Personal essays
Making the best of the sales cycle
The appointment
Saturday was the ninth anniversary of Kim’s death.
I commemorated the occasion by buying a new washing machine.
“Oh Daniel,” you say, “this isn’t another essay about washing machines.”
No, it’s about the buying experience.
I did a bunch of research, talked to friends about various options, and then made an appointment to see the cousin of Kim’s aunt at a local appliance store.
I’ve bought a refrigerator, dish washer, oven hood, and other appliances from her over the years. She’s not particularly helpful, but I’d rather support local businesses and friends of friends.
I’d prepared for our visit ahead of time and sent her a lit of the models I’d been considering along with link to their store’s price and availability. She’d replied that these were good choices and she suggested one more.
When I showed up for our appointment she greeted me on the floor and told me she didn’t have her notes from our correspondence.
Fortunately, I did.
Shopping
We looked at the model I’d marked as the one I was most interested in buying. It wasn’t the cheapest. The cheapest one was the smaller capacity of the same model it was $549 but it was marked $60 off and this one was marked $250 off so it was $599. Having paid attention in math class, I could see that that was $50 more than the cheapest.
We started there.
I looked at it and I have to say, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be looking at. It’s a washing machine. It has a bunch of cycles that I’ll never use. I have used the same settings on my washing machine for thirty-plus years. Sometimes I set it to a smaller load but apparently you don’t even do that in these modern washers - they figure out the size of the load for you.
The salesperson was very proud of this fact.
I just head “here’s another thing that can go wrong and cause you to have to replace your machine.”
Out loud I said, when we got our previous machine thirty some years ago, they were mechanical and plain. There was little that could or did go wrong with them.
She smiled as if I were an idiot and said, “thirty years? You’ll be lucky to get five to seven years out of any of these.”
When did that become ok?
When did we accept that these machines we spend hundreds of dollars on shouldn’t be built to last?
More options
So we were at $599 when she walked me down to see another model by a different manufacturer.
This one was much prettier. I told you I don’t know what I’m looking at. It was grey and sleek and had more knobs.
She liked this one better because it had a soap dispenser and was more highly rated. In fact, I had checked Consumer Reports and this one was the highest rated of the ones I had on my list. But it was $749.
I consulted my notes. The one I’d looked at was $649.
Oh, she said, that’s a different model. It’s just a little bit smaller capacity. She’ll check to see whether they have one.
Before she did, she walked me over to another machine by yet a different manufacturer. She liked these because of their warranty.
I was reaching the point at which I was overwhelmed. I asked her to check on the $649 machine.
The sale
While she was in the back looking it up, I walked back over to the $749 machine and read the tag.
The tag said that the same machine was available in white for $549 either for the agitator or the impeller models.
Why hadn’t the sales person told me that?
There’s that moment when you realize that this person who is there to help you isn’t really there to help you.
When she returned from the back, I asked her about this $549 price. Is it really for the same exact machine but in white?
She said that sometimes the tags are wrong but she’d check. The tag turned out to be correct and so I bought the white one. This thing that she’d try to upsell me to in grey was the cheapest one on the floor in white.
She had me meet her at the counter so she could enter the sale into her computer.
“Have you ever bought anything from us before?” she asked.
From “us” I thought, I’ve bought from “you”. But I just nodded and said, “yes.”
These people who you are loyal to and show your appreciation to -
Sigh.
Saturday, on the ninth anniversary of Kim’s death, I bought a washing machine.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 283. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe