Salesman

So, not a car, but I was looking at purchasing a motorcycle yesterday and had an infuriating experience with a salesman. I asked about financing the bike (and they wouldn't give me a final price before letting me apply for financing, I should have walked right there) and they had me fill out some forms and give them two forms of ID- my driver's license, and a bank card. Salesman disappeared for like half an hour and didn't bring my ID's back to me. He started pressuring me on sales, I told him no with the dealer fees that amounted to a 75 percent increase in price. I told him I wanted to go and to get my cards, he sent another guy out and returned without my cars. I got angry and actually yelled at them to "Get my fucking cards NOW. I'm DONE."

Was I overreacting or were they in the right to hold onto my ID and debit card for so long? I feel he should have given it back to me immediately after processing the credit check.

This is a thread I saw posted a few times when I was in high school and went on this sub a lot. I always loved reading the responses and learning the little quirks and funny, interesting points about the languages people study here so I thought I’d open it up again :)

If alien disclosure occurred the larping and lies will go to the extreme. You'll have fake gurus and new cult leaders pop up, Suddenly more and more people claiming to be abductees will come forward. Claims of channeling these extraterrestrial. People will make profit off the announcement of extraterrestrial life visiting its already a problem.

Ok. I don’t know if it was sexism or if he was legit intimidated by my very foreign looking husband but hear me out. (I’m East Asian and my Japanese is pretty good. So I can be Japanese passing. While my husband is white and more obviously foreign)

This guy rings our doorbell, tells me he’s from a Kaisha that does home improvements and renovations. I talk to him, give him some time because who knows when we’ll need his services. At this time, dinner is simmering in the kitchen. But it was on low heat so I wasn’t super stressed about that.

He proceeds to tell me about the importance of waterproofing the walls. He explains some more. He talks about the age of the house. He also talks about the prices. At this point he’s been talking for at least 8-10 minutes. I’m really not interested and say “we’re scheduling a home inspection by the builders of the house. So give me your contact information and I’ll research your company and maybe talk to my husband when he gets home.”

He gives me his calling card.

He then refuses to leave. He keeps talking. I tell him hey, I’m not gonna decide today. I need to talk to my husband when he gets home. He says he doesn’t want me to make a decision today. But then refuses to leave again and keeps talking about their services!

The paragraph above was repeated three times. I’ve said “Kekkou desu” and “I’m gonna need to head back in to finish making dinner” for every service he brings up and I’m at the end of my tether, because he WON’T LEAVE! And in my head I’m just going “oh eff this, I’m gonna call husband and pretend to be busy.” The reason I didn’t want to be rude is someday, we might use their service, or our neighbors already do and I don’t want to burn that bridge. So I grabbed my phone and dialed.

My husband, bless his heart, was walking and couldn’t feel his phone vibrating in his pocket. Thank GOD he was turning into our cul-de-sac when I was giving up hope.

He talked to the guy, and the guy basically goes, “this is my kaisha and this is what we do.”

My husband repeats everything I said and then says “ok, we can’t decide today. We need to talk about it.”

And the guy goes, “ok sir!” And EFFIN LEAVES. I’ve been trying to get him to leave for 10 minutes and my husband talks to him in seconds and he leaves.

I’m just UGH. So annoyed.

Guess I’m not intimidating at all.

Considering he is a limited time vendor he should have a random assortment of furnishings from the realm depot shop (and have them cost half their normal price). Because as it stands, the furnishings are quite expensive and you're obviously limited to how many you can purchase per day.

I was at the Toyota dealership last Friday and bought a new car. As with any new car, the dealer destination charge is added to the MSRP to arrive at an adjusted sales price. However on the sales sheet, the adjusted sales price was at the top, but then on a line near the bottom they tried to add in a second destination charge! I can't believe they tried to slip in this $1175 charge in there as a blatant double charge.

I immediately called them on it and they had the sales manager come talk to me and explain that it was company policy to charge this right now since the market is so crazy. He then said he would remove it for me as a "welcome to the neighborhood" gift. He said, "Easiest $1200 you ever made."

