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Saturday, March 7, 2015

FREE ESTIMATE


FREE ESTIMATE
No opinion for
Cranky Opinion Saturday instead
A Rant for
CRANKY RANT SATURDAY
I hate salespeople.  I’m sorry, are you in sales? Fuck you!
I’m on to your tricks. 
First off, I’m not your friend. 
I once had a sales guy pitching a new roof job that I needed.  He had the best shingles with the best guarantee, and the best certified installers.  He gave me his price and then pushed a contract to me to sign.  If I signed right away I would get the one time, offered this week only, 10% discount.  I told him I wanted to see a few more contractors before I decided.
“What’s the matter, don’t you trust me?”
I told him,
“You seem like a very nice guy, but I’ve only known you for 35 minutes.  I have friends I’ve known since grade school who have fucked me, so no, I don’t trust you enough to sign just yet. Thank you!”
Oh, and the price he quoted me ended up about 150% higher than the price I finally paid a contractor who was not my “Friend.”
My favorite is when they offer a “Free Estimate.”
No kidding, thank you so much.  A free estimate, what a great deal, because I hate it when the sales guy tells me it will cost me one million dollars for all new storm windows and then charges me 100 bucks for the estimate when I don’t buy his windows for a million bucks. 
Who the hell pays for an estimate?
I love guarantees.  “Guaranteed for life” is always a good one.  Whose life?  The life of the product?  “Yeah, the washing machine died and was guaranteed for life? Sorry, its life is over!”
In 1970, I bought a Ginsu knife that had a fifty year guarantee.  It broke last year while I was using it to cut a brick.  Where do I go to get my new Ginsu?  Doesn’t matter, somehow I’ve lost the sales slip anyway. 
I have never known anyone in my life that has ever got a new product back from a lifetime guarantee (Ok, maybe Tupperware, but that shit never breaks.)
“On Sale today only!”
Does anyone really believe this one?  First off most sales are for shit the store just can’t sell because it sucks, or it is just a price reduced from a ridiculous list price that only an idiot would pay.  Like jewelry.  I have never ever bought a piece of jewelry that was not on sale.  It is always on sale, and the sale always ends tomorrow!
There is a clothes store chain that offers a special, “Buy one suit get one suit free” sale.  I do not believe anyone has ever left that store with only one suit.
Furniture…is there a furniture store on God’s green earth that is not going out of business?  There is a store a few miles from me that has been going out of business for 25 years.  “Everything MUST go!”  Well then why do you keep restocking?
That’s it, rant over.
Buy my first book for twice the list price, and get my second book free.  Both are guaranteed to make you laugh.  If not simply return them along with $29.99 postage and handling and I will return your purchase price.  Act now, this offer expires as soon as you buy the book.
What, you don’t trust me?

18 comments:

  1. I hate retail salespeople. If I walk into a store, I RUN the other way from those annoying people. Then they think I'm weird.

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  2. Yep! It's like the MSRP. "Buy today and get 50% off the MSRP." So who decides the MSRP? The guy giving me the 50% off deal. Well DUH!

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  3. the worst ones here are the mattress sales - they just rotate their 'specials' over and over again. mismatch bed and boxspring. too-much-inventory. last year's models. blah...

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  4. Oh so true! Then there's the New Years sale, Presidents day sale, Valentines day sale, St. Patrick's day sale, etc., etc., etc.

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  5. They try to get you on the impulsive sale, so they try to make it seem like this is going away so very soon; we are afraid we will miss that great bargain so we jump on their band wagon and buy, buy, buy (well some of us, not me)

    betty

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  6. Buy one and get the second one for half price is only 25% off because you have to pay full price for the first one. This fools far too many people who think they're buying something for half price.

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  7. If it sounds too good to be true then you can bet it's going to cost you plenty.

    Have a fabulous day Cranky. :)

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  8. Oh, it's part of their job to do that. :P
    Have a less cranky weekend! :)

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  9. What bugs me is when something is selling for pennies a day or is "Less than $100 ($99.99). I hate when prices end in 99 cents--except at the 99 Cent Store!!

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  10. Yeah! (to both you and fishducky) How come gasoline is always X.99 per gallon? Why don't they just round it up?

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  11. In the area we have both an oriental rug company and a furrier who have gone out of business annually for as long as I can recall. I believe their merchandise is geared toward the very transient nature of the town.

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  12. My favorite furniture store has been going out of business for two years. They really do have good, reasonable stuff though so I put up with the baloney.

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  13. It's a good thing for us Grandpa was even better at being a doctor than he was at sales, and he could persuade a chicken farmer to buy eggs! He really did have the talent to sell, but that wasn't his passion. And no, i didn't inherit his ability, i can't sell worth anything.

    And i don't like such tactics, either, they make me angry.

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  14. Car salesmen are the worst, with their free undercoating, and kind word they put in with their manager to get you the deal, which of course the big bad manager can't do. And they get so condescending when you walk out!

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  15. The buy-one-get-one-free sales must be something typical American. My sister came for a visit from Germany one time and bought a package of cookies in a grocery store. When I told her later that the cookies were BOGO, meaning she could have gotten the second package for free, she looked at me like I was a cow with two heads.

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  16. I've just seen an ad on TV for "the best pillow you will ever own" Guaranteed to support the head and neck no matter which way you lie. But wait there's more! (no, not steak knives) if you buy right now, we'll send you not one, but TWO extra pillows free of charge! Straight away I thought yeah, you can't sell them so you have to give them away. I don't get fooled by stuff like that.

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  17. In a mall here in Cairns, there is this stand in the middle of the hall (?) and they sell beauty products. They have people who stand there and accost people as they go by. I've been caught by them before and I wasted 1/2 hour of my life being persuaded to buy products that I don't want or need at triple the price that one would normally pay for such things. They don't take "no thank you" for an answer as they try to engage you every time you walk past. I've tried not making eye contact, hiding behind other shoppers, but they always find you and say "can I ask you a question?" Finally I gave up trying to be polite and now I just answer back "No!" Then I got caught out by my 11yo. He thought I was very rude and admonished me for it. I couldn't deny it and was embarrassed because I've always taught him to be polite... I hate salespeople too!

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