The sweet smell of desperation

The thing I hated about being a car salesperson was the constant pressure. You have monthly sales targets to hit, and your progress towards these are charted weekly. So even if you had a great month and hit your numbers, the next month you're starting from zero again.

The yard I worked in was not a very good yard (bad location and some slightly sad stock), so I soon learned that you had to leap on any whiff of interest and also recognise the cars in the yard that appeal.

One friday, we had a family come in looking for a first car for their son who'd just gotten his license. The young lad, much like many other young men, wanted a car with a bit of shove but also communicated that they were inclined towards Fords.

We only had two Ford Falcons in stock at the time, one being a FPV that was only a couple of years old, and way out of budget, and the other being a much older XR6 that was a little tired. They left their details, but went to look further afield.

The next day, early on a saturday morning, one of our trade-ins got delivered after the customer collected their new car. It was Purple Falcon XR8, and would fall into the ballpark that this young man claimed to be looking for. Problem is that customers rarely clean their trade-in when they collect their new car, and cleaners don't work saturdays. So after calling the young man to confirm that he could come in that day, I was off into the cleaning bay with the trade-in, rolling up my sleeves and trying not to get the dirt, grease, old burgers and other junk on me, while scrubbing this car inside and out.

It wasn't as grand as a professional detail from the cleaners, but the car was presentable and the nasty stink on the inside was gone.

Didn't sell him the XR8 though. I think the dad had an unfortunate moment of clarity realising that his son behind the wheel a 5L powerplant was a bad mix, and it was his money funding the deal. I also managed to annoy the other salesmen, as the yard manager was now asking why they didn't clean cars too. Bad day, that one.

Getting a bargain

On quite a few occassions, when people find out that I worked as car salesperson for a time, they will then ask what can they do to ensure they get the best price. Its actually quite a silly question, but I do understand where they're coming from. The answer actually isn't something most people want to hear though, as it is the same answer for any purchase you make:

Do your research.

Basically, if you want to do minimal effort and just show up and buy something, then you need to be prepared that most of the time, you wouldn't have gotten the best deal around. When it comes to thinks like milk, or a pair of sneakers, then it isn't a big deal. But when it comes to the bigger things in life, such as cars, a little bit of effort goes a long way.

It surprises me that people don't accept this for cars. Instead they want some magic keyword, like a secret masonic handshake, that unlocks the wholesale price without haggling. Or they can't understand why, when they ring the dealership and ask for the "best price", the sales person just laughs them off.

Ultimately, the salesperson wants you in the yard, as they make money by making a sale. Selling a car cheaper than anyone else, means that they aren't making as much money as they should. And as I've mentioned in a past post, they're still a business and bills need to get paid.

But that doesn't mean that there isn't anything you can do. There may be some tricks to torture and put the screws on the salesperson, but ultimately that is both inconsiderate and hypocritical for the buyer.

Just do your research. This means:

1. Get to know what you want. You can't know what a good price to pay for a car is, if you don't know what car you want. You need to invest time in writing down your needs, then looking at different cars to see what fulfils those needs.
2. Once you have a shortlist of cars you want, or ideally have even identified just the one car you want, you can then start utilising the internet to see what price this car is going for in different dealerships across your city. If the car is not brand new, then you can even start looking at the private market to see the prices there.
3. When it comes to new cars, not all dealerships will list the price of what they have in stock. But there are many that will, and this will give you an idea on what to expect. Some yards will be cheaper and they can achieve that as perhaps they focus on getting more of their profit through finance or accessories, and they won't have room left on the price to haggle. Generally the cheapest price on a new car that you find online, is going to be the lowest price you can haggle to. If that dealership is not close to you, you can take their advert to your closest dealer, and see if they'll match it.
   NOTE: Occassionally you'll get a yard who has a new vehicle ridiculously cheap. This is because they have allocated 1 or 2 vehicles to be sold at cost but to serve as a legitimate headline to pull customers into the yard. Once those 1 or two specific vehicles are sold though, you won't be able to get that price. So if you want to use their advert to beat another yard down, you need to know if that first yard still has those headline vehicles still available.
4. Ultimately, be prepared to walk. Just because Dealership A has the car at $20,000, doesn't mean that Dealership B (closer to your house) can beat it, or even match it. Every dealership has different margins and may have different amounts owing on their stock that they need to recover, so if they can't (or won't) get to the price you want, then just politely thank them and bid them good day. Sometimes the price they are offering you, really may be the lowest that that yard can go to.
5. Just a reminder that a used vehicle dealership can't match the prices you see in the private market. This is because any business has overheads, and you're getting a warranty (however limited), whereas in the private market its 'caveat emptor'.

Bottom line; if you don't do your research and don't know what the best price is, then its pretty silly to ask the salesperson to give it to you.

Supermarket rant #3

This hasn't happened to me in ages, partly due to now refusing to go to the supermarket during the peak hours, but also the extended trading hours also mean that its easier to go late in the afternoon/evening with the oddball people, rather than the crazy people crowd.

But what I used to get alot of, was when in the checkout queue, the person behind is so close with their trolley that it's smacking into the back of my ankles. It's as if by putting pressure on me, I will then somehow make the checkout person work faster. Or perhaps they hope I'll pay the passive-aggressive irritation forward, until it reaches the helpless soul who is currently being served.

