Dealers on this site and cheap customers

[Bird]

Yep, depends entirely on the kind of product or service as to whether I'd tell the seller/contractor my budget or how much I'll spend. In 1968, I was driving a '66 Ford and decided I wanted a new Plymouth Roadrunner. I saw one on a dealer's lot, stopped to look, found it was equipped exactly the way I wanted, even my first choice of color. I walked inside, offered the keys to my Ford to a salesman, and asked him to get my car appraised and tell me how much it would take to trade for that Roadrunner. He asked, "How much difference would you give?" I told him I didn't know, to just tell me what it would take and I'd decide whether I could afford it. He insisted that if I didn't know how much I was willing to pay, there was no need for him to even have my car appraised, and he flat refused to do so.

I drove straight across town that same day to another Plymouth dealer, went in and talked to a salesman who told me they had no Roadrunners in stock and didn't think there was one at any of the dealers. So I told him where one was, he didn't think they'd be willing to dealer transfer it, but called and found they would. So he gave me a price, I agreed, and went with him to get it from the first dealer. He did ask me to wait around the corner of the building while he went inside so the first salesman wouldn't see that it was me who bought it. /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

 

[meledward23]

Oh I dont consider my statements to be broad strokes that paint a picture of every transaction. More or less why I provided my summary.

Budget: This is a very tricky point. It depends what you are doing. I spoke as a deisgn / build. I can design a 500,000 dollar landscape for an acre lot. And no I am not really exagerating. I always provide a full scope design list and allow the client to bid it out to make sure I am competetive. But in the design realm if you dont provide a budget the designer hasnt a clue, unless you specifically detail what you are looking for.

If you walk into a car dealer revealing a budget is pointless. Telling an electrician that you want to run a 50 amp service line from the house 50' to the garage, once again not a budget concept. Asking an architect to design you a house, you may want to mention a budget, before you end up with a 3000 sqaure foot house that costs 2 million dollars and makes the next architects digest issue.

So back to the idea:

Haggling is for some, and not others, and sometimes some.
Haggling can have good effects,haggling can have bad effects. The great thing about a free market, Hagglers can do business with Hagglers, non-Hagglers can do business with Non-Hagglers. Saturn and Carmax weren't hits because they reinvented a car. Yet they did not revolutionize the whole car industry.

 

[Bird]

I understand, Matthew, and I agree that the designer would need to know the budget for a landscape design.

Incidentally, I bought both of our current vehicles at Carmax. /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

 

[Phils]

Matthew,

You've made some excellent posts in this thread, and the thread overall has been excellent.

I just have a question that may have an obvious answer, but I don't see it:

You'll design landscape and then allow the customer to check with others for bids on building it. At that point you must be at least giving the customer some rough plans and material lists.

What prevents them from taking your designs and doing it themselves? Or if they have another contractor build it, do they pay you for your work?

To my way of thinking (and after watching a lot of HGTV) the art is in the design. I see landscapers compete to design backyards and wonder what prevents a homeowner in that situation from getting three competing designs, combining all the best features into one, then putting it together themselves.

I'm logic-driven, vs artistic, and am imagining you working late over a drawing table for hours with no return. Tell me it ain't so!

And so I'm not accused of hijacking the thread, I really don't have the dealer/cheap customer problem because I don't set the rates on insurance but only make sure my clients are adequately knowledgeable on exactly what they are buying and why. They can decide (within limits) what exactly they want to pay. And like the previous posts, you do "get what you pay for". Oops.... I don't advertise on this site tho.

Phil

 

[2nstonge]

I'd like to hear Mathew's take on the design end of things as well.

