Sales Conmanship

As usual, I had already been warned about the different tricks that a car sales person will always use to try to con you out of more money. Well, I don’t blame them one bit considering the kind of working environment that they are under. However, I am definitely adamant that I will not be paying a single sen extra than had already been agreed upon last week.

I got a call from the Hyundai showroom today to go and sign some documents and pay my down payment for the car. I told the sales person that I will be paying my down payment by cheque and asked what the figure should be and was told a figure that was several thousand ringgit higher than my own calculation. This shocked me.

So, I asked the sales person why the price had suddenly gone up by several thousand and the person gave me some sort of lame excuse. I scolded the person on the phone and warned the person to not play sales games with me. A deal is a deal. Once the terms have been agreed upon, I do not expect the terms to be modified after money had already changed hands. By law, that is already a contract.

The sales person told me to come down to the showroom to have a chat and explain the whole situation to me. So, I went down and listened. The sales person said that they had to charge me extra for some bodywork and I told them not to be silly. The sales person then tried to see if they could come to a compromise and have us split the difference. I was up to no such nonsense. Either sell me the car at the agreed upon price, or return me my booking fee and lose my custom.

The fact is that I know that they are still going to make a handsome profit off my purchase. The difference is just a matter of making a few thousand extra or not. Plus, I had already cleared all the necessary hurdles with the credit check at the bank. So, the moment I put my signature down on the hire purchase agreement, they can bring the money to the bank.

So, the sales person agree to ask the boss if it was possible to do me the sale at the agreed upon price. I made it clear that if it was not possible, I will be walking away from the deal and they can try to sell the car to the next unwitting fool that comes along. They would be stupid to throw away a ready sale just for that little bit of money. The sales person kept trying all kinds of excuses to make me pay more but I was not going to budge.

Anyway, I hope to hear positively from them tomorrow. According to the sales person, if all goes well, I can sign the documents tomorrow and pay by cheque. They will deposit the cheque on Monday and it will clear by Wednesday. They will then register my car for me a day or two after that. So, I should be able to pick up my new car by the end of next week, assuming all goes well.