visitors, etc. pay a lot of attention to because they
[26:53] don't know anything about the country. Not yet. And as far as our good old boy Texas expat friend, he's not sitting still about this. He's looking to call in a favor at one of the local papers too. He wants to write a little op-ed piece highlighting what happened to him. And he wants to find out how many other people have been victims of this kind of thing. He thinks an article like that could put a big dent in that used car lot's business. But I don't think that'll help his case much either, because those days are long gone when bad publicity actually hurts somebody. I mean look at Lindsay Lohan, Charlie Sheen, Robert Downey Jr., Amy Winehouse and Ozzy Osborne. That's the best kind of bad publicity that money can buy. You've been listening to The Expat Files, living in Latin America.
[27:41] And don't forget, you can email me on anything at all about Latin America. The Expat Files at gmail.com. That's theexpatfiles at gmail.com. See you next time. Nos vemos.