On the home improvement front I get several calls in the course of a season about quoting decks. I can't provide a 'good' quote - one that I'm comfortable with - unless I've at least sketched it out & have a pretty good parts list for the lumber yard to look at. The price for a pressure treated deck with basic railings is going to be a far cry from the composite deck with fancy railings. Customers want to see designs & pricing for each - even tho they really don't have a budget figure in mind. Before I provide the quote I ask them if they're shopping the job around or if this is just 'think about it for awhile' exercise. I offer to give them any sketches & parts list (or a CAD drawing if the lumber yard has the time to create one) for a price - say $300. If I get the job then the $300 is credited to the project, if I don't get the job at least I've received some compensation for sitting at the desk for a few hours doing the noodle work. If they don't want to pay a couple hundred bucks for design work I know the job is probably not going to happen and deal with it accordingly, i.e., the bottom of my pile.

-Norm

 

[CT_Tree_Guy]

<font color="blue"> What prevents them from taking your designs and doing it themselves? Or if they have another contractor build it, do they pay you for your work? </font>

I think that the main thing we can do to avoid being treated badly is be as kind and loving as possible, thereby serving as a good example to the rest of mankind, and thereby reducing the chances that we will be mistreated. Short of being as good as you can possibly be, there's very little you can do to control the actions of others.

Hey, I just had a good buying experience today. I bought 10 units of industrial shelving from a supplier in West Hartford, CT. I called him yesterday, told him exactly what I wanted right down to the last nut and bolt, told him I was getting another quote or two, and asked him please fax me his best price. After discovering that he was pretty much the only game left in town, I called him today and gave him the order, at his price. He then made a special trip to his warehouse to pick it up so it would be waiting for one of my guys to pick up an hour later, saving me the usual one to two day delay. I wonder if he would have done that if I had just tried to beat him out of fifty lousy bucks?

We then talked about this thread, and after I told him about some of my experiences with, and responses to, "haggling" customers, he had two great stories for me.

First he told me about how he deals with customers who come up to the counter and ask, "Hey, are these prices negotiable?" He just says to them, "Hand me twenty dollars". "Huh?", they say. "Hand me twenty dollars", he'll repeat. "Why should I?", they'll say. "Well, why should I ?", he'll say back. I told him, "Hey, you're my kinda guy." /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

The last story is classic. They have a running gag that plays beautifully into some people's natural desire to take advantage of someone else's mistake or misfortune, and it's been working flawlessly for years. When a customer asks for a price on something, he'll yell into the back room, "Hey Vinnie, how much for this Steelcase swivel chair?". "Sixty-five bucks", Vinnie yells back, knowing it goes for $55. "Fifty-five bucks", he'll tell the customer. Thinking they've just gotten over on some poor schmuck who must be hard of hearing, they can't pay fast enough, eager to get away clean with their big "score". Gotta love it, turning people's greed against them like that. You know, I think there IS a god after all. /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

 

[YanmarFever]

<font color="blue"> The last story is classic. They have a running gag that plays beautifully into some people's natural desire to take advantage of someone else's mistake or misfortune, and it's been working flawlessly for years. When a customer asks for a price on something, he'll yell into the back room, "Hey Vinnie, how much for this Steelcase swivel chair?". "Sixty-five <font color="blue"> </font> bucks", Vinnie yells back, knowing it goes for $55. "Fifty-five bucks", he'll tell the customer. Thinking they've just gotten over on some poor schmuck who must be hard of hearing, they can't pay fast enough, eager to get away clean with their big "score". Gotta love it, turning people's greed against them like that. You know, I think there IS a god after all. </font>

Its called good cop--- bad cop !!

 

[LBrown59]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( I have one customer who's trees I pruned and treated for several years that only wants me to come to his place when he is home. He always has 20 to 30 minutes worth of tree, lawn, or shrub questions to discuss with me when I get there. He hasn't yet figured that I increased my hourly rate by almost 50% over what my other customers pay when I work at his property. )</font>

Why do you charge him a higher hourly rate?

 

[LBrown59]

<font color="blue"> What I don't understand about hagglers is that a haggler will assume that I priced an item higher than it's worth. </font>
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Somebody's given them this impression. Such an impression can only come from those in the business of selling.

In other words those in the selling profession as a whole are casting this image of themselves to the consumer somehow.

 

[LBrown59]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( Funny though, the people I know that are good at haggling have more money than me. )</font>
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That's whay have it.