Buy it. BUY it! NOW, damn you!

My father in law, the Architect, tells a story about how he and the wife and kid took a vacation, once, at a salesman’s expense.

They hung out in a luxury condo on the coast, ate steak dinners at sales presentations, and basically relaxed in the sun and had fun for three days while a sales team hammered on them about how great this coastal resort was.

At the end of the three days, they offered him a contract and waited for him to get his checkbook out. He did not do so, and instead thanked them for a wonderful time, and tried to leave.

They about popped an O-ring. “What?” they cried. “You mean you lived in our beach resort, ate our steaks, played volleyball, golf, and shuffleboard, swam in our pools, fished off our piers, and now you’re NOT GOING TO BUY?”

The Architect pulled out the brochure, and pointed out where it said “No obligation to buy.”

They laid a guilt trip on him a mile long. He laughed in their faces, loaded his family and luggage in his car, and left them in the dust. All the brochure said was that he was obligated to listen to the sales pitch while he enjoyed their hospitality; his presence did not obligate him to anything.

When he first told me this story, I was amazed that anyone would do business that way. GUILT someone into spending thousands of dollars? Howthehell do you make any money THAT way? Wouldn’t EVERYONE just laugh in your face?

No, actually, not. I learned, when I was a salesman, many years ago, that five percent of the people will buy any damn thing, and five percent won’t buy anything, no matter what.

And a lot of people will avoid returning stuff to the store for fear of hurting the salesman’s feelings.

And there is in fact a sales model in America today where a salesman will give you the hard sell, and then act hurt or outraged when you won’t break out the checkbook. Really!

I first ran across this about ten years ago, when a company offered me a Las Vegas vacation weekend package in exchange for looking into their vacation resort. Three hours after the Mrs. and I showed up, the salesman and I were shouting at each other.

“Oh, so you weren’t SERIOUS about looking at our lots,” snarled the salesman. “You just came out here to get the PRIZE, is all.”

“I came out here to look at your RESORT, Charlie,” I snarled right back, “and I told you that at the beginning. YOU were the one who allovasudden started wanting to sell me a house you haven’t even built yet!”

“Well, you don’t have to decide right away,” he said, backing down a little. “If you could just sign this statement of–”

Too late. He’d already pissed me off. “If I’m not making any decisions today, why am I signing anything? Get that thing out of my face.”

It was not a pleasant scene, and certainly not conducive to selling me much of anything. He finally gave us the coupon for the Vegas vacation. We mailed it in like the instructions said, and never heard from the company again, thus kind of proving that we were right not to trust 'em.

…which brings us to the now. We’d ducked into San Antonio, the wife and I, to run an errand and hang out at Hemisfair – they were reopening the Tower Of The Americas on this particular day – and we decided to kill a little time at the Rivercenter Mall, around the corner from the Alamo.

The saleslady pounced on the wife while I was looking at the directory. Within minutes, my darling was asking what I thought. Free riverboat tickets, a free fifty-dollar restaurant coupon, and a three-day vacation getaway at a fancy hotel, all for listening to a ninety-minute spiel where they’d try to sell us on some kind of time share plan?

My inner thug rose to the fore. This did not sound good. Actually, it sounded TOO good, and nearly guaranteed that it was. But my darling looked at me pleadingly. She really likes weekends in expensive hotels – she collects 'em the way some people collect stamps – and it was only ninety minutes, and no obligation to buy. Please?

No obligation to buy, I thought to myself. Get that in writing. Sure enough, it was on the brochure. I pocketed the brochure, and steeled myself for the experience. I go to great lengths to make my beloved one happy. Learned to take out the garbage once a month whether it needs it or not, learned how to eat with a fork, threw away my beloved beer hat, and now this. The things husbands go through…

The saleswoman led us out of the mall, across the front of the Alamo, around a corner, and into a business office a block away. There, we were asked to fill out forms and wait around until a salesman became available. *This is coming out of that ninety minutes I obligated myself to, * I growled mentally, and sat down.

My wife, too, was beginning to have second thoughts, after ten minutes of waiting, and she was on the verge of saying, “Screw this, let’s leave,” when the salesman came out and pounced on us. He was twenty-three, very chatty, very sunny fellow. He was one of those guys who doesn’t really know how to break the ice with strangers, so he settles for asking a lot of nosy questions about where you’re from, what you’re doing, and why you’re doing it here… kind of like a cop, but friendlier.

He told us about himself “so you won’t feel like you’re dealing with a stranger.” *Yeah, right, buddy, machine-gunning a bunch of random facts about yourself at me for thirty seconds practically makes you my blood brother, uh-huh. * Truth was, he told us more than he should have – he was three weeks out of college, majoring in business, and knew about as much about sales as a pig knows about politics, and it showed.

