what is it with some garages and being rude

[Cavcraft]

And a ride on the Shieldsman ferry.

 

 

That's not what he called it when he offered me a go.

[eddyramrod]

When I bought the emergency-purchase 406 last year I was treated royally at Knightsbridge Cars on Roose Road in Barrow; so close I walk my dog there every day. The car I was looking at,, you may remember, was a V-plate Scenic they had taken as a px ages ago, so long they couldn't even recall if it had MoT. They were prepared to sell it to me for 200 and about the only courtesy I didn't get was a cup of coffee. And I didn't even buy it! Slightly more offhand but acceptably affable was Cumbria Autos where I actually did buy the 406, for a massive three hundred pounds.

Credit where it's due to those guys. That's how you sell cars. Knightsbridge have one on the forecourt that my mate is slightly interested in at the moment - one of their proper stock priced in the thousands - and I'm trying to get him to come for a viewing. Word of mouth, best advertising there is.

[dugong]

I didn't realise you were the hero that got that Meganne running, in that case you should be able to make your fortune touring the country and fixing our knackered old sheds

Same here. It took a while, my forum memory is terrible at the moment. That C4 may actually be fair game. I still wouldn't, but I doff my hat to your skills.

[Honey Badger]

Cheap and cheerful on teh bay at the moment, no MOT

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2000-HONDA-HR-V-VTEC-4WD-BLUE-/111439863030?pt=Automobiles_UK&hash=item19f2555cf6

 

[Cavcraft]

Oh aye, I got the snotty wanker treatment from the parts department at VW not that long ago. Naturally, for that reason only, I shan't be buying a new VW.

 

The now sadly long gone H. Dugdales Motorcycles near Helsby were epic at customer relations. Bought an old Superdream for £175 (on finance!) and a few months later the speedo cable broke. Went up there to buy a new one, owner recognised me and I got it for nothing because I'd bought the bike from there. Sadly, every other motorbike shop in the area I've visited since and before are the absolute opposite. 

[dangerousdave]

one thing I always say is never judge a couple of stories on here proved that because yes you could just be looking at the cheap part x out back but how do they know your not checking the sales teams attitude out for someone who maybe looking to buy a fleet of new cars

case in mind a friend of mine some years ago came into some inheritance money so wanted to buy his then girlfriend an expensive ring bearing in mind like me hes into heavy metal so went to a really upmarket jewellers in meadowhall  in his usual ripped jeans scruffy t shirt and boots the salesman came straight over and said really snottily " can I help you " my mate said yes id likto look at that ring the salesman turned round looked him up and down and in same tone of voice said " you cant afford that " so my mate said oh cant I producing a big wad of cash the salesmans attitude changed instantly and said "oh oh sorry sir please come over and sit down " my mate said no forget it with that attitude and walked out

[Cavcraft]

I know what you mean my mate worked in the punctuation department of Halfords and someone came in looking for some Comma oil and some brackets but he didnt like his attitude so he told him to ram it up his colon full stop 

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

A few years ago now I used to sell new and used cars for a BMW main dealer. Luckily I was shielded from the mouthbreathing cheese and onion breath scum that go hand in hand with old shitters, but I have to say that I enjoyed fucking off the smartarses. 'Buyers are liars' is a phrase my manager told me and it's true.

One arsehole rang up about an X5 (twat status confirmed) and I verbally gave a rough p/x estimate and within an hour the cunt was here with the usual 'not as described' p/x. When I explained that we weren't going to honour the px price, he started to menstruate and wanted to speak to the manager. Cuntface got his deal, but what he didn't know was that RFL wasn't included. I watched his face fall as I told him that it cost about £450 a year to tax - an enjoyable moment. He had to get dome sort of cashback thingy with the finance agreement to cover it. I also enjoyed telling him and his fur coat/no knickers wife that we's pre sold their px already.

 

Car sales is a horrid job and I don't miss it one jot. I cannot begin to imagine what it's like to work for Arnold Shark.

[Minimad5]

I popped into M53 Ford (or what ever it is called now) , to get a price to re-code the new injectors fitted to Fatha_Minimad5 Mondeo TDCI.

I walked into the flashy showroom and navigated to the PARTS / SERVICE / SALES area, and asked the young bloke (Who was sat at a gangster leaning 49 degree angle on his office chair) "Hi there, just wondering if i could grab a price for recoding of injectors on a Mondeo, please"
He sat there and replied "yeah man, you needs parts dept" ..... so i asked where that was and he said "here" .