I rolled my eyes so hard he could probably hear it. I continued on with the sale because I've been through this process several times and know what to look for. But I just can't stop thinking about how many customers just roll over and eat the double charge unknowingly. Has this ever happened to anyone else?

I originally posted this as a comment on Car dealer shenanigans....

My wife and I have used a salesman's sexism against him, and it was so satisfying. It was when we bought our first new car. We were nervous that we didn't know what we were doing so we did a lot of research (it helps that my wife is a librarian).

When we got to the dealer, the salesman would only talk to me. I was all buddy buddy with the guy, too, but he completely ignored my wife. We went along.

The dealer was running a promotion where they would give you $X for your trade-in, no matter what condition. "If you can drive it on the lot..." kind of deal. Of course they just don't discount off of MSRP in those cases, so it's a gimmick. When we walked in the salesman asked which car was ours parked outside and then asked if we were trading it in. I said no, we weren't trading that car in. You can see where this was going.

As I said, we had done our research and knew what a fair price was for the car we wanted. At the time Edmunds had detailed dealer-level price information for many new cars, including all the various ways a dealer gets paid and what their true costs are (the "invoice price" is not their true cost). I negotiated the price (since he wouldn't talk to my wife) and we arrived at a number I thought was fair, actually. We got a good deal at that point. Everything was going smoothly as he wrote up our agreement, until he confirmed that we didn't have a trade in. I said, no, we were trading in a car, just not the one we drove into the dealer in. He literally froze for a few seconds looking down at the form, his hand hovering over the page.

He asked the make, model, and year of our trade-in, and when I told him he sputtered and balked. The car we were trading in was on its last legs. I'd had it all during college and it was old before I bought it. It was definitely past its prime. I said, I thought you were running a promotion where the quality of the trade-in doesn't matter. I asked him if he would have given us a higher price if he knew we had a trade in? My wife said under her breath "that's sleazy." He heard, as she intended him to.

He then tried to renegotiate the price. We knew from our research that if they gave us the price we had already agreed on, and they honored the trade-in deal, that they would be losing money. So we were willing to move a bit, but we wanted to take our time. He

For context, this isn't my first rodeo. I'm a full stack developer, have worked at a YC company as employee #1, have co-founded in the past and raised, come from a dropout background and earned my chops building side projects and doing hackathons. I'm also an awkward nerd with a babyface who's not great at talking to strangers and has never found networking intuitive. Fundamentally, I'm not a salesman. I'm trying to start a new project, but finding it real difficult to get off the ground in terms of talking to users. I'm an old-fashioned hacker and am at my best designing and building things which I like to think I'm pretty good at, but this is not in my strong suit. The previous company I co-founded, I had no experience and stumbled into some credible-seeming talkers who I built the product for. It was a long story and we ran into some problems but the fundamental result is that I've never had to do this.

I've identified a (very real) problem that large numbers of founders experience. I've done 6 customer interviews so far from my network. I've built a landing page. But now I'm a bit stuck. I need to refine my model but don't know how to get the conversations I need. What I need to do is get out and start selling to people, but I don't even know where to start. Looking like I'm barely out of high school doesn't help. Feeling super overwhelmed, advice much appreciated. I don't want to do the classic technical guy blunder of build build build without heed paid to users.

Bad non-technical co-founder candidates are in high supply, but the good ones are rarer than gold.

So, I'll try to keep it brief at the front here.

Began selling cars three weeks ago after a lifetime of work in restaurants and professional music. Its a move I feel I need to make and I have what seems like a decent spot in which to start. Its a local Honda dealership, I'm working in pre-owned sales. Our base pay per unit is $150, up to $500 per unit when I'm at 20(+) units a month, with bonuses along the way. Consistently averaging in that top range (per month) will net me 6 figures before taxes, so that seems solid.

They offer a "self-insured" option for health insurance and matching 401K as well; probably some other benes I'm forgetting). Obviously, our inventory is screwed right now, but I'm feeling good about where I am and that this is a good place to start. I was hoping some more experienced people could talk to me some about how these numbers look to them and if they have any kind of advice for a TOTAL newbie in this field.

