The "art" of alienating customers

I write a great deal about how the little things that a business does--seemingly innocuous stuff that may fly under the radar--really can make a or break a reputation. Well, write about it often enough and you're bound to live it at some point.

My family recently bought a car through a car buying service. The service arranged everything--financing, a dealership with the best price, etc.--even was supposed to arrange delivery to our door.

We agree to a particular car to a dealership eight miles from our home (remember that distance, kids). The day before we were due to take delivery, the broker called us and told us the dealership was refusing to deliver the car because that, since they were already selling the car for such a low price it wasn't worth their time to actually deliver it.

Note to people much smarter than me (which includes much of the human race): what's the connection between the price and a delivery time that would top out at 20 minutes?

We agree to pick up the car. Two hours before on the day of pickup my wife, learned female that she is, decides to call to make sure everything is as it should be. Well, come to find out the dealership--because we were not financing it through them--wanted us to leave a check for the entire purchase amount until our loan cleared. It mattered nary a thing that our loan was OKd and ready to go--a check was needed or deal was dead.

Second note to readers: you got $20k plus laying around in an account doing nothing in particular? Not I...

OK, go to the dealership, give them a check and get the car. The poor salesman who was forced to deal with us--I think the manager who foisted all this nonsense on us was cowering in the back bingeing on Little Debbie's until we left--did a yeoman's job of trying to be courteous. Still, I refused to shake his hand or to play along in any capacity that this was some joyous, wrinkle free transaction.

An asshole thing to do? Probably-but I felt like an asshole. Moreover, a visit to the dealership revealed an entire sales staff standing around doing little more than help themselves to bottled water and free dum dums. So much for the argument that personnel could not be spared to deliver the car (remember, kiddos, a scant eight mile trip.

Studies have been done that show that the disparity of good buying experiences vs. bad buying experiences is rather great--that buyers will tell many more people about the bad than they will the good. And that's what I intend to do--all over minuscule details and inattention that could happily and easily been avoided.

Still, a good lesson for all...


Jeff