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Smart Shopper Stories from the Sales Frontlines
47903 messages, Last post on Nov 25, 2009 at 9:51 PM
You are in the Smart Shopper Forum. Your Hosts are kirstie_h & tidester
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Replying to: tidester (Jul 25, 2006 3:35 pm) The sales guys talk about qualifying people and one of the tools they have to use is appearance. If that partner had shown up on a busier day, would he have worked with her if there had been a couple of guys in suits browsing the lot? |
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Replying to: capitano (Jul 25, 2006 3:14 pm) Beleive me, I can look extremely grungy sometimes 
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Replying to: cluedweasel (Jul 25, 2006 4:03 pm) |
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Replying to: capitano (Jul 25, 2006 3:14 pm) And if she was the senior partner in a law firm, ready to be on the lookout for any sorts of prejudice in the selling process.
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Replying to: tsgeisel (Jul 25, 2006 4:22 pm) It doesn't sound like it from the story. Besides don't these places have signs that say "We reserve the right to refuse service..." I don't think she would have had the same experience if she was shopping a regular car (Nissan, Toyota, GM et al). She was shopping the high line stuff and there is an element of snobbery at that level.
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In the 70s a friends of mine owned a successful turkey farm complete with their own processing plant. They delivered their turkeys to restaurant and grocer accounts in Dayton and other small towns. One day he drove instead of having his 20 something son deliver so he could stop at the recently new Mercedes dealer in Richmond, Indina. They treated him like dirt. He was seriously interested but the dealer didn't understand he could pay for it out of his pocket money. He drove the next delivery date in Dayton and picked out the Caddy at a downtown dealer where they understand coveralls clean can mean a working person with money.
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Replying to: jmonroe (Jul 25, 2006 12:38 pm) ...They are NOTHING but trouble especially as they get a lot of miles on them. The largest aftermarket warranty company in the US will NOT sell a warranty on one for ANY price. They used to but no matter how much they charged, they still got burned. Is this true what isell said in post #2353 ? If I missed your reply please disregard this post, otherwise, please tell us what's going on with these high-priced wheels ? jmonroe Ok I will work on this now. This is going to be a long post and will go all over the place. The only aftermarket warranty we sell is the CNA branded warranty. We typicaly sell the Land Rover Assured warranty instead though as it mirrors the Land Rover factory warranty. Like just about all of the other british auto makes Land Rover always suffered from severe under capitlization. You need money to make a quality product and they were always struggling for money. The early Land Rovers, the one you always see driving around the outback in Austraila or africa, were very simple vehicles. They were more like tractors then cars and were easy to fix with the simpliest hand tools. The major design of these series vehicles did not change much over 50 plus years. Take a look at the pictures of the 1997 Defender and the 1959 series II Land Rover in my carspace section. There are a lof similarties between those vehicles and they actually still use some of the same parts on the Defender that were used on the 1959 Rover. Now you are probably wondering where I am going with this brief discussion of rover history. Where I am going is parts and how parts supliers can hold a fiancialy weak company hostage. Most auto makers do not make the parts they use to build their vehicles. Many of the parts are made by third party companies and the auto maker has to hold that company accountable for parts quality. Rover did not have the necessary capital to hold its part supliers accountable for quaility parts. As land rover was kicked from parent company to parent company over the years it lost more and more control over its parts supliers. By the time the 1990's rolled around Rover was on the brink of banckruptcy. BMW bought the entire company for 1.2 billion dollars. BMW basicly let the rover car division fall apart. It finally went under completly a little while ago. As you probably know BMW revived the MINI car division as its new premium/FWD based car division. BMW used Land Rover as a jump start into the SUV market. It was cheaper to take the four wheel drive technology that Land Rover had spend almost 50 years developing then for BMW to develop it on its own. BMW did start to fix some other Rovers problems but for the most part they were just getting into the SUV market for cheap. The one great thing BMW did was design the current generation Mark III Range Rover. They did a pretty good job and the guy that headed up the design team eventually left BMW to finish the Range Rover when Ford purchased just the Land Rover part of Rover Cars from BMW. Ford started back up where BMW left off to fix the two biggest problems that Land Rover had with a huge infusion of cash. Problem one: Very bad parts. Ford instituted new controls of Land Rover's parts supliers. In the past when bad parts came to rover they did not have the contract strength to give the bad parts back. They just got put on the vehicles and the vehicle got to the customer with bad parts. Then when those bad parts failed they were replaced with more bad parts. Ford set it up so that if bad parts came in the parts suplier was actually responsible for fixing it. Wow what a novel idea. Huge monetary penalties would be put on companies that supply inferior parts. Screw up too many times and the company lost the contract. Ford had the finacial clout to actually back up their threats. Problem 2: The labor Unions. If you think the UAW is bad they are nothing like the British Unions. At the height of the problems with the labor unions workers would delibrately put parts on the wrong way. Rovers would come into the dealership and within just a few thousand miles they would blow a motor. The motor would get pulled and their would be a big smiley face painted on the block. Things in the engine would be assemblied so that they would last just long enough to make it through quality control checks. You can't compare Land Rover products of today to vehicles made even two years ago. The product line has been completly changed. Even the Mark III Range Rover has an entirely new driveline and improved electronic systems as well. Once the LR2 comes out next year Land Rover will finally have a complete product line in the US again that is completly modern on all new platforms. You can't compare Reliablity studies from CR or other long term studies because none of the current models even existed four years ago. |
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Replying to: british_rover (Jul 25, 2006 6:11 pm) I understand what you're saying, and it may well be that they have turned the corner, but the public has been told that same untrue thing regarding Volkswagen and Mercedes quality control and GM product competitiveness. Just playing devil's advocate.
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Replying to: british_rover (Jul 25, 2006 6:11 pm) This was certainly true pre-1986 or so. Certainly, I saw some pretty appalling things going on. I remember being advised by a shift manager at the Ford plant in Dagenham, England, not to take any female employees to the assembly areas because he couldn't gaurantee their safety. Union power was pretty much gone but the late 1980's pretty much thanks to Maggie. "Ford set it up so that if bad parts came in the parts supplier was actually responsible for fixing it. Wow what a novel idea. Huge monetary penalties would be put on companies that supply inferior parts. Screw up too many times and the company lost the contract. Ford had the financial clout to actually back up their threats." And was this power ever misused. I worked as the QA manager for a company that produced weatherstrips at the time of Ford's Q1 program among other things. One day I got a 'phone call from the incoming parts manager at the Ford plant in Halewood, Liverpool (where they make Jag X-Types now). Our latest delivery was all rubbish and if I didn't get their pronto to fix it we'd never get another Ford contract again. I grab a trusty sidekick and hit the road to Liverpool. Five hours later I was standing in the middle of a load of boxes in the parts section looking at piles of faulty weatherstrips made by our competitor. I point this out to the guy who chewed me out. His response? "Well, if their not yours get out of here and stop wasting my time." Funny, we never had these problems with any of the European Ford plants. Anyway, my company made a strategic decision to go after business with the new Toyota, Nissan and Honda plants opening in the U.K. at the time and we ditched Ford ASAP. Personally, I found that the standards,quality and expectations of the German car companies especially was just years ahead of the British and American firms. Engineering wise, the Germans knew exactly what they were doing and expected their suppliers to do the same. Working with the engineers from MB, VW and BMW was always an absolute pleasure compared to the guys from Ford, Vauxhall and Rover. Those were the days. Sorry for hi-jacking your post to reminisce a little, Brit. |
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Replying to: capitano (Jul 25, 2006 5:12 pm) Conversely, many of those who don't "have it" will try to make believe they do by dressing to the nines. |
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