To feel ‘judged’ by appearance when making larger purchases

[CherLloydbyCherLloyd]

It can’t just be me who feels this.

My partner and I are doing okay financially - we live below our means and are on reasonably good salaries considering we have young children (thus both work p/t)

We maybe dress more … low end? As in, we wear comfy clothes. Athletic wear, jeans with trainers, etc.

We are in our early 30s and probably look approximately our age.

We have found when making larger purchases (cars, furniture, holidays etc) we tend not to be approached, or salespeople give us a quick “gimme a shout if you need help” and then move on to speak to someone else.

Personally, I find this off putting and will quickly leave a place if this happens, as I think it’s pretty rude/judgemental, and can only conclude this happens because of either our perceived age or our perceived ability to afford such items.

AIBU to think it’s off putting when a business prejudges customers based on their perception of what the customer can afford?

Over decades DW and I have purchased many new cars and yes we do research before visiting and have a good idea of models & offers etc before stepping in the door.

I am always the one who makes the first visit to a dealer. Also it’s always later in the day when we’ve been decorating and I’m covered in paint splashes with wallpaper trimmings stuck to my back. I have special decorating clothes I use for the occasion.

The reason is simple, if they treat me with basic courtesy whilst I look like a wreck & actually take the time see who I am & what I want before judging they are someone I might want to do business with. Also, I have found that dealerships with good sales staff usually tend to provide a decent after sales service. Or to put it more basic terms they tend not to be arrogant shits.

There was a Ford dealership near where we used to live where in about 6 years we purchased 4 cars & I always ended up dealing with the same man and we received good service from the dealership. On one occasion a new saleswoman totally blanked me and went so far as to complain to a colleague about the state of the customer he hadn’t noticed that was wandering around. He looked over, looked shocked, hurried over, apologised and knowing me well sold me a Fiesta & Ka within 10 minutes. He got the commission on 2 sales & once the showroom manager came over as usual to ensure all was satisfactory, she got to come over and personally apologise for nearly costing the dealership 2 sales.
I wonder what she learnt that day about judging a customer by their decoration skills?

I didn't know about Audis.

Right so you want someone to fawn all over you before you buy something you already know you want? What I’m learning from this thread is that many people who perceive they have money have some form of superiority complex that means they should never have to approach a member of staff and ask for what they want. Bizarre.

I found this when I bought my house. I am single was dressed casually. It was a large four bed family home in a good neighbourhood. Quite expensive.

the estate agent asked me repeatedly if I knew the price and told me there were cheaper houses available.

I am now too old to take this shit (I am forty!). So I rang her boss and asked what the issue was! She was taken off the sale and I bought the house.

It's not fawning it's courtesy that you show to potential business customers, treating people with the same service and credibility because you never know, and your business is to sell stuff.

People don't like to feel neglected or taken for granted. It is nothing to do with superiority

We aren't saying they have to fawn over customers, just that they should at the minimum approach the customer and ask if they want help with anything. If the customer says they are just browsing then by all means the salesperson should leave them be after that, but to totally ignore somebody who is showing interest in one of your products is plain rude.

Equally if somebody walks into a shop and stands at the entrance or in the middle, to not even acknowledge their presence e.g. asking if you can help them, suggests you aren't interested in their business.

It also isn't relevant to the posters here who have said customers coming after them were attended to first.

We actually had the reverse of this when we sold our house. Estate agent told us who was likely to be wasting time, not based on their position eg cash buyer, first time buyer, property to sell etc, not based on previous interactions with the buyer, eg they had viewed 10 houses and not put an offer in - purely based on the fact that they “didn’t look like they were ready to buy a house” when they went into the shop to enquire about the house.

They did put in a decent offer. Didn’t get the house but they were joint second, offered over home report value and were a cash buyer.

When my parents sold a house (a fairly high value for the area, 4 bed detached home) a similar thing happened. We were told not to worry too much about the appearance of the house because they didn’t think buyer was serious. Buyer had a large facial scar, wore large hooped earrings, and had a perm (this was the 00s) so I can only assume it was based on her appearance. Her and her husband owned a successful transportation business and bought the house.

😂 it’s ridiculous! I was walking round and mentioned I planned to extend (which I have just finished!). She told me extensions are really really expensive, then rolled her eyes at me.

she was right though - I spent over £100k and it is beautiful😂😂

the manager of the estate agent was quite embarrassed when I spoke to him.

Just goes to show everyone is different...the ops situation sounds ideal to me.

I can't bear browsing and being instantly set upon by a salesperson asking questions and giving information about the item you never asked for. Just fuck off, I'll call you if I need you.

I'm far more polite than that in reality but that's what goes through my head 😂

I agree, OP. I m ordinary looking, over weight, 3 kids in tow, no wedding ring. I once entered a furniture store because I saw my dream couch in the window. I spent several minutes admiring it, sitting on it, generally being very interested in it. The shop was empty. Neither of the two sales assistants moved towards me at any point and both avoided eye contact. I’d have bought that couch right there and then - I’d just had the probate through on my mum’s death and was sitting on a huge amount of money. They lost the sale. I bought similar elsewhere 2 days later.