Anyway after f*cking about for half an hour i ended up speaking to his colleague (Who was sat on Facebook), and finally got a price.
Hope the Mechanics give more of a fuck when i book it in

[myglaren]

I popped into M53 Ford (or what ever it is called now) , to get a price to re-code the new injectors fitted to Fatha_Minimad5 Mondeo TDCI.

 

I walked into the flashy showroom and navigated to the PARTS / SERVICE / SALES area, and asked the young bloke (Who was sat at a gangster leaning 49 degree angle on his office chair) "Hi there, just wondering if i could grab a price for recoding of injectors on a Mondeo, please"

He sat there and replied "yeah man, you needs parts dept" ..... so i asked where that was and he said "here" .

 

Anyway after f*cking about for half an hour i ended up speaking to his colleague (Who was sat on Facebook), and finally got a price.

Hope the Mechanics give more of a fuck when i book it in

Sounds like they are emulating this crowd:

[Bren]

My dad told me a tale when he took my sisters car to the local one man band, a woman came in who had cooked her corsa and left it there for a quote.

 

She was told £400 as head gasket etc. had gone. She then asked if she could pay weekly!

 

Sometimes I understand why people in the trade get arsey with the public.

[twosmoke300]

Indeed. Don't get me started on the "since yous "

[richardmorris]

Manners maketh man and cost nothing.

 

I've only tried to buy a car from a main dealer once - 56reg 2HDI C5 exclusive in 2008. It was a good price but had been smoked in by a cigar/pipe smoker and the radio didn't work (only done 30k). Dealer offered me £1000 for my 52 reg C5 exclusive. Told them parker's said £2800 px and he said well it's owned by woman's world what do they know.  I said I'll buy it today cash if he gives me £2500  - he went off to see his "manager" and came back and said no. Fair enough, but mine was in far cleaner condition than the one they were selling, had nothing not working and could have put it on their forecourt the same afternoon for £3500. I also had a £500 voucher my Dad gave me for the dealer that said valid for any part exchange or new car and this guy told me it was only for a deposit for finance.  They weren't interested in cash purchases - just finance.

[nrm69]

Went to the old Arnold Clark Fiat in Edinburgh about 6 years ago to look at Panda for my wife, can't remember exact price but salesman wouldn't budge any further and I had to leave as house was for sale and someone coming round later that afternoon. We decided that we'd pay the extra £100 and phoned the salesman who was busy but didn't return my call that day or next.

A couple of days later went to Arnies in Kirkcaldy and within 30 mins the Fiat guy is on the phone wondering why we weren't still wanting the Panda having been flagged on their computer system- if you can't call me to conclude a sale what's the rest of the service going to be like. The VW salesman was great and picked us up from the station when we collected the car.

 

A few days prior to this a salesman at Arnies Superstore wouldn't let us test drive a Ford Fusion until we'd agreed the price, how can I do that without knowing how the car drives?

 

Hate buying from garages.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

My fastest purchase was a new Ka in 1999. Knew the price (£4999, 1 years free ins, RRP £6495), went in and bought it, 25 mins. I took in a Y reg XR3 that was utterly wanked. "If you never bring that back, I'll give you a tank of fuel". Result!

[Cavcraft]

I have to be honest, Richard, if you turned up to buy a car at a garage I worked at and quoted Parker's, I'd probably have several asthma attacks from laughing.

 

When I worked at the car auctions and people turned up clutching PG, you could almost smell the blood as they got surrounded by sharks.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

he said well it's owned by woman's world what do they know.

Ha!!! Good comeback, you have to admit

[Mr Lobster]

Car sales is a horrid job and I don't miss it one jot. I cannot begin to imagine what it's like to work for Arnold Shark.

 

Generally terrible.

[Pete-M]

I worked as a sales droid for Ian Skellys for a while in the mid 90s. It was the most stressful, depressing mind-fuck of a job I've had in the motor trade.

 

Every morning there would be a sales meeting where the whole sales team would be bawled at by the sales manager "30 sales each this month or you're leaving us. Customers are making it onto the pitch without being welcomed within 20 seconds, there's a failure to close deals as the sales team aren't engaging customers. If you see a customer who's not with a salesman get involved, steal the sale".

 

There's nothing the sales managers there wouldn't stoop to. Ringing people who visited the parts department five years ago to try and sell them a car was a weekly thing. Lists of thousands of people who'd bought car parts were regularly brought out so on a wet Sunday you'd have to go through every number and write down the responses. Of course, they'd record the calls and then once every couple of weeks you'd be sent to talk to the marketing experts "when you rang this guy you asked him three open questions, that's not how you're meant to call people, you're meant to be closing deals not giving people room to hang up.".