Secondly:

I'm a great salesmen, in general. I can talk to people, make friends quickly and build rapport. The part I'm really apprehensive about is the financial process of the deal and learning the technical aspects of the vehicles. Any advice in either of these arenas? I'm literally open to any advice and I thank you ahead of time if you want to drop a line to me about how I can learn to do this. I think I can be great at this but I have to figure out how to bridge the gap between what I don't know and where I need to be.

Thanks!

______

ONE MONTH UPDATE: I have been recommended for, and today secured, a promotion into the dealership's internet sales division. I haven't even sold anything but they've seen enough to want me there. Pretty damn stoked as this move will probably allow me to be productive as early as next week instead of in another month or two.

A MAN WAS TRYING TO SELL ME VACUUM CLEANERS. HE IS MAKING HIS WAY FURTHER AND FURTHER INTO TOWN. ALSO CAN SOMEONE TELL ME HOW TO TURN OFF CAPS.

I finally test rode a Panigali V4S. I heard they get hot, but I didn't realize how hot till I rode one.

The salesman only took me around on the street (Ducati test rides don't allow highways) but man, after 10 minutes I didn't even want to hold my thighs onto the tank. I never once rode a bike and thought "this is burning my thighs" before.

Now given, I don't have a lot of experience with 1000's, but when I rode a friends CBR1000, it never got even close to "hot".

I've taken 600's out for touring with shorts on and they never got hot.

When I asked the salesman about the heat, he told me "all bikes get hot".

I really want to upgrade to a 1000, and specifically a Ducati, it's my dream bike.

But are all 1000's this hot, or just Ducati's?

I plan on putting hours into this next bike and using it as my daily. But I'm also in one of the hottest city's in the US and I don't know if I could deal with the heat that Ducati was giving.

I'm definitely enjoying the Teacup world, but the traveling salesman on the weekends is proving to be pretty meh. Every week it's the same thing: a couple animals and terrain chunks. The animals are okay, but with Load being an issue having a bunch of animals is pointless. And I'm getting tired of seeing the same terrain chunks week after week. I was expecting much rarer purchase options from him. As it stands now I'm only buying animals I don't already have and then 2 terrain blocks off a friend for the weekly battle pass (which I'll stop doing next week since I'll hit 50).

EDIT: I'd love to see him have really expensive options. Buildings you can only get through him that cost a lot and you really have to decide if it's worth buying. To me that would make it much more poignant.

This is my first post! It’s on mobile! ( I see other people disclaim those things so I will too)

I worked at a well known vacuum company as assistant manager for almost a year. The manager was a classic sketchy salesman, but he never totally crossed the line until the following story.

I live in a place with lots of forest fires in summer typically. We had a lady drop off her vac for diagnostics, but she called within days to explain her house is in the middle of a evacuated area, and she is much too busy to come get it. I told her this is totally fine and of course we understand. My manager hadn’t even finished diagnosing it to my knowledge. I immediately let him know the situation, not to mention it’s kept in a record on his computers anyway so he can check what needs doing.

Cue another few days later, and a customer needs a specific hose for their vac. My manager proceeds to look in the back, finds the hose for the vac previously lady left, and makes out like he’s going to sell it!

I went to him, took him in the back right away, and reminded him that she will be back and then what will we do? This is her property still and not ours. He of course ignores me, and proceeds to cut the electrical components and sell the hose to the next customer. (The next customer needed a hose, but didn’t need the electrical component which was in the way for their vac)

To my absolute glee, the original lady shows up literally the next day (karma) I felt bad for her but was very excited to see the drama ensue. She comes in looking for her vac. My manager acts like he doesn’t know what she’s talking about. She’s screaming at him. I proceed to show them both the record on the computer. He still acts like he doesn’t know. He then says he threw it out (a lie) So I say let’s go look in the bins together! They haven’t taken them since she dropped it off.

Needless to say, it was very satisfying seeing it all fall apart so perfectly. He had to compensate the lady with a whole new vacuum.

I quit not long after. Weirdest effin person I’ve ever worked for. And a total scammer.