#280 – Episode 280: Navigating Life in Latin America – Car Damage, Repair Costs, and Cultural Insights

Automatically transcribed from the original recording; names and wording may contain errors.

[00:14] Hello there all you expat wannabes, I'm Johnny Mueller and you're listening to the Expat Files, living in Latin America. The show that tells you just what it's like to live, work, play and or retire down here in Latin America. It's a mix of the good, the bad, the ugly and the great and it's all right here so let's get started. Well it happened to me again. I got nailed in a parking lot and I wasn't even there. Now you know that's one of the occupational hazards of living down in Latin America. I mean getting your car scratched, dinged and banged, wherever you park it, whether it's on the street or in a parking lot. Now you have to remember, latins as opposed to gringos have severe personal space issues. In other words, they like to crowd you, anywhere and everywhere. And as much as it ruffles our feathers, especially when someone's breathing down your neck in

[01:01] an elevator or gently leaning against you in a line at a bank or in a grocery store, latins don't seem to notice it at all, in fact they seem to thrive on it. And you know in parking lots, they've got yellow and white lines painted where you're supposed to put your car, right? Well even then, the engineers and parking lot designers, if there are such a thing, have vastly undersized the parking spaces and the lines are always too narrow for your car. So lack of personal space is institutionalized down here. Now most people might say, well that's alright, because latins drive subcompact cars. Most of them are tiny, like 95% of them. Well that doesn't matter a bit. Seems like most latins, instead of centering their cars between the two lines in the parking place, they'd rather just cozy right up next to your car. And you know, we'll be to the person that parks next to a pickup truck.

[01:48] Since latins will overload those things to the gills with all kinds of sharp and pointed junk. And it's never completely confined to the bed of the truck. There's always something hanging out or overflowing over the sides, which sooner or later is going to scrape someone else's car, probably yours. That's why when I go to a parking lot, I always scout out a wall or a pole that I can park next to. That way, I know I can only get dinged from one side, not both. And if you can't find a post or a dead end wall to park next to, the next best thing is to park next to a very nice new expensive car. So take a few turns around the parking lot, looking for an empty space next to a very nice car. Then you just cozy right up about 8 inches next to that car and void their personal space a bit. Which he or she won't mind because they were born into a culture that's used to that sort

[02:36] of thing. So cozy up to the nicest car you can find. And that way you'll be giving the junky car that's parked on the other side of you a foot or so of extra space. So with any luck, when he flings his door open, he won't hit yours. And the guy with the really nice car next to you, well, he doesn't want to mess up the paint job on his brand new car by flinging his door open. So at least you hope he's a little concerned about that. Anyway, it's a good bet he's going to be the cautious one. All new car owners down here are like that for the first couple of months until their doors get all scratched and dinged and they give up on the whole thing too. So anyway, yesterday I was at the local Hays Hardware and when I got back from doing my thing, there was a nice big crease in my driver's side front fender. And of course there were people walking around but nobody saw it. So I had no one to bitch at except the little guy selling chiclets and candies, who had

[03:25] to have seen or at least heard it because he stands around that parking lot trying to sell you stuff all day long. But he played dumb too, and though I really didn't bitch at him, there is some satisfaction when you can bitch at someone. Anyone. Anyway, and the parking lot attendant, you know the guy that's minding the gate when you leave? Well he was like Sergeant Schultz in the old Hogan's Heroes TV show. If you're old enough to remember that, you know, I see nothing. Only in Spanish it's, no se, no vienada. When I forgot to tell you, that crease in my front fender was on the driver's side and when I opened my door, I heard this, meaning the front fender was shoved back a bit into the door, so it wasn't a simple fender crease I was dealing with now.