"Now, when you sign up for our time-share plan, after the presentation, " he began–

I raised an eyebrow. The poor fool. He’d tipped his hand way too soon. “What if I don’t sign?” I said.

He looked jolted. “What?”

“This thing here says you want a down payment and a monthly payment, as well. I did not look over my budget before I left the house this morning,” I said. “Do you think it wise for me to make a snap decision involving thousands of dollars immediately after a sales pitch, without consulting my bank or looking over my budget?”

“Well, the fact is, you’ll be saving so much money with our time-share purchase plan, you can’t afford not to–”

“Sure I can,” I said. “Let me clarify. I’m not signing anything today. I am not making any snap decisions today. If I choose to buy into your plan, I will do so after consulting my budget and making some important decisions at my leisure, over a period of days. If you expect me to sign something before I leave this building, you’re crazy.”

He looked panicky. “Ah, tell you what, let me check in with management,” he mumbled, and ran from the room.

My wife giggled.

I practiced my stone face.

My wife giggled some more.

“Shut up,” I growled. “You’re going to make me smile, dammit, and this would be a bad time for that.”

She giggled for a moment longer, and then restrained herself.

The salesman came back a moment later. “You’re not under any obligation to purchase, of course,” he began, a little nervously, “but if you’ll hear me out, I think we can offer you some very attractive vacation package options.”

“Okay,” I said. “Let 'er rip.”

“Trust me, sir, before we’re done, you’ll be signing,” he said with a confident grin.

Oh, you dumb bastard, I thought. *BIG mistake… *

“So,” he said brightly, “if money was not an option, where would you go for vacation?”

“The back yard,” I said, equally brightly.

He looked at me quizzically.

"Perhaps you meant ‘if money was no object,’ " my wife added, helpfully.

“Hah?” he said, not understanding.

“If money was not an option, I assume that means I would not have any,” I said, “and therefore would be spending my vacation at home. If money were no object, well, perhaps a cruise of some sort would be nice…” I spoke nice and slow, so he could keep up.

“Hm. Ah. Well,” he said, trying to reorganize his thoughts. That was when I realized that the poor bastard wasn’t thinking – he was literally *mentally reading off a memorized script, * and my interruptions and unexpected responses were confusing the poor fool to no end. I decided to quit screwing with him and let him get on with it. Mighod, is this what passes for a salesman these days? I wouldn’t have lasted a week at Consolidated if I’d been like this when I was his age…

I won’t bore you with the rest of the sales spiel. At one point, they ushered several of us into a little room to watch The Commercial That Refused To End, in which many happy customers shared their joy by repeating important facts about their vacation getaways, like:

*“Time sharing is… about… sharing time,” (Ah. Well. I’d never have figured THAT out by myself)

*"…the best thing is, it’s just like home." (which begs the question of why you’re spending thousands to go there when you could have kept the money and stayed home?)

*“As working parents, we don’t really have enough time to spend with our kids during the regular year. Our time-share really offers us some quality time to spend with our kids, every year!” (Ah. And you think that throwing money at them for two weeks a year will somehow make up for your egregious neglect the other fifty weeks of the year?)

I noticed my wife stifling a grin, there in the dark. It was all I could do not to channel Joel, Crow, and Tom Servo, myself. It was SO dumb…

“What did you think?” grinned the salesman when we came out of the Chamber of Commercials.

“It was great,” I beamed. “Downright insipid.”

My wife elbowed me in the ribs. As an English teacher, she knew damn well what the word insipid meant. The salesman, of course, did not, or perhaps simply interpreted my cheerful tone, rather than actually listening to me…

…and said, “Great! Now let’s step over here…”

We spent another 45 minutes with this poor fool, and another fifteen with his boss, who did everything he could to convince us that it was in our best interest to obligate ourselves to a large down payment, followed by several hundred bucks a month, right now.

“I will not make any decisions without consulting my budget,” I said. “I would be very interested in taking some information with me, to help in decisionmaking.”

“That’s not how we do business,” the manager said. “You see, if you’re not willing to commit now, you’re likely not going to commit tomorrow, which means you’re likely just not willing to commit next week, or for that matter, ever.”

Ah, thought my wife, is that what you told your wife when you proposed to her? But she didn’t tell me this until later. Instead, she said, “Do you have a business card? I notice your information and web address isn’t on the brochure…”

“We don’t do business cards,” said the manager. “We found that people were just throwing them away as they left.”

