Aaaaaahhhhhh, I hate car sales people. I think it is a general feeling that estate agents and car salesmen are possibly the worst in the industry and I am controversially going to agree. The estate agents we have encountered have all been absolutely useless. I think the problem is that they know if people want and like a house, they will buy it regardless of what the agent is like because it would be their home. Too much reliance on this has led to lazy, up their own a*ses failed sales people with no drive or ambition. This is a massive generalisation and I appreciate not all agents are like that, but in my experience I haven’t encountered anything else.
Car sales, well this is another one of my pet hates. I have recently ordered my new car. I knew exactly what I wanted as I have been thinking about it for ages and waiting for the version of the car I wanted to be released. Unfortunately it came with a 5 month wait direct from Japan but I can handle that as long as it arrives in one piece and is most of all, what I asked for. Knowing the car you want and the exact spec you want before going into the showroom is possibly the best thing you can do if you are lucky enough to see someone with ears! Fortunately, for the first time ever I was approached by a non pushy, intelligent and knowledgeable sales person in Mazda, but he really is a one off. My sale went without incident and he really was fabulous.
I have recently bought my parents a new car as my Dad as of last week is now registered disabled and he has been suffering badly over the 6 months. So I wanted to do something nice for him and I made him get rid of his gas guzzling top of the range estate that gave him hell because he had to change gear and instead I bought him a little automatic he liked. One which after 20 years I may also manage to get my mum to drive in case she ever needs to take him to hospital urgently if I’m not around. Buying this car really was a pain in the neck for me actually because of having to deal with the salesman, an event which was repeated on Saturday.
Me and hubby went around looking at new cars as he has decided he too would like a new car to be delivered in September, but he has no idea about what he really wants and is oblivious to anything car-fied, so really it is up to me to find his next purchase. As I am getting the 2 seater sports car, he needs to have one which is a bit more 'family' with seats in the back (to take me and pals out) and a boot (for my shopping obviously), but we are somewhat limited for choice. Mercedes, BMW and Audi are the only places he will get a car he likes, that is affordable, good quality and looks half decent. BMW are out because he already has one and I hate them – sorry Mart, you’re out voted! Great so really it is either a Merc or an Audi, we have both been keen on Mercedes sporty compacts so we started there. Needless to say we also ended there…
Mercedes have the worst sales people I have ever encountered in car shopping. They have a total inability to listen and lack any knowledge at all about the cars they are supposed to be selling. So we went in as I was there anyway sorting my current car out, not one sales person approached, yet they were all in a room having a lovely little chat! That was the start on my anger-ometre as we had to ask to get someone to come out. This bird came out looking really lost, she was very timid and lacked confidence in what she was doing which didn’t impress me because when I am about to part with thousands of pounds, I expect to feel like it is a good thing to do. I didn’t get that feeling so that was another notch up on my anger scale. She sat us down and asked us what we are looking for. I was very straight and to the point with what we wanted to avoid confusion (I could sense she was easily confused). I told her the max price we were willing to spend, the engine size we wanted, the colour, leather seats and anything else is irrelevant really as it would need to be in the price quoted and to be honest we are not into anything flashy in a car. We aren’t in it long enough to warrant concern with all that and don’t have kids. It is merely a means to get to and from work and the odd night out. All I wanted her to do was tell us what we could get matching our minimum criteria, how much it would cost and when we can buy it. This was obviously too much for her to take in.
“So do you want manual or automatic” she asked. I told her that it didn’t matter because the biggest concern was that we could afford it and it fits our minimum criteria given.
“OK well I will cost up what you want with automatic first.” I said to her that I thought automatic cost more than manual and she said “yes it is about £1000 more,” so I asked whether she could cost with manual then as we are not fussed about the transmission we just want the minimum criteria we gave you to be included as a must and anything else would come down to the price. My anger metre was seriously rising as I had to then repeat this about another 4 times afterwards because she wasn’t getting it.
Anyway she took us outside to show us the differences between a sports version and an evolution version or something. Fine, but I really don’t give a s*hit about what the car is called or whether one has a sodding silver ring on the gear stick for an extra £500 of hard earned cash or whether the grill at the front has little tiny holes in the design and the other one doesn’t for an extra £700. Seriously, none of this matters. All we want is a car that fits our criteria, that is safe, will get us from A to B and that we can get in September. Is it too much to ask?!!!!!!!!!!!
My husband is the calmest person in the world I swear, but by this point even he was getting a little bit annoyed by this sales person’s lack of ability to sell. Then he kept annoying me by telling me to calm down! A good sales person should know that the first thing to do in order to sell is to listen and highlight the criteria the customer wants in each car and then when they are bought into that you can carefully introduce little extras staying around their budget and then at the end, give them options. But when the customer says they are not interested, listen, agree and then move onto something else. Well she will win no awards I can tell you that much. So she took us back into the showroom to her desk to finish off business she asked us AGAIN what we wanted. I repeated exactly what I had said 7 times already and she made a note – finally!! I told her I want the criteria costed, no extras just what it comes with and tell us how much that would be. When we know that we would then be in a position to add things on as we will know what budget is left.
She went away, spoke to her boss who is obviously up on the intelligence stakes as well and she came back with a quote which was out of our price range. I asked her what she based the quote on and she listed all the things that I never asked for – “well madam I have costed it with automatic transmission, sports edition which comes with aluminium finish (aka: a f-ing piece of silver plastic crap around the gear knob which quite frankly I can live without), heated leather seats, entertainment package (DVD player for the children I don’t have!), sun roof (we have a convertible don’t need it in this one and it comes with AC anyway) etc etc.” She reeled off this list of things of totally pointless rubbish that we just do not need in a car which is the exact opposite of the basic things I asked for. I was on the verge of hitting this woman now and if it wasn’t for the fact we had priced our own car on the internet before, I would have just walked out, but I knew I could have half those things she mentioned if she had priced it on a manual car and the right version of car in the first place!
I was so angry. I told her one last time what I wanted priced and she went back to her boss and came back with a decent quote. Great I thought, finally we are getting somewhere. I took the quote from her and whilst she was out the back my husband and I agreed that there was no way we were going to be giving her any commission from the crap work she has done on selling us a car, so we will now go to a different dealership and when we find the one possible sales person that is worthy of commission, we will purchase the car. I can see this could take a while though!