[04:11] The fender was actually moved back a bit and now it was impinging on my front door. So every time I open the door, I hear a grating sound and a little chunk of paint would flake off the edge of the door. Not good, and that means I was hit pretty hard. Wonder what the other car looked like? Well I know it was red because of the paint on my fender, and if there's any justice or karma in the world, it was a Ferrari. Fat chance, huh? So naturally I'm pissed off like any gringo would be, and I know I can't just leave it because every time I open the door, I'm doing more damage. So luckily, like one block away, there's a Honda car dealership with a nice big body shop attached, so I thought I'd pop in for a second since it was close. Now I didn't want to get the car fixed with those guys because I know they'd be expensive. All I wanted the mechanic to do was to bend my fender back a little bit so that my front

[04:59] door could close properly. At least free the door up till I could get it to my body guy and have him fix it for, I'm sure, half the price. Anyway, when I pulled in, I figured I'd better let the guy think I'm going to give him his business so I asked him for an estimate. And while he was doing that and poking around under the wheel wheel, I politely asked him if he could bend it back a little bit so I could free up the front door so it didn't keep scraping. Which he was kind enough to do. And after about 10 minutes, he gave me an estimate on the whole job of 400 bucks. Which I know up in the states would have been a great deal. But this is the third world and the average body man or mechanic down here makes about $3 or $3.50 a month, dollars that is. So if I had my car fixed there, which would take probably less than a half a day for a good body man to fix, the shop owner would make 400 bucks, enough to pay that guy for

[05:45] a whole month. With 50 bucks left over for paint and materials. Anyway, I immediately made the half hour drive to my little body guy and this guy does tremendous work and of course he does it out of his own house in his little garage. So he's got no overhead and as a matter of fact, he doesn't even have a car. With this little guy, you just call him up and he'll ride his bike out to where your car is and have a look at it, make an estimate, figure out what parts and stuff he needs. And sometimes, and he's done this for both me and Eddie, he'll pull the damaged part like a fender right off your car, wherever it's parked, in a street or a parking lot and he'll strap the fender or bumper or whatever piece he took off to his bike with plastic and bungee cords and do all the repairs at home and a day or two later, drive back to your car and put it back together, good as new.

[06:31] So anyway, on the way to driving over to this little guy's house, I pulled into another little body shop place that I know of where a gringo restaurant owner I know gets his cars fixed and he's always telling me to stop over there because this guy does such a great job for peanuts. So anyway, this guy's a one man shop too, however he actually has a real sign and some artwork on the side of his garage that kind of makes it look like a bonafide body shop. But his setup was nicer and a little bit higher rent than the little guy I usually use, so I was expecting his estimate to be on the high side but not near as high as the Honda dealership. Anyway, he had a good look at it and he said $175, which again was ridiculously cheap for the damage that was done. Anyway, I thanked him and told him I'd think about it and proceeded over to my little guy's

[07:17] place. Now I'm not being mean when I call him a little guy, now this guy's got to be about 5 foot tall and weighs about 105 pounds, so there's no demeaning insult intended there, just the way he is. Anyway, when he had a look at it, his estimate was $90 bucks, so that's where the car is right now in his little garage. Oh and by the way, I should tell you this, when you deal with guys like that working out of their homes, it's always on a verbal and a handshake basis. So you'll get your estimate and the guy will generally ask you for 50% down to buy paint and parts and stuff, no problem there, right? But beware that whatever they quote you, even after a handshake deal, most often that's not the end of it, because you see, more often than not, when you give him that 50% down, let's say it's 40 bucks, he'll go out and buy a pair of shoes or take his wife to McDonald's

[08:03] or pay off a long standing debt, so as a result those replacement parts for your car might not get purchased. So there is a good chance that the very next day you'll get a call and your body guy or mechanical say that he ran into a little complication and he needs an extra little part or two, and then he'll ask you if you'll please come over and give him the money for it. Now that should be an obvious signal to you that he's dead broke, because remember, I'd say a good 80 to 90% of Latin Americans live from hand to mouth day to day, and there's just no room for planning or budgeting. So anyway, right on cue the very next day after I dropped that car off, I got a call from my little body man, and he started the conversation by saying, Don Johnny, tenemos una problemita, which means Johnny, we have a little problem.

