{"id":1294,"date":"2007-09-10T11:17:56","date_gmt":"2007-09-10T16:17:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1294"},"modified":"2007-09-10T11:20:14","modified_gmt":"2007-09-10T16:20:14","slug":"direct-abuse-showroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1294","title":{"rendered":"Direct Waste Of 90 Minutes Showroom"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the things I love about 21st century capitalism is that I can shop when, where, how, and if <\/em>I want to.\u00a0 I can go to the Midway Cub\u00a0at 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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!<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But I also have a very old house that needs some remodeling over the next couple of years.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Of course, these were the kind of people who built new houses because they were bored with their old houses, but…whatever.\u00a0 Simple fact:\u00a0 I need stuff, and since I’m half Norwegian and probably a quarter Scottish, I want it cheap<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So I got a call from “Direct Buy Showroom” last week.\u00a0 The young lady on the phone ran down a long list of the deals that one could get if one were a member.\u00a0 Decent deals, as far as it went…but more later.<\/p>\n

She also said that the “showings” were by invitation only, and asked if I were available Saturday morning for about 90 minutes.\u00a0 As it happened, I was – I needed to go to White Bear to do the Saturday broadcast at the Superstore.\u00a0 So it wasn’t out<\/em> of my way, per se.\u00a0 I’m always a little loathe to devote 90 minutes to anything <\/em>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.<\/p>\n

I drove up to the McOfficePlex in White Bear precisely on time – 8:45 AM – and went inside.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A brief aside, here; I can’t stand most salesmen.\u00a0 I mean, I’ve worked with a lot of them, and they can be really great people as people<\/em> – but when they switch into “sales” mode on me, and try to “sell” me something, I shut down.\u00a0 And I don’t care how slick they are, how polished their approach – I can always <\/em>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.\u00a0 Always<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But no worries – the guy they sicced on me was neither slick nor polished.\u00a0 His suit pants bagged out in back; I tried to think charitably; maybe he’d lost 50 pounds entirely on his butt.\u00a0 He also had that air of “I’m doing sales on Saturday mornings because my real job isn’t panning out for me.”\u00a0 Whatever – he sat me down, got some coffee, and started chatting me up.\u00a0 Of course, when sales guys start chatting you up, you know <\/em>you’re being chatted up to try to set you up for a sale.\u00a0 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 <\/em>up in return.\u00a0 I was right; he was a Lutheran minister…er, wait.\u00a0 He was a “consultant” to Lutheran churches.\u00a0 And things were a little slow.\u00a0 And…<\/p>\n

…well, I started to tune out, when the sales manager came around and told us it was time for the big presentation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 A guy that looked for all the world like Dr. Craig from Saint Elsewhere<\/em> walked to the front of a room, and spent the next hour alternating his pitch with a video about the store.\u00a0 And the deals – an average of 43% off of retail – did <\/em>sound good (assuming one ever <\/em>pays retail for anything<\/em>, or even tends to buy things brand-new, which I should add at this point I rarely if\u00a0ever do).\u00a0\u00a0 His pet example: a “high quality” dining room table that ran $3,000 at the retail store would cost a member…$1,800.\u00a0<\/p>\n

$1,800 for a table?\u00a0 Isn’t that what estate sales are for?\u00a0 I have only spent over $1,800 for a handful of cars<\/em> in my life; I’ve never spent more than a sixth of that on a given piece of furniture!<\/p>\n

Key to the whole thing, I knew, was that they only sold to “members”.\u00a0 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”.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I figured a couple of hundred bucks for a “membership” could be pretty well worth it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Finally – at about the hour mark – the guy cut to the chase.\u00a0 The initial membership term was 10.5 years.\u00a0 “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.<\/p>\n

“Now, before I go on”, he continued, “due to our agreement with the manufacturers, our deal is this; if\u00a0 you walk out of here today without becoming a member, we can never offer you the membership again.\u00a0 That’s to safeguard our relationship with the manufacturers…”<\/p>\n

He then wrote the price for the initial term on the whiteboard.\u00a0<\/p>\n

$5,900.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I raised my hand.\u00a0 “So, we gotta come up with six thousand dollars today<\/em> to join your little club?”<\/p>\n

“Yes”.<\/p>\n

Execuchick spoke up; “And that’s it?\u00a0 If we don’t do it now<\/em>, that’s it?”<\/p>\n

“Yes”.<\/p>\n

Both of us got up and walked out.\u00a0 I was tempted to leave with a hearty “the only reason I have\u00a0 any money is that I never spend $1,800 for a dining room table, much less $3,000<\/em>“, but I stuck with a simple “I just don’t spend $6,000 without budgeting it way <\/em>in advance”.<\/p>\n

The guy didn’t seem to bat an eye.\u00a0 I got the feeling they expect <\/em>to have half of their prospects walk out in a huff.<\/p>\n

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 <\/em>to keep their little showroom open?<\/p>\n

Two Americas, indeed.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the things I love about 21st century capitalism is that I can shop when, where, how, and if I want to.\u00a0 I can go to the Midway Cub\u00a0at 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, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mitch","category-money"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}