Pretty Woman Moment

[JuliaRobHurts]

DH and I were at a homebuilding and renovation show yesterday as we're in the middle of an extension project. Specifically we 're on the hunt for a new front door and while looking around one of the vendors we had a "pretty women" moment.

We had a look at the various products on show before trying to get the attention of one of the representatives who appeared to be avoiding our gaze. Eventually she approached and I said 'hi, we're interested in bespoke front doors and quite like this one on show'.

Without asking our budget or any of our requirements she went into a spiel about how the doors were very expensive, how they were imported from Lithuania and the import charge was also expensive, all the while wincing as she was saying it. She then said we might be better off with a more mass manufactured door. I was absolutely stunned at her condescending tone. She hadn't asked a single question about what we were looking for.

I was so close to confronting her about her approach, but held back. DH calmly told her her sales pitch needs some work and we walked away, but I was fuming. We were both dressed smart/casually so the only thing I can think is she guaged our age (late thirties) and made an assumption we couldn't afford it (even though we can).

WWYD in that situation? I'm half inclined to email the company and provide feedback on our experience but I also don't know if it's worth the energy.

Would love to hear if anyone that's had a similar experience but DID confront the rude person as I'm still annoyed I didn't give her a piece of my mind.

Similar happened to me in a Gaggenau showroom, not as overt, but as I was asking the salesman about some ovens and steam ovens, the salesman said ‘these items are really targeted for high net worth individuals’ 😀😀😀. Clueless!!

I don't know if the agent ever tried to get commission but I think the sellers would have got really awkward about a potential buyer being turned away. It seemed as if they were going to go in and make a really strong complaint, but I don't know if they did.
Ah, I don't think I can start giving clues. He's in the music industry. He's... not young 😄He's mostly song writing now, we have a very low key life. Actually, he's the most lovely man, came into my life after a very bleak time.

Was it a trade show? She was politely telling you that they only take big orders of like 30+ doors and you would be a more suitable customer for another company. It wasn’t a dig, she was trying to say it politely and sharing the information.

Just becuase you haven't experienced something first-hand doen't mean it's a figment of other people's imagination.

It’s surprising assumptions people make when you don’t fit the mould of their exceptations. We have no interest in labels or brands, cars get you from A to B, we like doing what we enjoy doing and have strong regional accents so get this nonsense all the time.

My favourite was trying to buy a car. We’d been gardening and had arrived in my little runaround. They firstly refused to give us our booked test drive without the paper component of my husbands licence. Had to go home and come back. Then they still refused as apparently “they” should have booked the appointment. Finally they accused us of lying and wasting their time.

After muchas spirited discussion it turned out that “they” were the council and the salesman thought we were social workers as the council bought all their cars from them and thus it wasn’t worth his time to do the test drive.

I didn’t half enjoy watching their little faces as I told them we weren’t social workers but husband was in fact c-suite level at one of the UKs biggest companies. A company who bought all their pool cars as well as many vans through their brand as well as their vehicles being available to staff via the corporate car scheme (hence our presence).

Bade them a cheery farewell and said husbands office would be having a nice chat with their Head Office on Monday morning as to why our money wasn’t good enough for them. I did enjoy the resulting 20+ increasingly frantic voice messages from the garage owner “please call me back….please”.

I’m glad that this wasn’t about a man leaving money on your night stand but it would only have been a Pretty Woman moment if you went back in carrying the expensive door you just bought from somebody else and shouted “big mistake” at them lol.

Why assume people are paranoid or making up experiences? What would be the point on an anonymous forum?

There are quite a few reasons why salespeople might be rude:

• they're (individuals, not a generalisation) not that smart and don't make the connection/have the ability to see past looks

• they aren't on commission and don't give a fuck about whether they sell - I dont know why people assume all sales staff get commission

• they're just having a bad day and take it out on the customer

• they don't realise how they come across- could be language/culture differences, autism, or just a misinterpretation/misunderstanding

• They are specifically told by senior staff to weed out the likely non spenders and occasionally make the "wrong" judgement call

• its the type of shop where who buys the stuff is as/more important than how many sales are made. Many exclusive stores dont want to sell to what they perceive as the "wrong" type of customers regardless of whether they can afford it. They want to maintain the exclusivity of the brand rather than just selling as many items as possible. Look at how burberry's reputation was impacted when they got too mass/down market and how they've deliberately tried to limit stock to bring back the "correct" clientele, or how Hermes sells bags.

• they're new and inexperienced

• they're just dicks who get their kicks from looking down on those whom they consider to be beneath them.

It was so simple then wasn't it?

In the nineties I was a market trader so had a lot of cash. I was also about 23 years old and my husband looked younger. We needed a bigger vehicle for the bootsales side of the business and decided on a Land rover. We had £30k in cash to buy it which we needed to bank first, they wouldn't even let us test one. We ended up buying an estate car from a dealer instead. We were Goths and reckon they though we were taking the piss

I had something that started in a similar way in JL recently, was looking at an iPad Pro they had out and asked a young assistant a couple of questions. He answered and suggested he showed me the Air instead, my adult daughter looked a bit horrified and asked me why he was showing me a cheaper model. I have had a couple of ‘pretty woman’ moments in the past and I think she expected me to react. I laughed and suggested that I was a 60 plus woman who might not make use of all the tech on the other one. He explained that they are discouraged from upselling, he spent a fair bit of time talking about what I wanted from it and we agreed that the Air would meet all my needs. I was actually quite grateful to him.