…so you’re willing to give me free riverboat tickets, a vacation getaway package and a coupon for a fifty-dollar dinner at Red Lobster, but you can’t give me a business card? I thought. This pretty much eliminated any concept of “trust” I might have felt for the guy or his organization, and we quickly concluded our dealings with “no thanks.”

Well, almost.

Actually, they tried to sell us a total of three slightly cheaper packages with fewer benefits, and hung onto us for a good 25 minutes over the 90 we were obligated to, until we basically said, “Hell, no.” Then they shunted us off to a receptionist who gave us the riverboat tickets, the restaurant gift cards, and a coupon to send off for the three-day vacation getaway, and then she unceremoniously showed us the alley exit.

We headed for the Riverwalk, and used the boat tickets. Amazingly, they accepted them.

On the way home, we stopped at Olive Garden, and checked the gift cards. Amazingly, they were valid, and we ate an expensive Italian dinner.

So what’s the moral of the story? I’ll bottom-line it for you, the way the salesman wouldn’t: Learn to say NO to people who want your money and want it NOW. Even if they’re giving you free goodies to sit there and listen to them.

…and anyone who can convincingly fake being married (and has a “spouse” they can bring along), has picture ID, a major credit card, and claims to make over forty grand a year can get fifty bucks worth of free restaurant goodies out of Fairfield Resorts, if you can find a salesman. And no, they don’t look at the credit card number; I wasn’t ABOUT to let them do THAT…

:dubious: :dubious: :dubious: :dubious: :dubious: :dubious:

Wife and I were talking about that salesman and his boss today while we ran errands.

“You know,” she said, “if we had indicated disagreement, they’d have been on us like black on a bowling ball.”

“Urr?” I said, sagely.

“They’d have been working us apart, trying to get one of us to want the deal bad enough that the other one would finally give in,” she said.

“That seems kind of unwise,” I replied. “Do you really want to trigger a fight between spouses in the middle of your sales center, surrounded by other customers and their sales reps?”

“Yeah, but most people won’t go all Jerry Springer in public,” she said. “That’s why one of us would be expected to back down and sign up for their thingy. You know, some people would do just that, rather than go all loud in public. And the whole time, the salesmen would have been sweetening the deal, being ‘reasonable,’ and talking to the tough one of us, trying to weasel in and close the deal.”

Well, a funny thought seized me then, and I snickered. My dear one immediately asked me what I’d thought to make me laugh.

“That could be kind of funny, if we’d rehearsed it right,” I said.

“Rehearsed it?”

“Yeah. You know damn well that neither one of us was going to buy anything when we walked in there. We both knew what to expect.”

“Yeah… and?” my wife asked. Ahead, a light turned red, and she slowed down as we approached the intersection. She was drivin’, in case this is unclear.

“And at one point, I was just yankin’ the guy’s chain for fun, you know,” I said. “And that’s why (I thought) you started laughing when he left the room.”

“Were you?” she snickered. “I THOUGHT you were being a little too gruff, there…”

“You read me too well, my love,” I said. “And that’s where the fun really could have come in, if we’d been really ready to take it balls to the wall.”

The light turned green. She clicked the left-turn signal, and as we curved left, towards the grocery store, she said, “Balls to the wall? What kind of horrible evil madness are you thinking, you wicked man?”

“Your invective is exactly what I mean,” I said. “Imagine that we just kind of took things a little further than they expected. WE knew we were in agreement when we walked into that place, but they didn’t know that. What if one of us wanted to sign up, and the other REALLY didn’t want to…”

“…and the situation DID begin to get a little Jerry Springer on them, right there in the middle of the sales place,” she said.

“Goddamn right!” I growled dramatically. “I mean, we’ve got a kid in college, we’re saving to buy a goddamn house, and YOU want to drop five grand on this goddamn timeshare crap–”

“Don’t give ME that shit!” she shot right back, not missing a beat, in her best hoity-toity tone – one she never uses when she’s actually angry. “YOU spend a fucking fortune on your hobbies and shit, and you’re telling ME we can’t afford a nice vacation–”

“Well, goddamn it, woman, if YOU would get off your ass and bring in a little bacon, maybe we could AFFORD to spend–” (actually, as a department head, she makes somewhat more than I do)

“Well, if YOU were any kind of a MAN, maybe I could see FIT to–”

“Don’t you talk to ME like that, you goddamn whore!”

“You worthless limpdick sonofabitch!”

“GODDAMN EMPTY-HEADED SLUT!”

“NO-BALLED WHITE TRASH MOTHERFUCKER!”

“ROTTEN MISERABLE COW! I OUGHTTA KNOCK YOUR FUCKING–”

…and about then, it occurred to me that the car was stopped. We were parked in the grocery store parking lot.

With the windows down.

Surrounded by other people, loading their cars with groceries. Well, not any more. Mostly they were sitting there staring at us with their mouths hanging open.

My wife sat there with her mouth hanging open, too. She’d been so into playing the dozens with me, she’d swung into the parking spot and shut 'er down on automatic, never noticing all the passersby.

Perhaps I should explain the situation to these folks. “Uh,” I said. Hm. What to say? “Er…”

I didn’t know WHAT to say.

My dearest solved the problem by bursting into hysterical laughter.

I tried to keep a straight face, failed immediately, and fell into hysterical laughter, too. We collapsed in the car seats, cackling like loons.

Some twenty people stood there and stared at us for a second. The more cautious among them quickly loaded their vehicles and got the hell out; after all, it didn’t pay to hang around with crazy unpredictable people like this. Who knew when they might quit laughing and suddenly start trying to kill each other again? Or any inconvenient staring bystanders? Best to quietly hustle away…

It was a fun idea. I doubt we would have gotten the free dinner cards, once all was said and done, though…

Oh, Master Wang-ka, I’m SO glad you’re back!

Rah! Oh, rah! You wonderful Wang-Ka you!

Wonderful :smiley: I’ve been in that hot seat a few times. I’ve never opened my checkbook either.
I once had to threaten to call the police, and say I’d been kidnapped. They had locked the doors and weren’t going to let me out until I signed. The gave me my boom box and let me go.

Master, why did you ever leave us? Never leave again! Never!!!

Excellent post - one I very much enjoyed and cannot do justice to in return. All I’ve got to relay is the experience that my wife and I had during our (one-and-only) time-share type pitch. We were on our honeymoon in Mexico, and didn’t really know what was what with the whole time-share marketing system. They offered us a free blanket to listen to their shpeil - we listened for about 5 minutes and said OK, we’re going now. They were so stunned that, if I remember correctly, they gave us cab fare back to our hotel. :stuck_out_tongue:

(We had graduated from college by this time, but probably looked all of 18 - I’m not even sure now, in hindsight, why they would have targeted us for their pitch. I think it must have been a slow day.)

When I decided to join a gym last winter, I went to L.A. Fitness because my roommate was a member there and spoke highly of the facilities. I am a cheap bastard, but I take personal recommendations very seriously. I wanted to look around the place, but I wasn’t terribly interested in shopping around at other gyms because I trust my roommate.

The salesman was beyond charming into smarmy, your typical early-20s, fast-talking, confidence-oozing guy, bone-crushing handshake, obviously a chiseled gym rat himself. He tried to come on like he was my best brah while he showed me around the place. Then he wanted me to sign a contract. I told him I wasn’t ready to sign anything quite yet, since I wouldn’t mind checking out a few other local gyms first. Eventually his boss came over (another bone-crushing jock type) and they started doing the good cop/bad cop thing with me. It was definitely the kind of high-pressure hard sell tactics I disapprove of, but the thing is, my mind was 98% made up that I would join this gym anyway. I eventually relented when they offered me the same monthly rate I knew my roommate was already getting, but I’ve felt kind of bad about it ever since. I should have held out or put up more of a fight, and I feel like they thought I was another mark and a schmuck. At least my experiences at the gym have been decent so far, or I’d be a lot more pissed at myself for giving into that.

I read a story about how some people went to one of those time share things.
They started to walk out of the slaes presentation.
The timeshare people wouldn’t let the them leave.
The protagonanist pulled out his cellphone and said. “I’m dialing 911 and you will be charged with kidnapping if you do not let me go right now.”
They let them go. :smiley:

Brian

Well, at least you got a reach-around outta the deal.

You really are a Master :stuck_out_tongue:

On the flip side, I’ve been to a few Marriott time share properties and I have to say that their presentation is so low key it’s practically non-existent. Presentation is on the 2nd to last day of the stay, about an hour long, and they understand the meaning of the word no. Fabulous properties, too.

VCNJ~

That’s goddamn scary. I thought I had a story just because they leaned on me a little? If anyone pulled that stunt on me, I’d likely have hurt someone.

Me to!

“Time sharing is… about… sharing time,” (Ah. Well. I’d never have figured THAT out by myself)

Epiphany!

“We don’t do business cards,” said the manager. “We found that people were just throwing them away as they left.”

Epiphany!

I don’t get it.

WE had one of these in Tahoe one year. We were staying in a time share facility for a Car gathering (driving, eating, parking, drinking kinda thing) We went down into town to hang out at the casino when they offered us $50 for listening to a shpiel. (walking in the door. You take the people mover into a air-lock and have to make a 90 degree left to enter the casino, they were 90 degrees to the right, and you’re being shuffled through there like cattle)

We sat down, listened to the whole thing and they said “Right! Who’s interested in being a part of the Best Thing Ever™!?!?!”

