We went off on a car hunting jaunt today. This rant and rave is about the sales people in the car showrooms. Maybe I could have a job as a mystery shopper after this episode!
The car hunt was all fuelled by a sighting of the Fiat 500 on a trailer at the Anguilla Park car park some weeks back. I figured we should find out more about this vehicle and we started our hunt today. We first headed to somewhere in the Ubi area where we found the FIAT sign but no sighting of any Fiats. The Fiats were hidden behind some showroom displaying some China marque but again no Fiat 500 in sight. A very friendly young lady told us that the Fiat 500 was at Sin Ming. She answered our usual questions about how much the car, what financing options, what colour available, manual or auto gearbox, engine capacity, electric adjustable wing mirrors, and even made suggestions on our possible replacement car.
We give her an A for effort even though she didn't have the car that we were looking for!
My criteria for a car were simple: manual gearbox, manual window winder and electric adjustable wing mirrors. My sister is another story - she's a lazy driver and wants an auto car, large boot space, must have vanity mirrors on both sun visors and a whole lot of other things. Hero only wants a vehicle to drive him from A to B and doesn't care about the rest of the other refinements. Can move - can already!
We headed off to Sin Ming and found the Fiat 500 in the driveway. We headed into the showroom and encountered another friendly salesman. He answered all our questions and even entertained our request for a green version - colour and nothing to do with CNG versions or whatever. This salesman even told us that he would knock off $1,000 off the price of the car and include all the extras (leather seats and premium colour choice) if we signed on the dotted line. He was totally upfront about what was included in the price. Told us that his company does not mess around with gimmicky sales prices to entice buyers. We told him that we were also looking at the Peugeot 1007 (the sliding door car) but he was quite unfazed.
Also an A for effort for this gentleman. We like him for his honesty.
So we headed off to Alexandra Road to see the Peugeot 1007. We encountered really snooty sales people in that Peugeot showroom. Admittedly we were not dressed to the nines, but that does not mean that we are not serious buyers.
In the stable of vehicles we have in our family, these are the marques we have driven over the years - Rover, Citroen, Land Rover, Peugeot, BMW, Mercedes Benz, VW, Renault, Fiat, Alfa Romeo, Toyota Camry, Toyota Lexus, Mini, Ford, Jaguar, Proton, Honda plus experience in driving vans and lorries at some stage. So we are not inexperienced hopeless and hapless drivers!
They were not keen to show us where the spare tyre was stored - a safety issue for us! Answering our questions seemed like a great chore for them. We were dressed in our Saturday best ( t-shirts and denims with SHOES, not slippers) - maybe too casual for Peugeot. In my usual impeccable taste, I had my feet shod in my Ferragamoes - with the logos showing, so I don't think we were doing too badly! :-p So do we need to turn up dripping in our designer labels and tote our Hermes Birkins before we get attention from Peugeot??
When we asked for the exit pass (so that we el-cheapo people don't have to pay for parking!!) we were given one with great disdain by another snooty looking sales lady.
We give them an A++ for snotty snooty behaviour.
We headed off to the Renault showroom after that - we give then an A++ for hospitality. No problem with answering questions. They even offered us coffee and tea and biscuits. Ahh, that's bliss after the rounds of the showrooms.
Anyone want to hire me as a mystery shopper to test out services?
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