Where did you get that idea? He didn’t buy anything, he was trying to trade in his old guitar on the new one.
Who was the first person to mention the $420 price?
errrmmm… no. No cash has changed hands at this point.
But thank you, Mama Zappa, you have unwittingly proved my point. Posters on the SDMB are a pretty smart bunch. And if the SDMB posters are a bit confused by the transaction, well, maybe Cosmodan didn’t do a good job explaining himself in negotiations.
Cosmodan, for what it’s worth, I’m what you called in an earlier post as a “straight haggler”. Don’t think I don’t sympathize, it’s just that your shop did not make it simple. Maybe it’s my cynicism talking, but people are dumb. If part of your job is haggling with dumb people, good God, keep it simple. Don’t expect them to do math.
But there was no math to do. Prices were given tax included, no? Unless I’m wildly misunderstanding the OP, this is about as simple a transaction as you can make it for the customer as the customer knows exactly his “out the door” price because it’s given to him straight up, instead of having to calculate the tax on top of it.
Look, there’s even plenty of hot dog stands and small fast food establishments here that have written on the menu “tax included.” This isn’t that difficult a concept. It makes it easier for the customer. When I see a hot dog is $2, tax included, that means I hand over $2 and satisfy the terms of the transaction. I don’t have to do any mental math and think, ok, there’s 9.25% tax on that, so that’s about an extra, what 18 or 19 cents, so I’m really paying $2.19, not $2.
It sounds to me like the customer was doing some rough math and pulling the $420 out his ass. The price was $460, tax included. Somehow, the customer got it in his head that this means he pays about $420, the store covers the tax, and we end up at $460. It was the customer pulling out the math to arrive at the $420 pre-tax price. (At least as is told in the story.) It just sounds to me like the customer was trying to confuse the OP by throwing numbers around.
Did you read the same OP I did? Look at it again and count the times numbers were mentioned. The shop’s guitar has a retail value of $899. But there’s a 10 % discount. Except there’s a trade in of $350 which comes off of the original price. There is also sales tax which is 9.25%, or 0.0925, depending on how you look at it.
Now, explain to me how that is not math.
The prices given to the customer require no math. The price was given as $460, tax included, no math needed. It was the customer who ended up doing an extra bit of math to arrive at that $420 price.
No math is necessary for the customer to understand the final offer. It’s either out the door at $460 or, if you take out the case, $430. I don’t know how much more straightforward the offer can be. The customer doesn’t need to compute the 9.25% tax at all, as it’s included in the offer.
I’m putting you in the same category as silverfire. i.e. someone who always expects things like math should be done for them, rather than by them.
I didn’t say anything about haggling, I said “Fuck math.”
exactly
oh how very wrong you are. get out much?
How do you figure that? Looking back at the OP it sounds to me like the salesman was the one who came up with that number (probably while explaining how the tax works). That’s why I asked earlier who came up with the $420 price first. If it was the salesman I can understand the customers confusion since in his mind he was told one price and then 2 days later is getting a different price.
Hey, Cosmodan, I want to ask you about something that’s a bit irrelevant to your OP. I want your advice, actually. I want a digital piano. Not a keyboard, exactly, but something that plays like a piano and yet doesn’t have the size of a piano. The best way I can explain it is that I want a keyboard that gives feedback from the keys. Most of the keyboards I’ve played around with just feel like I’m pressing switches. I want something digital that mimics hammering piano strings. Something that translates how hard I hit the keys. Does something like that even exist, and if so, where can I buy it?
Watching a few episodes of “Extreme Cheapskates,” one of the things that impressed me was that these guys are very into haggling, and they get a better price far more often than I would have expected them to. Even at a McDonald’s drive-through - they want to pay less than the $6.99 that their meal costs, and either they get a better price, or they get something thrown in just to make them go away.
Maybe it was the phrase “tax included” that threw the customer off - that sounds more complicated than, “Give me $460, take the guitar, and get out of my store.”
There is no missing dollar.
O…K…? I don’t understand your point. The only thing I care about, as a customer, is how much money comes out of my pocket. Whether that is phrased as $460 tax included or as $421.05 plus tax is irrelevant to me.
And, yes, making it easier for the customer to immediately know how much they’re paying is good practice. When I give my prices, I tell them what I have to tax them on, how much that tax is, and what their final cost is, so they don’t come to me all surprised when they see their contract is more than they originally thought it was for because they didn’t think about tax.
From the story as given in the OP, the number we have reported to us is $460 tax included, by the salesman, and the first mention of $420 was by the customer. If the salesman did mention $420 at some point, then I am more sympathetic to the customer.
Have you played the weighted key digital pianos lately? Try out something like a Yamaha S90XS. The phrase you’re probably looking for is “hammer action.”
This is what made me think it was the salesman that at some point during their conversation came up with the number.
And this is what makes me think the customer pulled the $420 figure from somewhere that most people don’t store things: