Future Boaters, salesmens attitudes!?

[ari]

You know, if I ever get to the point where I can walk onto into a place like that and pay outright for something in the region of £350k, I'm going to go as scruffily as I can without being completely offensive.

Just for the sheer hell of it. I'd just love to watch the faces as expectations and stereotypes come crashing to deck, shattering into a dozen pieces, exploding their faith in their judgement .

It'd be funny.

How bizarre.

If I were in the market for something seriously expensive I'd be more inclined to want to be taken seriously rather than just play strange mind games.

 

[ari]

How many "unminted" oiks now will be minted in 10 years time ???

There are est approx 400,000 millionaires in UK at last count.(must be true cos internet ses so).
There are approx 60M peeps in UK.so about one in 120 of population is a millionaire.Assuming that the majority have that wealth tied up in property with little free cash and of those left only a few percent are interested in boats and that few have made the decision to attire themselves from the local Pound shop as a protest against consumerism,our boat salesman will need to be very patient indeed for our minted oik to appear.Especially if our minted oik has had a traumatic experience at some point in his life.
A more efficient use of his time may be to concentate of those who appear to be able to afford the boat in question.

Exactly that!!

Not sure they really have time to chase around after every oik in the hope that they might turn out to be some eccentric millionaire (possibly out to play weird games).

Much better, I'd have thought, to be polite to those, but concentrate on what their experience would suggest are real buyers.

It's what I'd do.

 

[ari]

As for sitting in the helm seat and pushing buttons - well that's a little different. most of the boats feature signs asking you not to sit on seats, we looked at some manufacturers who physically roped off helm seats (harder to re-trim after the show than a removable cover). If you want to know how to raise and lower the TV just ask to make sure you don't break anything, (I don't think it's do-able from the helm seat is it?).

Good point!

As I suggested at the beginning, there's probably a lot more to this one than meets the eye were it possible to discover what really happened...

 

[bonny]

Of course, you're all correct. It's not the manufacturer at fault, it's the salespersons attitude, which unfortunately is the manufacturers representative. There are other fish to fry. If however I seriously wanted a said brand and had a bad experience with a particular salesperson, I would not let that stop me. I would (at the point of signing) mention the person by name and make sure that It is clearly understood that I was not happy with his attitude which could have lost them a sale. The point is that whilst I may not seriously be looking at the moment, the opportunity is lost. When we bought our first new boat (many years ago) we went to Earls Court specifically to view a particular model with a definite intention of making a purchase. We could not view it immediately because there were quite a few people queing up and so had a look around other stands at boats we would not have considered and were impressed by one in particular (costing 30% more). We did later view the original choice, and decided against it, placing an order for the more expensive one which impressed us. Our radar moved purely because we were allowed to view a boat in a price range we were not considering. I'm not going to say which boats, but we firmly believe it was the right decision and have never regretted it. A fortunate one in our case.

 

[jfm]

I'm not going to say which boats,

Why is it such a big secret?! It was "many years ago". I'm just curious.

 

[Lucky Duck]

Two weeks ago my missus went into local Audi shop to buy an A5 that she fancied. She wasn't sure which model/engine and was treated badly by salesmen so left. Day before yesterday we both went back in, named the salesman, asked for a different one, and ordered the car for £40k or so. She could have vowed never to buy an Audi, but it would be irrational to mix up the product with some salesman. She'd have been the loser cos she actually liked the car. If you don't like the dealer, just find another that you do like, and don't throw out the baby (the product you want) with the bathwater. Life is short enough as it is. All imho

Interesting point, I spend the odd moment on similar fora for car owners and despite posters discussing major issues they have with their local dealers they remain loyal to the brand (Audi in this case) and are willing to travel to another dealer for what they think of as better service, discount or whatever. One comment that was made which made me laugh was that if they discounted each brand having had a bad issue at a dealership they would have run out of manufacturers to buy a car from

 

[jfm]

if they discounted each brand having had a bad issue at a dealership they would have run out of manufacturers to buy a car from

Exactly. i dunno why people (in this thread) make such a fuss of a salesman who is bad or whom they just don't get along with. She liked the A5 and will never see the good or the bad salesman ever agian most likely, so just find another salesman and buy the sodding car. It's no different from shopping at Sainsbury's and having a bad experience with a surly checkout operator who's perhaps had a hard day. All this "I was wearing jeans and I could afford the Fairprinseeker [now/one day - delete as applicable] but they didn't treat me like a rock star so I'm never ever buying that brand of boat ever, so I'm not" is incredibly pompous. It's only shopping, ffs.

PS: no loyalty to the Audi brand. Pure impulse shopping, cos she like the LED lights

 

[[2068]]

... if they discounted each brand having had a bad issue at a dealership they would have run out of manufacturers to buy a car from

Yup. I feel very sorry for anyone in the Portsmouth area who continues to use a dealer that is an anagram of "washe van lash". I gave up on them after getting shouted at by the service manager for suggesting that an intermittent fault within warranty that finally failed completely outside of warranty was not something I was going to pay for.

Picador, I would call a good dealer. They listen to what I say when I bring the car in. Stuff gets fixed, or at least the car doesn't leave the dealership any more broken than when it arrived. The lady on the service desk has nice legs, errm, I meant a very professional and friendly attitude. What more could you ask for?

 

[ari]

All this "I was wearing jeans and I could afford the Fairprinseeker [now/one day - delete as applicable] but they didn't treat me like a rock star so I'm never ever buying that brand of boat ever, so I'm not" is incredibly pompous. It's only shopping, ffs.

Spot on.

But what's even more bizarre is the "I'm going to try and look as much like I can't afford it as I can, then complain/show them".

Why's that clever?

I remember a very similar thread on a prestige car forum (by people who couldn't afford the car but, hey, might be able to one day, they don't know that, blah blah, etc). Same thing applies, I've never had a bad experience at a car showroom, but then I don't try and make out I couldn't possibly afford it so that I can get upset when I'm not taken seriously, and I act in a sensible businesslike manner.

I'm just surprised we've not had the standard apocryphal "so the tramp who was really a secret eccentric millionaire went to their competitors, bought a car, and then drove it back to show the first people who weren't very nice to him what they'd missed out on" story, it's only a matter of time surely? We've had variations on the theme though I suppose.

What never seems to dawn on some people is that maybe sales people (who let's face it, normally are on commission and therefore need to sell cars/boats/whatever) aren't actually that daft, and are fairly experienced. And that maybe they'd rather just deal with genuine straight people who just buy things (if they like them or don't if they don't) than faff about with all the pseudo maybe possibly apocryphal eccentric millionaire tramps and "my dad's a millionaire who won't buy a boat unless you're extra nice to meeeee" types.

Better to lose the odd one of those that might just turn out to be genuine, and get on with some real business with proper people elsewhere perhaps.