[08:52] And then he said, I didn't see it before, but I discovered there's a broken plastic clip that I need to get at the dealership, and it's gonna cost 12 bucks. Now when he said that, I knew there was a very good possibility that there's no such special clip involved at all, but he needs the 12 bucks to buy the touch up paint, and you know, you can hardly get mad at a guy for jacking up the price by 12 bucks. And I know some of you right now might be thinking that I assume the worst about people, and that I really should give the guy a break and give him the benefit of the doubt that he really is gonna buy a clip for 12 bucks. And I know there's a lot of you guys and gals up there who don't think I should give a Latin guy like that the benefit of the doubt, because you wonder when you hear stories like this, are all Latins basically dishonest? And people do ask me this all the time, especially when I talk about gringo pricing.

[09:39] You know, when Latins see a gringo or a first-worlder and all of a sudden the price doubles, which by the way mostly happens on the tourist trail, not off the tourist trail where gringos are scarce. So to answer that question, are Latins basically dishonest? Well considering all their politicians and leaders are liars and thieves and constantly loot the country and steal its patrimony, boy does that sound familiar, huh? Anyway, I can only say that with 200 or 300 years of examples like that, from people who are supposed to be their role models, you can hardly blame the average Latin person for sometimes wheeling and dealing on the edge of truth and honesty. But the fact is, I've met many Latin people who are dead honest all the time. They'd never think to rip you off, they just got good values. And I've also met a lot of Latins that'll go either way.

[10:26] In other words, if you're straightforward and honest with them, they'll be the same with you. However, if you're a bit sleazy and underhanded, they'll take the ball and run with it. But let's get back to my fender bender repair job. Well I can tell you this much, this little guy has fixed more than a half dozen bangs and dings in my cars, and he has never, not once in all that time, held to his original price, even after a friendly handshake on the deal. And another thing, little guys like that that work out of their houses rarely will give you a receipt. And who gives a rip, right? But I know some gringos and expats who just have to have everything documented and they want a receipt, or a factura as they call them down here, on everything. Now what happens with a little guy like this that's off the books? If you do ask for a receipt, he'll agree to it of course, but more often than not, he'll

[11:11] come right out and say that with a receipt, he'll have to add VAT tax. That's the sales tax that's collected on everything you buy and sell down here with a receipt. But you knew that already, right? Which can range anywhere from 10% to 20%. But the thing is, when you're dealing with guys like that, who are generally off the books, and they give you a receipt and you pay that extra 10% to 20% depending on the country you're in, they're just going to pocket that. They're not going to pay the government. That's one of the reasons they can keep their overhead so low. And the fact is, more often than not, if you ask for a receipt, the one you get will be fake. That's not to say it won't look good, it'll look fine, but it won't be registered with the government. Now as you might recall, all official receipts are issued by governments down here, and the numbers are registered and sequential.

[11:57] And any Latin in business knows that a gringo or an expat, or any foreigner for that matter, has no way of knowing what's a real receipt and what's a fake one. So just remember, when you're doing business with someone who's got their business, located in their house, or a place that's kind of rough and rickety looking that obviously doesn't have a web page and does not want to be in the yellow pages. I'm talking about a place of business with no signage and minimum advertising, or none at all. Well that usually means you're dealing with someone who's working off the books, and there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, I encourage using these little guys. Many of them are really terrific craftsmen, who just don't want to work for a big outfit. They want to be their own bosses, and basically they're saying, screw the government. And I agree. The government gives these little guys nothing, so why should they contribute?

[12:44] Yes, and by the way, I did mention the yellow pages a little while ago. And yep, they're actually still alive and kicking down here. And internet advertising, which has taken over in the first world, is just in its infancy down here. It's that lag time thing I'm always talking about. And yet another reason why there's so much opportunity for us expats and wannabes. Now I hate to use that overused phrase, getting in on the ground floor, but that's exactly what you can get in on. Now up north, when someone says you can get in on the ground floor of an opportunity, that means you've missed it already. But down here, there are still thousands of ground floor opportunities, but you have to be down here to spot them. Anyway, just know that if you're the proper kind of anal retent of gringo that needs a

[13:30] receipt for everything, you just might pay an extra 10 or 20% for nothing. But back to that car repair story. Now it's not to say that I don't get pissed off at this little guy every once in a while, because I do. And it's never about the quality of his work. And it's always because, like I've tried to explain to this guy so many times, that once you shake your hand on a deal, it's a deal. And believe me, the last few times he's looked at my car to give me an estimate, after we shake on it, I always look him in the eye and say, Emilio, now this is it. We made a deal. That's the price I'm going to pay you and that's all. We agreed, right? And he always smiles and nods his head and says, si, Don Johnny, si, el por su puesto es el presio. Punto final. Which means the estimate is the price.

