A man and his older sister came into the dealership the other day, looking to buy a motor home for the sister. They fell in love with a Bounder, which is a Class A gas-powered, bus-like motor home. Turns out she couldn’t get it financed (the price on this is about $160K). Since the original salesman was off the next day (when the financing fell through), the manager turns them over to me to show them Class C motor homes, which are more in their price range.
So I walk them through a couple of models and she selects a new 31’ Tioga that has everything she wants. Price: about $80,000. I write up the deal and take care of all the miscellaneous paperwork and the deal sails through financing without any problems (which means I get half the commission). We tell them the coach will be ready the following day.
They pick the thing up the next day and drive off, only to return later that day and claim this isn’t the coach she agreed to buy! I say: “What coach did you think you were buying?” She replies: “The Bounder!”
WTF? There is no confusing the two vehicles, and she was enthusiastic about the Tioga, the name of which was mentioned no less than a dozen times during the transaction. They were both told the financing wouldn’t work for the bank. They did a walk-around before taking possession and I didn’t see a blindfold on her. It’s the worst case of buyer’s remorse I’ve ever seen. Or maybe the onset of pre-senile dementia.
To top things off, the dealership is going to allow her to return the vehicle and take up negotiations on the Bounder again. Bye-bye commission for me, hello Alzheimers for her, apparently. I’m not sure this is the sort of person that should be piloting a 36 foot motor home down the nation’s highways.
She thought she was still buying the Bounder? What, like y’all decided overnight to give her a 50% discount?
If the Tioga sale had gone through, you’d have shared commission with the guy who originally sold her the Bounder, right? It seems to me he participated in making a sale to the ditsy dame.
Correct. Now that she’s reverted to the original vehicle, I’m no longer eligible to split the commission. It’s somewhat frustrating, since every deal but one in this pay period has gone sour because of financing problems. The debt load in this country is staggering, and the banks are starting to turn down loans in the absence of substantial down payments. Everyone seems to want zero down, $100 a month for longest-term loans, not seeming to realize what they are doing to themselves. They end up being “hooped” (having negative equity in whatever they have purchased).
What gets me is that she actually drove off in the Tioga, and tries to act like she didn’t know the difference. I mean, they must look totally different - what, is she blind?
You may be right. She says she talked her brother into lowering her rent. :eek:
That means that the whole “this isn’t the model we said we wanted” nonsense was just a scam to try to get out of the deal. The guy admitted later that this was indeed the model they had decided on. When they initially came back in, he said that they had wanted the 31W model instead of the 31M. Now, barring adult-onset dyslexia, I’m 100% sure that it was the 31M, cuz I wrote down the VIN before going in to write the deal. Once the manager rolled over on it, the guy admitted he was wrong (read ‘lying’). Sheesh.
Well, let’s see…there were the two aggressive women who came in apparently just to bitch about the high cost of RVs and such. I had the misfortune to have to deal with them (some folks just should NOT be allowed to wear stretch pants, by the way) politely, despite their rudeness and in-your-face 'tude. After bad-mouthing our pop-up trailers, complaining about the prices, and demanding to see the NADA prices (hell-LO, they’re NEW vehicles), they smirked their sorry asses back out to their car and peeled out of the parking lot. Interesting, since we are the only pop-up dealer in town. Now they’ve placed themselves in the position of having to come back to us and hope they don’t have to come to me for help. It was kind of suicide by attitude, if you will. I don’t want to get into the whole ‘salesmen are scum’ argument again; it would seem that until someone is rude to you, you should at least be civil to them, even if you don’t trust them.
Then there was the shouting that was going on over in the manager’s office one day this week. Someone who wasn’t even involved in the sale barged into a sales conversation and started telling the customer that they were being ripped off, etc., and began shouting at the salesman and the manager. The manager, who is a consumate professional, finally lost it with this bitch. The whole thing dissolved into chaos because some stranger decided to get involved in something that wasn’t her business. Most entertaining.
The challenge of the week was actually a pretty good experience (and most customers for this product are civil and fun to talk to). A young military couple came in looking at small trailers. They were very pleasant and attractive people, but the woman was wearing a skin-tight top and equally tight jeans and was rather - shall we say - well endowed. The top was thin and there was a bit of a breeze, and…well…my eye muscles still hurt from the effort not to drop my gaze, even for a second. The sale would have been dead the minute I did so, because I knew that the husband was well aware of his wife’s charms and was just waiting for me to take a gander. It fell through later in financing, but I think I strained something in my brain.
Similar episode happened with me. This guy’s wife was talking to my wife about breast feeding. Perfect time to look at her chest right? Nope. Guy was watching me like a freakin’ hawk.
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