[shancz]

Since they've apologized I am assuming that the reported events are true and if they are that "salesman" doesn't deserve the position he's occupying.

Also unfortunate is the fact that this isn't the first time I have read something about someone concerned with sales using unacceptable words/tone towards a customer regardless of attire.

IMO the weirdest thing with judging people by attire is a social concept I don't agree with but it is real and is practiced most by people who would turn out to be the worst hit if they had to face something like it themselves.

On a related note, sharing an old anecdote

Originally Posted by shancz

First stay was at a "five-star property" (not paying of course) and I was arriving earlier. On reaching I stopped and asked where to park the bike to which the gate keeper(with a sense of disbelief and offence) asked did I have a booking. I replied yes, then he told me to park the bike on the side and first confirm from the reception about my booking(still puzzled). I went in, they guys were pretty nice and already knew about my arrival and one of the executives/managers came out with me to the patio talking about the trip. I went on to unmount the luggage from the bike and now, the same gate keeper rushed in and offered to help which I refused. Now his manners were exactly opposite to what it was earlier. Then he said that he can guide me to the parking but I can even leave the bike there and "I will be here, nothing will happen". I refused the parking as I had to go out in the night and getting down to the parking every time would have been a chore.
The incident itself didn't matter that much but it also highlights an important point. Most people who "look down" upon two-wheeler riders are two-wheeler rider themselves! I can't imagine a gate keeper being able to afford a car (I wish everyone could but that's not the case). While the executive/manager was pretty interested in the ride, was familiar with the concept of "biking" and respected the effort.

[dicor]

I had a similar experience at Delhi airport at some luxury car stall (Don't remember if it was Volvo or Range Rover). The executive didn't stop me from viewing and sitting in the SUV but he was least intrested in talking to guy in half tees and shorts who is most likely from other city and probably have no money to afford this.
He wasn't rude but his ignorance also felt like an insult.

Coming back to the topic. It seems the topic is being sensationalized here. A majority of of the Bolero customers looks like that only (somes times my dad as well ) and sales person are not idiot to mock someone (even if they are not the prospect). I think there is a background story and ego issues from both parties which led towards this childish fight and now media using it for TRP.

Some salespeople are not just wise enough to tackle tricky customers. Remember Jeep guy hitting customer.

I think both parties and everyone should know that.
1. Showroom cannot accept more 2 lakhs as cash. Unlike 2nd one, this is real strict.
2. Delivery can't be done unless vehicle is sent for registration.

and I would not leave this opportunity to flaunt my Bolero here.

[petrogeek]

Most of Mahindras volumes come from its SV segment, Bolero Pickups, Campers etc. The clientele would be from the rural and semi rural areas and Mahindra's dealers would be used to dealing with the customers from this areas. I wonder whether something else could have been the issue in this case. Nevertheless, the assumption that attire and purchasing power is correlated is laughable!.

[OffRoadFun]

Originally Posted by Cresterk

I can't believe people are still falling for the same old sleazy sales tactics that some particularly unsavory salesmen use. They play up to your appearance/status or even subtly insult them in order to goad you into spending your money just to show them what a big man you are. This salesperson just turned a potential window shopper into a customer that paid in full that day itself without them being able to pester for any discounts or even considering any other competitors.



So what should be a carefully thought out decision turned into an emotional need and for what? Imagine borrowing money just to show some sleazy salesman how much you care about his opinion. Sure in this case, the bad publicity might make the dealership take a hit but 90% of the time these salesmen know how to play this game just subtly enough that it stays between them and the customer.

That's an interesting perspective and may be true also. Getting a customer pay in full cash and even without discounts? Looks like a smart salesman!

Hurting some ones ego might be best way to make him/her part with their money.

I recall one incident where there was an RTO auction of fancy number and a contractor paid some 10L+ for his Scorpio as he was determined in that auction to beat his (known to him) rivals from other districts and satisfy his ego! This came in a newspaper.

[srini1785]

I am not getting into the moral aspects of the debate.

Only one point: Is it time to start taxing farm income?.

Case in point : I won't be able to muster that cash at such short notice.

