Monday, May 03, 2004

Salesmen Continued...

Lee, the Honda guy. He didn't seem to want to explain to us what makes the car good. How the things that Honda has done will benefit us. For some reason, he kept explaining how the drivers seat could be raised and lowered. I felt like telling him, "Fifteen years I drove in a car with seats that go back and forth, not up and down. I don't care about that feature. It's just stupid. I'll duck, and Tracie will sit on a phone book."

When he wasn't touting the greatness of the adjustable height seats, he was saying that it came with power windows! Like I'm going to say, "Oh it has power windows? That's that final straw we'll take it!" Lee, if you are reading this, pay attention. EVERY NEW CAR IN THE ENTIRE WORLD CAN BE FITTED WITH POWER WINDOWS! It isn't a selling feature, it is an add on. Once you have sold the Civic, you convince them to spend an extra $500 for the power windows.

Another annoying thing was when we said that we wanted a standard transmission, he said, "Most people can't tell the difference between how an automatic and a standard drive, but you really know how to drive a standard." He went on to tell us how good we were at driving a standard transmission car several times. I'm thinking to myself, "This guy met me five minutes ago. What am I stupid? Like I don't know he has no fricking clue about how I drive." Really the flattery started to get a little embarrassing.

We told Lee that we only cared about two features. Cruise control and air conditioning. He didn't seem to realise that we wanted him to find us a car with those features. Not some other random features. Did I tell you that he found us one with power windows and adjustable height seats?

The final thing that made me switch from being a lifetime Honda driver to being a Toyota driver was when we told him that we had tested a Jetta. Now, the Jetta is a whole different class of car. Really there is no comparison between the Civic and the Jetta. The Jetta is way better. It also costs $7000 more. The first thing Lee did when we told him that we tried a Jetta was to grab his lemon book. He didn't actually flip to the Jetta page, (if there even is one,) but he did say, "Ooooh, I don't know, they make Jettas in Mexico."

The Mexico comment offended me. I consider myself to be somewhat well traveled, having lived in Argentina for two years. At the time I though, "Boy if I had gone to Mexico instead of Argentina, I would have been really offended not just sort of offended." It's like the guy thinks that Mexicans are stupid or something. Like they can't weld as well as people from Detroit, Ontario, or Japan.

The bottom line is that Lee didn't explain how owning a Civic would benefit us, how we would find value for our money in the car. His sales pitch was basically was, it's a Honda, the seats and windows go up and down, and a lot of hand waving. Hand waving instead of actual thought makes me very mad.

Lee has single handedly cost Honda at least $100,000, because now instead of buying four or more new cars from Honda, I will be buying Toyota or VW.


-Gary, Owner of a Coca-Corolla

Ps. This post was getting a little long, so there will be parts 2 and 3 for the other two good salesmen and a crappy closer.

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