One of the things I love about 21st century capitalism is that I can shop when, where, how, and if I want to.  I can go to the Midway Cub at 11 on Saturday if I want to see plenty of my fellow human beings, or to Byerly’s at 4AM if I want fewer of them, or to Aldi if I want to feel a lot better about my life’s course, or to SimonDelivers if I don’t want to see anyone at all.  I can buy hard drives or tabasco sauce or a boat online, or go to the Farmer’s Market and buy vegetables and put ’em in the burlap bag I brought to save the hassle. 

I love it because it’s the opposite of the whole Eastern-Bloc socialist system where one shopped when the powers that be sent the merchandise – or one missed the merchandise!

So as a rule, when merchants call and say “if you’d like such-and-such a deal, be here on Saturday Morning at 9AM”, I tell them to relieve themselves up a rope. 

But I also have a very old house that needs some remodeling over the next couple of years.  And a former girlfriend’s parents were members of one of those wholesale warehouse places, and told me about the amazing deals they got on pretty much everything.  Of course, these were the kind of people who built new houses because they were bored with their old houses, but…whatever.  Simple fact:  I need stuff, and since I’m half Norwegian and probably a quarter Scottish, I want it cheap.

So I got a call from “Direct Buy Showroom” last week.  The young lady on the phone ran down a long list of the deals that one could get if one were a member.  Decent deals, as far as it went…but more later.

She also said that the “showings” were by invitation only, and asked if I were available Saturday morning for about 90 minutes.  As it happened, I was – I needed to go to White Bear to do the Saturday broadcast at the Superstore.  So it wasn’t out of my way, per se.  I’m always a little loathe to devote 90 minutes to anything that doesn’t involve work, kids, earning money or having fun, but I ignored that little voice in the back of my head, and accepted.

I drove up to the McOfficePlex in White Bear precisely on time – 8:45 AM – and went inside. 

A brief aside, here; I can’t stand most salesmen.  I mean, I’ve worked with a lot of them, and they can be really great people as people – but when they switch into “sales” mode on me, and try to “sell” me something, I shut down.  And I don’t care how slick they are, how polished their approach – I can always tell when someone is trying to convince me to pay more than I would on my own, for something I don’t need all that bad.  Always. 

But no worries – the guy they sicced on me was neither slick nor polished.  His suit pants bagged out in back; I tried to think charitably; maybe he’d lost 50 pounds entirely on his butt.  He also had that air of “I’m doing sales on Saturday mornings because my real job isn’t panning out for me.”  Whatever – he sat me down, got some coffee, and started chatting me up.  Of course, when sales guys start chatting you up, you know you’re being chatted up to try to set you up for a sale.  And since I knew I was in the room for the long haul, I figured I’d have some fun; so I started chatting him up in return.  I was right; he was a Lutheran minister…er, wait.  He was a “consultant” to Lutheran churches.  And things were a little slow.  And…

…well, I started to tune out, when the sales manager came around and told us it was time for the big presentation. 

Minister guy and two other salespeople brought four of us – a woman whose attitude screamed “accounting execuchick”, and a couple that looked prosperously blue-collar – into a room with a big-screen TV in the front.  A guy that looked for all the world like Dr. Craig from Saint Elsewhere walked to the front of a room, and spent the next hour alternating his pitch with a video about the store.  And the deals – an average of 43% off of retail – did sound good (assuming one ever pays retail for anything, or even tends to buy things brand-new, which I should add at this point I rarely if ever do).   His pet example: a “high quality” dining room table that ran $3,000 at the retail store would cost a member…$1,800. 

$1,800 for a table?  Isn’t that what estate sales are for?  I have only spent over $1,800 for a handful of cars in my life; I’ve never spent more than a sixth of that on a given piece of furniture!

Key to the whole thing, I knew, was that they only sold to “members”.  And as the elapsed time crept up toward an hour, I thought – “the longer they delay telling you how much the “membership” costs, the worse it’s gonna be”.  I started tallying up the things I need to do – build a patio, new cabinets and floors in the bathroom and kitchen, lots of paint, refinishing a bunch of hardwood floors – and tried to figure out the break-even point.  I figured a couple of hundred bucks for a “membership” could be pretty well worth it. 

Finally – at about the hour mark – the guy cut to the chase.  The initial membership term was 10.5 years.  “Think about how much retail markup you pay in ten years!”, he exhorted us, splattering numbers on a whiteboard like a Pollock painting, somehow arriving at a figure in the mid five-digit range.

“Now, before I go on”, he continued, “due to our agreement with the manufacturers, our deal is this; if  you walk out of here today without becoming a member, we can never offer you the membership again.  That’s to safeguard our relationship with the manufacturers…”

He then wrote the price for the initial term on the whiteboard. 

$5,900. 

I raised my hand.  “So, we gotta come up with six thousand dollars today to join your little club?”

“Yes”.

Execuchick spoke up; “And that’s it?  If we don’t do it now, that’s it?”

“Yes”.

Both of us got up and walked out.  I was tempted to leave with a hearty “the only reason I have  any money is that I never spend $1,800 for a dining room table, much less $3,000“, but I stuck with a simple “I just don’t spend $6,000 without budgeting it way in advance”.

The guy didn’t seem to bat an eye.  I got the feeling they expect to have half of their prospects walk out in a huff.

Which made me wonder, as I drove to a coffee shop to get ready for the NARN broadcast – after all that, they find enough people who can impulse-spend $6,000 to keep their little showroom open?

Two Americas, indeed.  I’m trying to figure out if those Two Americas are rich/poor, or thrifty/spendthrift, or smart/gullible, or pennywise-poundfoolish/smart, or what.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Monday, September 10th, 2007 at 11:17 am and is filed under mitch, Money. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.