 

Fucking ridiculous state of affairs. You can't ring someone up out of the blue and pressure sell them a new VW, ffs. That's what they expected.

 

The finance side of it is often the only way the salesman can be guaranteed his commission. Skellys sales managers used to regularly adjust commission earned on cars to try and screw the sales team out of money they'd earned - that's how utterly sharky they were in the mid 90s. In the morning they'd declare that, for example, a Polo sold was £50 commission, there'd be £5 for mats, £5 for mud flaps, £10 for an alarm upgrade and similar amounts for various upgrades or options. There'd be £100 bonus if you could sell the hideous Kermit Green 1.0 5 door "open air" that was proving impossible to shift.

 

At the end of the month the rates for all the extras would mysteriously be cancelled if you hit the sales target for cars moved. The grand earned for options and accessories would be cancelled for some spurious bullshit reason "You beat your target but the team as a whole didn't so we're not paying for extras this month and your target is being raised from 30 to 33 cars".

 

This meant that instead of taking home a good wage you were earning less than the parts delivery driver who didn't have to be in 12 hours a day, six days a week.

 

The only useful experience to be gained working there was the ability to spot a slimy shifty bullshitting sales cunt at 200 metres, and know exactly how to deal with them.

[Rusty_Rocket]

Pete- that sounds like a living hell.. 

[Rocket88]

I worked as a junior salesman at a Fiat garage in Dorset in the early eighties. it was a small dealership,and the owner was a complete nutter. Senioer salesman was engaged to his daughter, and made sure that I was stitched up / humiliated at every opportunity. Pinched customers I'd cultivated for weeks, made sure anything I sold was badly PDI'd, made sure my P/Xs were written back at ridiculous levels. etc etc

. Went back there about 10 years later, old owner had died, but salesman was still there. He didn't recognise me, so I took great delight in wasting his time for two hours pretending to be interested in buying two brand new cars...............

[Pete-M]

Working there means now when I meet a car salesman I feel sorry for them rather than much else.

 

I've heard a nasty rumour that the dreaded Pendle system is making a return in car sales circles. That's bad news for car sales and customers.

 

If you think it's bad now, wait til Pendle makes a return.

[oman5]

the only time we ever bought anything new was the Sandero from Renault Cardiff. I doubt Dacia commissions are going to be much, but the salesman couldn't have been nicer. He didn't try and flog us a dearer Renault like some have tried, offered us a test drive straight away and the showroom had free coffee and bickies laid on. He chased around to get us the exact car we wanted much sooner than the quoted delivery time too.

we took the car back for its annual service (150 quid..not as bad as I expected from a main stealer) and our salesman is now working at the Maserati showroom down the road.

[Richard]

Working there means now when I meet a car salesman I feel sorry for them rather than much else.

I've heard a nasty rumour that the dreaded Pendle system is making a return in car sales circles. That's bad new for car sales and customers.

If you think it's bad now, wait til Pendle makes a return.

It's proving a bit difficult to JFGI Pendle on my phone with a flaky connection. Could you explain what the Pendle system is?

[Noel Tidybeard]

wot he sed ^

[myglaren]

^Same 'ere^

[chaseracer]

Looks like fun...

 

 

<_>

[Pete-M]

High pressure sales techniques.

 

Don't leave the opportunity to say no to anything. Coffee, tea, biscuits, mats, alarm, scotchguard, alloys, sunroof, aircon, finance, ppi, "if I can do this for you today we'll have a deal".

 

Nasty head working stuff.

[Cavcraft]

The hardest bit of my last job (sales/servicing with a big outfit supplying workshops and garages and doing waste removal) was mostly from the boss. You just couldn't do enough for him 99.9% of the time, and he'd often call meeting at 8.00-8.30am to bollock the ones who turned up late.

Seeing as I was always first out in the morning (often at 6.00am) it was pissing stupid to include me in these meetings, but he said he had to. That meant even shorter time to get out, do your work and actually try and sell things of course.

 

Usually on the day of such meetings I'd just piss about and do the least possible, or maybe see if I could break previous records between certain points in the van, and/or accidentally* put the tacho in back to front.

[mat_the_cat]

A few days prior to this a salesman at Arnies Superstore wouldn't let us test drive a Ford Fusion until we'd agreed the price, how can I do that without knowing how the car drives?

 

Sounds like they've been bitten by timewasters, in which case I'd agree a price only based on everything being A1. My usual way of buying, whether private or dealer is to only test drive if I/we will buy the car if the test drive goes OK. To me there's no point driving something if you have no intention of buying (not that I'm suggesting you did that) so would only back out if the car had problems or didn't like the way it drove.