rude salesmen

[craigiep]

I've just been to enquire about Porsches and Mercedes at major dealerships, and in both cases the salesmen clearly weren't in the least interested in helping me. I was perfectly polite. I wasn't wearing a smart suit, but I wasn't scruffy either. Yet these snooty men looked me up and down as if I was a piece of dirt on the bottom of their shoe, and gave mainly monosyllabic responses to any questions I had. Why do they behave like this? Are they trained to? What makes them think I'm not perfectly capable of affording their cars? Not all wealthy folk look wealthy. It's a bit like visiting designer clothes shops in Sloane Street or Bond Street - a hideous experience in which you're made to feel like scumbags unless you're filthy rich or famous. Please explain, especially if you are a salesperson for an upmarket outlet

[mrknowall]

Id write to them ie manager or the dealers tell them what you came up against.
They will write back and treat you different this is where you get a good deal.
Ask for everything full tank/tax/extraservice

[kjn2]

I had a similar experience a few years ago, as I work in an office its a shirt and tie job, weekends are jeans and jumper, the salesman in my case actually said that the cars in the next row were a bit lower on price and would I like to look at them , this made me say something similar to "excuse me but I know what I can afford just because I dress like this do not take it for granted that my income is not sufficient to purchase the cars I was looking at" Do what I did went somewhere else bought my dream car took it to the first salesman at the garage and said "HEY LOOK WHAT I HAVE PURCHASED, HAVE A NICE DAY" I felt great.

[Jay70]

In fact a lot of wealthy looking people arnt wealthy because most of their money is spent on suits flash watches and keeping up appearances etc. When my wife used to work at a well known building society she was trained not take notice of appearance as it was mostly the scruffy people that didn't spend lavishly that had the most money to invest and were in the black and not the red.

[Jay70]

I'm sure they must get alot of time wasters but it just shows how shallow, and ignorant they are. After all at the end of the day they are only salesmen - you dont exactly need to be very clever.

[IzzieQ]

Mercedes are apparently spending millions of Euros on training their staff in customer service. Let's hope it works!

I have to agree with kjn and Jay70 - you can't judge someone's disposable income by the way they look. The husband of one of my work colleagues was undecided on a Mercedes or a BMW. He got the snooty treatment at the Mercedes dealership so went to BMW who were courteous and helpful. He bought a BMW.
Serves the idiots right when they lose commission.

[Jay70]

The other thing you can do is go to Lexus and get better service and a better car. The quality of the new Mercedes' has really reduced of late.

[leighb]

I also had the same experiance a few years back, I went into my local Mercedes dealership in Poole as I wanted to test drive a Merc SL for a few days, The snotty salesman looked me up and down and said we dont do that, He spotted me getting into a brand new Range Rover in the car park (not mine) and came running out for my phone number so that he could arrange it,
I did get to pose around for a few days in an SL Merc, it was good fun.