[14:17] Period. But I know the moment he says that I'm going to get a call the next day or soon enough and he's going to nick me for another 10 or a 20. Now you might wonder if there ever comes a time when gringos and expats who own cars finally get so sick of the dings and bangs that they get in the doors and bumpers that they just say, screw this and drive it like it is. Well, like so many expats have told me, it's just so hard for a first world person to get over that hump. To come to that realization that it's probably a good idea not to get your car fixed at all. Unless of course it's mechanically screwed up, then you want to get it fixed or it's been hit so hard and damaged so badly that it's so embarrassing it's laughable. Well there's a kind of rule of thumb to all of that too.

[15:03] Now if you buy a brand new car or one that's a year or two old, obviously, being that you have gringo sensibilities and are ultra sensitive about the look of your car, then like any gringo you want to keep it pristine looking. So like me for example, the little car I'm driving around is a 2012 model and in a little over a year I've had that thing in a body shop four times already and there's nothing special about that car at all. In fact, it's one of the lower priced ones you can get. Which is why I bought it in the first place because there was a super, kind of a once in a lifetime deal going, when that model was first offered down in Latin America. I mean it was a hell of a deal. It's got a factory five year, 100,000 mile guarantee, it gets about 50 miles to the gallon and it's so basic, stripped down and unglamorous that no one's going to steal it.

[15:49] But I'm certain within a year or so, I'm going to let the dings and bangs and scratches kind of add up and I'm not going to run back to my little body man every time I get one. And even though he's dirt cheap, instead I'm going to do what expat Eddie does. I'm going to let the dings and scratches pile up until some first world gringo or expat makes some kind of an ugly remark and then I'll do something about it. Maybe. Oh and to change the subject just a bit, referring to my last show when I talked about gays and lesbians down here in Latin America, now here's a very interesting development I didn't have time to mention. Now lately I've been seeing some big billboard ads and ads on buses down here in Central America that are very risque for a macho Latin society like this. In fact, just a few years ago, ads like these would have caused a riot.

[16:36] Even now, you'd think it would be too much of a risk for a marketing or ad house to take on a campaign like this even today. And what am I talking about? Well, there are huge billboards and ads all over the place now with a particular well-known sports figure, a football superstar, which is a soccer superstar down here. Now I don't know what the guy's name is and I don't care because I don't follow team sports. I'd much rather spend a Sunday afternoon shucking clams or picking lint out of my navel. And I only say that because you're fooling yourself if you don't think organized sports is not all about the money. But I digress as usual. Anyway there's this huge photo of this soccer superstar and it says in the ad, I'm a sportsman and I'm gay. Now you talk about alternative lifestyle tolerance in the rest of the world. I don't think you could get away with that up in the first world.

[17:24] Try doing something like that in Cleveland. And you know that strikes right at the soft spot of Latin American male culture. I mean they've only got three national pastimes, sports, dancing and tax evasion. And in the immortal words of Meatloaf, two out of three ain't bad, you know? Anyway when this big ad campaign came out like a month or so ago, personally a lot of expats I know and myself were expecting the worst. We figured, uh oh, here comes the graffiti, every macho gay basher will be out there with his spray can. In fact with the bigger billboards out in the countryside, I was expecting to see a few blacked out teeth and bullet holes in the head. Like you see around election time when politicians have their ugly mugs up on billboards. Oh and by the way, in regards to politicians on billboards, about a year and a half ago at election time, the cops did catch some young guys with guns blasting bullet holes

[18:13] in the face of a presidential candidate on a billboard in Peru. And it turns out they weren't your run of the mill delinquents. They were working for the opposing candidate and were actually paid to deface ads and billboards. Anyway I just wanted to let you know that the gay thing is well out in the open here. Not to say that Latin countries are as advanced as Europe or the States. I mean you're not going to see legalization of gay marriages anytime soon down here. Latin America is way too Catholic. And I never quite got the irony that it's okay for priests to repeatedly molest young boys. At least it's been alright for the Catholic Church to cover that up. Yet if you're born gay and you follow that path, you're condemned to hell. And here's another thing I don't get. And you know the Vatican has the largest real estate holdings in the whole world. And by the way, number two is McDonald's.