I said, “You didn’t answer the most important part.”

Salesman said, “Wha?”

I said, “What’s it COST?”

Salesman looks like it was a question nobody had ever thought of asking, Then breaks into a 100 mph run-on sentence of costs and fees and terms, not expecting my to keep up.

Me: “So it’s $52,000 over 12 years for a 52nd of a hotel room I can will my kids which probably won’t last long enough to do so?”

We were politely given the poker chip and ushered out the ‘other’ exit.

I didn’t even get a chance to say I was STAYING in their resort and the floors were uneven and there was mouse crap on the coffee table in the morning.

That whole ‘guaranteed’ vacation thing was funny too. You have a 2:1 trade with any other timeshare in the world and will never have to worry about having a place to stay for your vacations! But I don’t ever recall having a problem finding a place to stay anywhere I choose to go.

Big Bad Voodo Lou it meant: While they were doing you from behind, at least they ‘reached around’ and made it feel a little better…course, any way you look at it, you’re still being sodomised.

The outfit I was dealing with – Fairfield Resorts – insisted that they were still going to be around in a hundred years, and that what I was doing was BUYING something, something almost tangible, something I could sell or leave to my kids, and that they weren’t going to go out of business or anything, nuh-uh. They even issued a DEED, a legal document guaranteeing my fragment of ownership!

Of course, this begs the question, “Why should I trust you, considering your screwy way of doing business?”

Apparently, a lot of people with money just don’t ask certain questions.

Way back in the 80s, my husband and I received a letter informing us that we had “won” something…there were three prizes, and husband and wife had to go to the office together to pick up the item. Oh, and listen to the great deal that they had for us. It was basically a buying club, and we were offered the fantastic opportunity to buy into it for a low, low initiation fee and monthly dues. When I expressed horror at the initiation fee, they offered to lower it, and lower it, and finally they said that we could pay it monthly, on top of our dues. We were assured that we could buy large ticket items at a fraction of the retail cost, which would more than pay for any fees or dues that we’d pay out. My husband was ready to sign up then and there. I told the salesman that it sounded good, we’d take a copy of the agreement to the Air Force legal department to look it over. He just about fainted. I assured him that we’d make sure to ask for him, so he could get his commission. It turns out, of course, that nobody was allowed to leave with an unsigned contract. Bill wanted to sign it. The salesman certainly wanted us to sign it. I, however, had had my BS trigger tripped and the more the salesman tried to make a deal, the more stubborn I got.

A few months later, we saw people picketing the office. My BS meter had been right. The company ended up paying back the initiation fees and dues, at pennies on the dollar, going bankrupt in the process.

I have never let my husband forget this.

Bwahahahaha!

Now that I think about it, Fairfield was VERY sticky about the idea of letting us leave with anything except the pretty color brochure…

When my husband and I were newly married and naive, we had a vaccum cleaner salesman come over to our house for a free demonstration of a very overpriced vaccum. He accosted us in the mall, if I remember correctly, and we were promised a check for $25 just for watching the in home demo with no obligation.

So, the salesman comes over, gives his spiel and then shows us how awesomely powerful the vaccum is. Then he informs us that it’s only $1400 and we can make easy monthly payments. At that point, we told him we weren’t interested because the price was way out of our price range. He continued to do his hard sale and we continued to politely tell him no.

He got mad. He turned about 3 shades of red and threw all his sales stuff back into his briefcase. Then he threw our $25 check on our kitchen table and told my husband to treat me to a nice cheap dinner at McDonalds. Then he added a “Goddamn kids!” as he stormed out the door. :eek:

Karma worked fast in this case-in his angry mad dash to leave he backed out into the ditch next to our driveway. :smiley:

In 1975, I had just moved into my very first apartment - an adorable little studio with a Murphy bed and a pink fridge in the kitchen. Someone - a dear friend, no doubt - sent a Cutco saleman to see me. He brought in all of his crap and did his spiel. I know I burst his bubble when he was demonstrating how well the knives cut and he asked “Did you ever wonder what the inside of a slice of bread looks like?” and I said “Probably a lot like the outside…”

I admit that I bought the knives, which came with a sharpening tool and a cutting board and an electric frying pan and a pair of scissors which would cut a penny in half… I seem to recall, it all cost me just a bit over $200, but it turned out to be a good deal - I’m still using the knives and the cutting board. I yard-saled the fry pan. I think the scissors are in a tool box somewhere.

I think that was the last time I was an easy sale…