A Parable About Car Salesmen

Whoever said not to name names is right most of the time. This is not one of them.

Harry Wong. There you go.

Harry works for City Ford here in Sydney and was one of three new vehicle salespeople to take Kate and I for a test drive. We had expected these to be a higher being than their used vehicle counterparts. In two out of three cases we were right.

I had called Harry on Wednesday after seeing an ad on the telly for the Ford end of year clearance sale. I explained that we were looking for a Focus CL sedan in automatic (a nice family car with sensible features). No worries, he said, and quoted me a nice driveway deal.

Come the hour of the test drive and things started to unravel. Harry was busy with other customers. When he eventually bustled over he gestured towards a waiting area and disappeared for the best part of ten minutes.

Eventually he returned, thankfully bringing with him a Ford Focus sedan. We looked it over. We were impressed. We drove it around the block. It drove well. I commented to Harry on the beauty of the interior, specifically asking if all this beauty was standard. He said yes. We were delighted.

It turned out it was not. We had in fact been driving, enjoying and coming to desire a higher, more expensive model. The interior of the CL, Harry disclosed in an offensively matter-of-fact way, has a different look and feel. It also lacks the nice storage unit where I’d been resting my left elbow.

You have to react to these things. After all, this was a critical point in the courtship between us and the Ford Focus. So, admittedly expressing some frustration, I suggested he could have told us this before the test drive in order to better manage our expectations.

He didn’t agree.

We felt dismayed and disappointed. Harry thought this too was unfounded.

Instead he told us not to worry. We could have the model with the left elbow rest for just $3,000 more. This would be a very smart move as it would also mean that we could have the colour we wanted. In the CL, we’d be looking at white, silver or a bluey-grey colour he didn’t have to show us but thought we should consider.

We decided we were comfortable with silver and sought to confirm the driveway price quoted to me over the phone. Not possible, said Harry, all of our CL sedans have been pre-fitted with a ‘smooth kit’. This will cost you another $1,400.

Why didn’t Harry mention this when I called him to enquire about AUTO CL SEDANS?

He now became defensive and unfriendly. If I hadn’t have extended mine, I’m certain he wouldn’t have shaken hands as we left. Even then, he turned away as we did.

Not the ideal way to start our adventure but we kept looking, listening and test driving cars. And there was a happy ending. We bought a car from the salesman we liked the most. That wasn’t all there was to it, but it was bloody important. Harry saw to that.