We are on a high income but my husband is a massive scruff, literally wears his clothes to rags, partly because he’s not interested in clothes and partly for green reasons. Don’t have any issue getting served. I think sales staff are aware that some people dress down but are still serious customers- it’s not a rare occurrence.

I think some people give off “serve me now” vibes and some people give off “happy to wait” vibes. It’s not a bad thing to be in the latter category, better than being a finger-snapping arse.

It makes no difference what you wear or how you look, some salespeople are just either bored (so playing games amongst themselves - did this when I worked retail as a student) or assholes.

DH and I were followed round an expensive but not blow the budget furniture store by about 3 members of staff who immediately came and rearranged anything we had touched to see the price/finish/material makeup of. Then followed us about 2 paces behind, yet saying nothing.

This was back in the day when female accountants HAD to wear skirt suits (🙄)and heels and DH was also on formal business wear. So on appearance only we looked the part.

It was also set up a bit like ikea so you couldn't turn back so we ended up touching everything we could just to annoy them (or make them less bored) until we could escape.

Pity as we had a new house and no furniture and they had really nice things, but I wasn't prepared to get stuck in the bowels of a shop whose staff had their training from Edward and Tubbs from the League of Gentleman

The thing is, I DID ask for information on the item (which I had already seen online and travelled to the store specifically to see the items in person before purchase (eg to get a feel for the drawer opening, to feel the mattress - things I couldn’t do online) and the sales assistant wasn’t even interested enough to point out the matching items in the showroom. I was even directed back to the website at one point.

I’m also ordinary looking and overweight, unmarried, and have two kids in tow a lot of the time (although to be fair we do seem to be taken more seriously when we have the kids with us)

Pretty much the exact same situation as us, except the money came from a different source. I’ve also had people direct me to the clearance section 🙄then when we mention we are moving house they ask if our new house is “unfurnished” and are a little taken aback when we explain that new builds usually are unfurnished when you first buy them (as in, they have assumed we are renting rather than homeowners)

Yeah, we most definitely don’t finger snap - having worked in customer service for many years we are very aware of not being rude to the staff. However, when you directly ask someone how quickly something can be delivered and they then walk off without any further discussion, it does leave a bad taste in the mouth.

Wow op, I'm impressed you can afford to stay at the moon Palace on a combined income of £50k. We looked there this year and it was £13k for 2 adults and 2 children.

Are you mortgage free? You must be extremely frugal day to day if not.

I’m going to go after work in workwear to see what happens! We are in a similar situation - we bought temporary furniture for our current house and are now moving so looking to replace pretty much everything, hence why we have been in so many furniture shops recently. Some have been better than others.

In any case, surely it’s preferable not to be pestered by salespeople?

IMO it’s as a pp said, it’s confidence thing. If you’ve got an inferiority complex or somehow feel you’re less ‘worthy’ because of how you dress, it’s probably going to show.

Yes, we can afford to stay at the moon palace. We aren’t mortgage free but we do have a very small mortgage. One of our kids is an infant so goes free. We are not paying £13k for the holiday.

50k is our part time salary, we are both on temporary flexible working requests to spend more time as a family. We have savings from when our salary was higher, and are due to increase our salaries back to FTE wages soon. We aren’t particularly frugal. We do like to go one “good” holiday per year.

We also live in an area with a low cost of living so £50k goes a lot further here than in many other places.

Not an inferiority complex. Just quite time-poor and don’t want to waste time running around after salespeople that aren’t interested. Could easily just make purchases online; but we do try to use bricks and mortar stores to help the local economy.

I'm genuinely impressed op. Hard to convey tone over the Internet though. It may have come across sarky.

I keep telling myself that it's because we live so close to London that life is so expensive as we don't drive swish cars or live in a fancy house.

I love that hotel! You'll have such a great time. One day I'll make it back there.

I think also if a salesperson is being unhelpful I would just assume they're not very good at their job and not that it was something about me 🤣

Dh and I get this. I’ve concluded we look poor. Sales people never want to sell to us and we have to hunt for them for cars etc. At our recent street party our new neighbours from up the road came along not knowing who lives where so we were all pointing to our homes. When I pointed at our house he questioned me about 5 times “do you mean that one?… really, that one there?…” and then asked if we owned or rented. For context, we do have have biggest house in the street but also have 3 dc so a 4 bedroom house is appropriate. I’m 41 so it’s not like I’m 20 with a big house. Dh and I both work in normal jobs with above average pay but not millionaires.

it’s odd how others perceive you. I did pop in to look at cars recently but straight from work rather than at a weekend so in work clothes… I got approached and talked through options etc but if I go in jeans on a Saturday I get ignored. It’s odd.

Haha i was in a new car dealership the other week and got funny looks when people realised i was buying a new car . The cars cost anywhere between 30 and 90k so think they were thinking the obvious of how could i afford that

It could be. We live below our means most of the time (nothing extreme - our mortgage is only 10% of our income which massively helps!) - we did save up for 3 years to have enough money to go part time with no change in lifestyle.

We are really excited to do our first long-haul with the baby. Well, excited and nervous - they were far smaller when we last had them as a lap baby 😂