A quiet stare, or even just nudging the trolley back usually brings that to an end, but it rarely illicited an apology, just a sullen glance.

This is all in the past though, as I seem to be managing to avoid these queues at the moment. But where I am now getting this behaviour is in the airlines check-in queues. Next time you are flying somewhere and you're in the long queue to check your bags in, just see how long it takes before the person behind you is climbing in your back pocket.

One of *those* people

Happened to be in a baby store the other day (people have babies, gotta get presents). These are one of those places where I think it can be really awkward for a guy, in this case a guy who doesn't have any children, as you feel as if everyone else secretly knows that you don't have a reason to be there. Kind of like being a bloke in a lingerie store.

However, baby shops are also quite fascinating due to all the stuff that is available for parents these days. When I talk to my parents and people from that generation, children were raised in furniture that was not far removed from a cardboard box and shredded newspaper. Now there are a million gadgets and fancy electronic toys to help your child grow to become the next world wonder.

One of the things I find interesting is prams. There's one pram which folds and unfolds itself with the touch of a button that triggers electric motors to drive the whole process (See Origami http://www.4moms.com/origami).

But of the regular prams where parents have to press levers, twist handles and fold stuff, they're all different and a little counter-intuitive for non-parents.

Anyway, I'd taken to amusing myself by trying to see if I could work out how to collapse each pram on display, valiantly waving off offers of help by the sales assistants. After working through all the models on display, I spotted one off to one side that looked radically different to all the others that I'd been playing with, so excited at the new challenger, I began to twist and prod buttons, trying to decipher its secrets when the owners of this particular pram walked over to see what I was doing.

Its quite embarrassing to discover that I'd been fervently trying to break someone's personal property, and I also learnt that it isn't wise to leave your pram unattended in a baby store...

Supermarket rant #2

This has happened to me more than once. Seriously. I think about 3 or four times now. I'd like to think its because of some special charismatic magnetic aura that surrounds me, but my wife just checked and apparently that's not it. *shrug* oh well...

Anyway, the issue is people crowding me. Again with the supermarket, but it also happened once in a larger mall while I was waiting outside a clothing store, too.

When I'm with people who are shopping, and I'm waiting for them, then I'll look to find a quiet place to stand where I can either people watch or just daydream. Now where things get weird is when I find that of all the open space available everywhere, a group of other people then end up standing uncomfortably close and just hover. Its like some weird flash trolling mob. They're not shopping for stuff where I'm standing, and this isn't the only quiet place in the store to stop to socialise, they just picked to stand really close to me, such that I almost look as though I'm with them.

The most recent case of this was when I was down south at a country supermarket, and ended up with a group of 6 asian uni students having their morning chat right up against me. What made this particular instance worse was that, as a group, we were now blocking passage through the deli section of the supermarket, and our configuration now meant that if a person needed to get through, they would most likely angle towards me to squeeze past. This group was indirectly forcing me to move and that was really burning me up. I've read about other people trying thousand yard stares, but my attempt at that didn't work, so in the end I shuffled a few steps left and went back to focusing on keeping calm.

Stuff like that makes me dislike people.

Now, don't take away from this that it is anything to do with them being asian, or uni students, or anything like that, as its happened to me from different age groups and demographics. You'll just get people from all walks of life who bug you, and I just have to learn to deal with it.

Supermarket rant #1

I hate going to the supermarket, and its because of the people. Not the staff, but the customers. I hate the self absorbed, inconsiderate, inpolite, and just plain weird mode that people go into when they're in food aisles.

I see stuff that makes me see red when around the regular mall, but in the Woolsworths and Coles is where it hits its peak. This kind of thing frustrates me in two ways;

1. I don't understand why people lose awareness of others,
2. God requires that I care for people and not turn into a raging homicidal maniac (so leave the chainsaw at home).

This rant is about trolleys. When I go shopping with my wife, my job is to push the trolley around so that she can focus on what needs to be bought and she doesn't have to deal with the whole wonky trolley wheel thing. Maybe it is a job that is so complex and demanding that it really does require a person to be fully devoted to it. I don't know, it doesn't seem hard, but the number of people who just let go of the trolley wherever it is, when they reach the section they want, is astonishing.

I often encounter aisles where people have done one of the following:

• parked their trolley neatly on one side, but then are alongside it looking at the opposite shelves, effectively blocking the aisle and ignoring my presence,
• just left their trolley in the middle of the aisle and wandered further down the shelves,
• are themselves purely a trolley driver while their partner shops, and decide to park with their trolley perpendicular to traffic.

And why do I always get the dirty look and silent treatment when I reach out to move their trolley to the side?

*sigh* I just need to remember to breathe and just let it be water off a duck's back. And perhaps start looking more seriously at using Coles online shopping service...

Resume regular broadcasting

Oops, really slid off the face of the earth there for a bit.

I actually had a post lined up to say that I'd be less regular about writing stuff during the 2 weeks over Christmas, but I couldn't even get off my butt to post that. Damn.

Anyway, it was a busy couple of weeks during the office shutdown; installed one of those spinning roof vent things, and went around scraping all the paint off the gutters around the house, and then repainting it all. That was a bigger project than I expected. For some reason I though the painting would be done in 2 days, but 5 days later, and I still have a quarter of the gutters left to be painted. Should be done with one more day's effort, but I've already just written that my estimation abilities are lousy.