[18:58] And the Vatican has about six miles of underground chambers that hold the most priceless art antiques and artifacts in the world. Yet every single night, half the children in the world go to bed hungry. I guess if you believe in God, she really does work in mysterious ways. To which you might say, Johnny, you have to have faith. Well, I do have faith in my friends and myself. And now to lighten up and switch gears for a minute. I want you guys to think back when I spoke on one of my past shows about the telephone systems down here in Latin America. And if you recall, I mentioned that a few years ago when governments sold off all their cell phone bands and privatized, the IT and internet business exploded. And now everybody, even the shoeshine boy, has a cell phone. Now I also mentioned that the vast majority of phones down here are the prepaid kind.

[19:46] The kind where you buy a scratch off card and load minutes into your phone. Or just go down to the local tienda and they'll charge up your phone in lieu of the prepaid card. And that's called a ricaraga. Ricaraga. Which just means you fork over your dough to the person behind the cash register. And they're authorized to use their own cell phone to plug in a special code and give you the credit. Right then and there. So basically, that means you're not seeing many of the scratch off cards anymore at all. Instead, the ricargas are making the scratch off cards obsolete. Anyway, a couple of things to remember about that. Always, hold on to your receipt. Because there are the occasional scammers behind the counter who, when they see a gringo or foreigner, or obviously someone with crappy Spanish or none at all, they just might take your money, go through the motions, and you'll walk out of the place and the minutes will

[20:36] never arrive in your phone. Or there's one clever game scammers will play where they'll give you, for example, $5 worth of minutes when you've paid for 10. Now the thing is, whether you've charged your phone with new minutes from one of those scratch off cards, or you go to a ricaraga at the local little store, you'll almost always receive within 10 minutes a text message that says you've received the proper amount of credit. So here's my advice. When you get a ricaraga at a store or gas station, and as you might have figured out, the word ricaraga means recharge in English. Anyway, you should always wait around that 5 or 10 minutes and wait for that text message. Now I'm not saying there are a lot of people in those tienes out to scam you. The fact is, you might not get that text message and it might not be recharged because the guy behind the counter just missed your number by one digit.

[21:24] That's always possible. And that's why you should always hang on to your receipt. And here's another thing. If you wait 10 minutes and still there's no text message, you must know that the gas station or little tienda won't give you your money back and they won't run another charge for you because they're just not authorized to do that. Instead, it's easy enough to go down to one of the local shopping centers and they'll always have a cell phone office for whatever service you're using. And you just bring in your receipt and they'll give you full credit. That's happened to me a couple of times. Oh, and about that other scam I've fallen victim to? Well, that's when you buy, let's say, $10 worth of minutes from a guy behind the counter and you do get that text message and you're thinking, great, my extra minutes just arrived. Well, you better check that message because it'll tell you how much was entered. Just don't think because your phone bleeped and you've got a message that everything's

[22:12] A-OK. Don't just listen for the beep. Check it. And if you feel like an idiot hanging around the gas station, check out counter. Just go in your car and wait it out there. Now, one of the coolest things about all this cell phone competition in Latin America is the fact that all the companies run terrific specials every couple of days. And I'm talking about specifically the prepaid cell phones, you know, the ones you charge up with minutes with a scratch off card or when you go to one of those little tiendas or gas stations and ask for a recarga. If you have a cell phone on a regular contract basis with the company where they debit your bank account or credit card every month, you don't get wild and crazy offers like you get with the prepaid phone. Though with both services, you'll get annoying text messages all the time. Sometimes up to 20 of them a day, they're always trying to get you to buy stuff or get

