It seems that lately it’s been a buyers market. However, I’ve never had to work so hard to buy a product. So, that said, I have a note for merchants. And examples too.
Example A) My new car.
It took a week to buy a new car. True, there was plenty of research to be done. Lots of test drives too. But it became abundantly clear that car dealers didn’t really want to sell us a car. No. Wait. A few car dealers. No one seemed to think we seriously wanted to buy a car. But we were. Our other car was fading fast.
When the moment came that we were ready to slap down cold hard cash, the car dealers were ready to play hard ball.
I’m more of a bicyclist myself and I don’t appreciate paying for things I won’t use, didn’t ask for, and was not quoted over the phone. That’s right. Over the phone.
During the car buying extravaganza, we called numerous dealers. Once we selected our top three choices of vehicle (Hyundai Santa Fe, Hyundai Veracruz, and Kia Borrego) we began looking around at surrounding car lots searching for just the right car. What we found?
Wrong color. Powder blue really should have stayed in the 80s.
Running boards, bleh.
Navigation system. Gimme an Iphone please.
DVD system. Who’s going to use that? The dog?
We looked in 4 different states. That’s how ready we were to buy a car. An SUV. An LUV, as they call the Borrego and Veracruz.
We found a lovely little Santa Fe. We asked for a price over the phone. They gave us one. We entered the dealership. Not only were we subjected to another full car inspection and test drive (we’d already driven the Santa Fe once, had inspected it three times - at this point, I was fairly certain I could sell the Santa Fe myself.) we then had to sit through “negotiations.” Seriously, we’d negotiated over the phone. Or so we thought. We’d haggled out a price. We were ready to sign and drive.
They mysteriously forgot to add sales tax and a documentation fee and a “security feature” to the price we were given over the phone. The new price? Roughly $1500 higher.
Okay, sales tax I get. But how does one forget to calculate sales tax for a multi-thousand dollar purchase? Documentation fee, not loving it but I can live with it. The extra security was where they lost me. When I explained how useless it was and how I wasn’t willing to pay for it, things went down hill. Long story short, we spent four hours trying desperately to buy a car and came away empty handed.
The next day we called another dealer. Found the perfect car for us. No extra security features. No running boards. No DVD player. No navigation system. We asked for a price. Repeatedly. Ultimately, the salesperson hung up on us saying they couldn’t sell a car over the phone.
Note to car dealers… why not?
Second note to salespersons and car dealers everywhere, don’t hang up on your customers, especially when they’re serious about buying a car and are asking legitimate questions.
They were incredibly surprised when we showed up thirty minutes later, walked right past the car (while quickly looking for scratches, etc.) and demanded we talk numbers. They wouldn’t tell us over the phone how much “and change was.” As in, it’ll be “such and such thousands of dollars and change.” Ultimately, that and change turned out to be seven hundred dollars. Again, we were going down that path of, we want to buy a car, you keep sneaking in fees and don’t want to sell a car today.
Luckily when we got up and walked out they offered to cut their “and change” in half and we drove off in a new car. Yay!
But this sadly isn’t the only case of trying to buy a product and stores not being willing or having the merchandise even stocked too sell.
I’m writing this post on a new netbook from Dell. I looked them up online, found out that it would take ten days to get here and well, sometimes I like instant gratification. Once I decide to buy product X, I don’t want to wait for it.
So off to WalMart we went. And went. And went. We were finally able to purchase the coveted netbook at the 6th WalMart we visited. Insane? You bet. I checked WalMart.com and they said that store #3 on our list had the computer(we just happened to check the two walmarts on the way to #3.) No, they had a display model. Evidently display models count toward inventory, even though they won’t sell it to you.
Yes, we traipsed all over north west Georgia to find this little beauty. And sadly, no one at WalMart seemed that concerned that they weren’t making a sale that day. Sad, isn’t it?
My husband and I have noticed a similar phenomenon at Best Buy, in fact we call it the Best Buy Phenomenon. Over the years we’ve purchased several things from Best Buy. Several big ticket items, in fact. This morning we stopped by Best Buy to check out the mini computers.
I kid you not, five different Best Buy employees asked if they could help us and that doesn’t count the greeter. We declined because we were still in research mode. During research mode we like to play with the product, touch it and use it. We like to see how it will fit in our life, without a salesperson standing over our shoulder trying to sell, sell, sell us on the product.
After a bit more research at home and a few more trips to Target and Walmart, we were ready to buy. Back to BestBuy we go. And we had questions. Questions that weren’t answered in the little slips of paper stuck to the price tag. We looked back and forth between the minis. We scanned the boxes of new computers below the demos. We still had questions before buying. Not a single Best Buy employee offered to help us.
This, friends, is what we call the Best Buy Phenomenon.
It’s happened multiple times to us, pretty much any time we go to buy a computer, camera or TV. When we’re just looking or buying something simple like a video or Milk Duds, there are ten employees at our beck and call. When it’s time to get something out of those locked shelves…there’s no one around. It’s bizarre.
It’s the way of things I guess. All I know is that I’ve never had to work so hard to buy products in my life. Let’s hope this salesperson apathy is just a passing phase.
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