Opposite for me: I once went shoe-shopping in a shop where nothing had a price on it. Lovely assistant, helped me find the right pair, then when he told me the price, I had to say "I'm sorry, I can't afford them." Was weirdly liberating to just say it, and I still feel a bit sad about those lovely shoes I had to walk away from.

When I experienced this trying to buy expensive stunt scooters for my twin sons, I emailed the company and congratulated them on the buoyant profit they were making to be able to turn down my custom.

I got a call from the store manager inviting me back and he sold them to me with a hefty discount!!

This happens to me and DH regularly. People assume than we aren’t worth talking to as we are not flash but do like to buy good quality stuff. We tend to not bother if anyone treats us as if we can’t afford their product. It’s poor salesmanship imho.

Friend of ours has always wanted a Jaguar car and vowed to get one before he was 25. He had a good job as an engineer, so saved the money up, then drew it out the bank to go and buy one ( this was back when you could use large amounts of cash to pay for things).
He walked into the Jaguar dealership with nearly 30 grand in cash in a bag. Looked at a few cars. Hung around a bit....nobody approached him. In the end he walked up to a salesman to ask about the cars, and the salesman literally looked him up and down and said " I don't think we've got anything in your price range". Friend then opening his bag, showed him the cash and said " I think you probably have, but you've just lost a sale" and walked out. The salesman ran after him and was trying to get him to reconsider but he just drove off!

Mine was a little different as it was not to do with perception of lack of money but prejudice against origin/accent meaning that someone was underestimated and so the company lost valuable business.

My stepdaughter, who is from South Africa but came to live with us in the UK when she was 12, was applying for private sixth-form colleges, having gone to a private school which had sadly discontinued its sixth form. There was a "trade fair" type thing at her school and lots of the private London sixth-form colleges, and schools with sixth forms, set up stalls and handed out brochures. I went around getting all the brochures and we applied to some. One was a prestigious, well-known girls' school with a sixth form college.

When we went to the interview we were told that DSD would not be likely to "fit in" or be able to keep up with the academic standards because of her coming from "abroad" (bear in mind she had been in the UK for several years by this time and was doing exceptionally well at school, had silver DoE, was in St Johns Ambulance etc etc). The woman said that they had to "keep up their academic standards" and so they were saying no. In a super-snooty way. I wish I had said something rude but we just slunk away at the time.

DSD went on to get the top GCSE marks in her school, so presumably was one of the pupils they would have been hoping to snaffle when they came to the fair at school,? She then got three A* and one A at A-level, and later graduated top of her class from veterinary school. I always wished I had had the guts to contact the school and tell the snooty bitch...

My husband and I have had moments like this several times. We both dress pretty casual but have good incomes. He particularly enjoys wearing very childish tshirts on days when we're making big purchases which I'm sure doesn't help but you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover!

We were treated like crap in a certain car garage so bought a different brand instead. Looked down on in a Skoda garage so bought from a different garage. Same story when we were looking at new build houses; 2 different sales people refused to tell us how much the show home was clearly thinking we couldn't afford it, we went to a different development and bought one of the biggest houses they sell (that sales lady treated us with total kindness so she deserved the sale anyway).

I personally don't bother giving feedback as I don't want them to sell more anyway, I'd rather just take our money elsewhere :)

I’m disabled and I have had this a couple of times the more memorable one being asking to know the size of a garment in the window of a charity shop and the response being “it won’t fit you” which was NOT what I asked !!

I'm loving the mental image of them hauling a massive front door just to relish this moment

This honestly really threw me too! 😂

You are incredibly naive and clearly live a very sheltered life.

I went to buy a new car - test drove it , guy called me darling twice which got my back up, but then as I was filling out the paperwork he asked did I need to call my husband. I picked up my handbag and strode out of the showroom saying he’d just lost the sale. The manager caught up with me just as I was getting back into my car and tried to tell me it was a joke.

Same thing happened to me at an expensive beauty counter in a department store, I asked about a certain product and the sales assistant said it’s very expensive you know, as she looked me up and down! I was mortified, I should not have been as she was downright rude.

I had this with my ex. We turned up to buy a Defender on the forecourt and the first thing the bloke wanted to know was how we were going to pay for this very expensive 4 x 4.

Ex got a roll of notes out of his pocket and waved them at him and told him to fuck off with his attitude. The salesman apologised but I had already walked away and ex followed me and off we went.

We weren't even driving a banger. We were in my company car. Bizarre.

How rude. I would email and say you're not going to get many sales with that attitude. I had the opposite experience in a really high end jewellers . I went in to see about getting a new setting for a necklace I had and they could not have been nicer and more helpful even though I wasn't actually spending that much. My brother-in-law went in to collect it for me when it was ready and he'd been painting and decorating and was in his scruffs. Again they could not have been nicer and more helpful, friendly and charming. That jewellers has been in existence since I was a child and has a brilliant reputation not just for quality and you can say why they've had the longevity because they really are so lovely to all the customers.

Friends of mine own several shops relating to DIY - they are very well off. The woman went into a travel agent wearing scruffy horse clothes to pick up some luxury holiday brochures and the assistant helpfully told her ‘those are really expensive - you might want the cheaper ones over there’.