[22:59] into a raffle or plug a product or a music concert or something. Down here in Latin America, cell phone text messaging advertisements have become a real pain in the ass. In fact, I know a lot of expats and gringos who just never read a single one of them anymore. They hit the erase button every couple of days just to clear the memory. And believe me, in some Latin countries, if you don't do that, you'll actually get a message from your phone saying you don't have any memory left. Anyway, like I said, every couple of days your cell phone company will send you a message or you'll see it on a billboard or in the paper that if you buy time that day, they'll credit you with double or triple the amount of time. And since generally they'll mostly offer triple time, the locals call them dias triples. Triple days. But you also have to remember this, if there's a triple day or some kind of additional offer

[23:46] like that, you have to read the fine print in the newspaper ad or on a billboard because sometimes that extra additional free time will only be good for calls back to the United States, for example, or only valid for the next seven days or less. And that's why, for example, a company like Movistar, which is a Spanish company that's all over Latin America, they're kind of tricksters because often you'll see in the paper or in an ad that they're offering not just three times the minutes as a bonus, but they're offering five or even six times as much time for a bonus. And that's why so many of the middle class and lower middle class Latins will go out and buy Movistar phones because of those seemingly tremendous offers. Whereas some of the other phone companies like Claro or Tigo or Telefonica will offer

[24:32] at a maximum three times as many minutes on one of those special days. So which company would you go with? Movistar, of course. But the problem is, and what they don't tell you even in the fine print, is that you've got a week or less to use all that extra time. And I know for a fact, because I had one of those phones once too, but after a while I figured out a huge percentage of my bonus minutes were evaporating. And after you've figured it out, it's too late because you've bought the phone already. And luckily on the cheap end, they're only 15 or 20 bucks, so when I found out how sneaky that company was, I gave mine away to a shoeshine kid and bought another $15 phone from another company. And that cell company, although they'd only give me three times my minutes on those special days, those extra minutes were good for a full month.

[25:18] Oh, and here's another pointer. On those days when you do get a triple offer like that, you should wait around for the text message that comes for those bonus minutes too. So what I'm saying is you get two messages, one for the initial amount, let's say five bucks, then maybe five minutes later you'll get another text message saying that you've just received your bonus minutes. So do pay attention to that. Like the man said, life is in the details. And since I'm on the subject, I just got an email from a couple of my new friends who came down to my latest expat wisdom seminar and they're now exploring Nicaragua. And their email concerns some of the latest news about cell phones there too. So here it goes. It says, Dear Johnny, yesterday we bought a Movistar SIM card for 50 cordobas for the chip and 50 cordobas to get it cut to fit my iPhone.

[26:04] Yes, I know that's not a low profile phone, but I almost never pull it out in public. Anyway, when we told the guy we wanted to add 500 more cordobas to the balance, he said there was a special going on. You pay 560 cordobas and you get a balance of 3000. In other words, we paid $26 to purchase a SIM card with a balance of about $120 in credit. A great deal. Which means they got a special bonus of 5 times as many minutes. And that is a great deal however, I hope you asked them how many days or weeks you have to use those minutes. Because remember you're dealing with that Spanish company Movistar and they're the ones that love to give you a lot of extra bonus minutes that only last a couple of days.

[26:51] So it may or may not be a great deal. So again, those are just some of the little details we expats don't find out till we've made a few mistakes. Oh yes, and you guys and gals up north who have smartphones and expensive iPhones, you can bring them down here and buy local SIM cards that will fit very cheaply. However, make sure your phone has been unblocked so it will accept another SIM card. Okay, before I finish up today, I've been getting some inquiries about the health care report that I haven't quite finished yet. Well as usual, I've got so much to say and I can really babble on, so it's turned into a much bigger project than I thought, so I'll need another week or so, so just hang on. And don't worry, I'll let you know as soon as I get it posted on expatwisdom.com. You've been listening to The Expat Files, living in Latin America, coming to you twice

[27:40] a week from somewhere south of the border. Email me, theexpatfiles at gmail.com. And don't forget to check out expatwisdom.com to sign up for your free reports on Latin America. See you next time. Nos vemos!