[aniketi]

This happens everywhere in the world, not just with Mahindra. Many people treat you depending upon your attire. Sad but true.

I am not very much surprised considering it's Mahindra. Once I was in their PCMC showroom to see Scorpio and we were completely ignored. We have to follow-up with them to get the car info and price list. They didn't bothered to ask us for our number or test drive also, forget follow-up later.

One fine day I was in shorts and went to showroom to see the car. They didn't took me seriously at all. I was looking to finalize my upcoming car and their behavior really pissed me off, can't help. Later on I started going to showrooms properly dressed so that I get proper attention, I am not kidding.

Unfortunately in most of Mahindra and Tata showrooms, experience is not that good compared to Maruti, Hyundai etc. Most Mahindra showrooms are not suited to handle urban crowd, sad but true. Tata showrooms are ok but they don't do any follow-ups like others do. Now Tata has great portfolio with them, if they can give great experience to customers visiting their showrooms, they can easily sell 15-20% more for sure. In today's car market, customer is king as we have many options. We should get good service and attention if not great.

[Siddarth_Ramani]

Originally Posted by PGA

Mahatma Gandhi saw it decades ago and advised us "A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption of our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider of our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favour by serving him. He is doing us a favour by giving us the opportunity to do so."

While I agree it was fault of the salesman, it's not always the customer is King. Atleast in my case it's not. My Dad owns a granite shop in a tier 3 town. Yesterday he a sold a piece of granite to a customer. It was an oddball size and no one in our town had it. Even we didn't, we used a bigger piece to and cut it to his requirements. So he did charge a premium and customer did pay for it. Apparantly his fitter had messed up the measurements and he came today to ask for a slightly bigger piece. Under normal circumstances we would've accepted his request, I was attending him (my dad was at the bank). He had brought his fitter this time and that fitter had no sense of manners whatsoever and he was being very hostile. He was quoting prices of standard size granites from some fly by night shops that has popped up in my area which sell without any invoice and often substandard quality. I tried to keep my temper. Then he said that he (fitter) could have bought the it for half price from a shop 400KMs away. That sealed the deal. I politely asked him to return it and buy it wherever he wants. He's still looking for it by the way.
Did we lose business? Yes. We didn't want to but we did. My dad is in his mid 50s and he's financially stable. He certainly doesn't want to deal with such customers. It's not our only line of business. We are not serving people. It's just business. Period. Just because he's a customer, it doesn't make him King (it's such a Gandhian quote). He has his old set of clientele who has special requests and they value our services. We try to reason with customers and I learnt from my dad that the most fitters behave like that because they have some sort of 'comission setting' with certain shops, so they try to steal our business. Whenever I sense such fitters (not actual customers mind you) I show no mercy in shooing them away.
My dad is a long term thinker. He doesn't sell substandard quality for lowest cost or pay commission to fitters. Those people have nothing to lose, if they didn't do the work properly they blame it on our quality. We try to acquire customers for life and that's exactly what has happened. My dad is into real estate business now and that's so much less mentally exhaustive and much more profitable. He wanted to wind down granite business 3 years ago but he can't. His old clientele value our services and they are ready to pay a slight premium for it.
Mental peace > Business

[roy_libran]

Hahaha... not that uncommon up here in the Northern Badlands! The first time I saw this happen was in 2007 at the M&M showroom in Gurgaon.
I had gone for taking delivery of a car that fateful afternoon, when a couple of fairly rustic guys came in riding a scooter. They were checking out the Scorpio parked inside the showroom, when the salesman told them a wee bit rudely to not fiddle with the control stalks and buttons. The guys taking offense immediately walked to their scooter, opened the storage compartment and came in with a sack full of cash. An hour or two down the line and after a lot of fiasco which involved more rustics coming in the guys took THAT VERY White Scorpio home, but not before giving the sales guy a fair bit of thrashing. Have heard many more such instances from around here over the years.

[GTO]

This isn't really about Mahindra - happens to all brands and lots of dealerships. End of the day, it's down to that one interaction you have with the salesman. There's huge churn in the sales industry, they're really not that well paid and a majority of dealerships don't even bother with training because of the high turnover.

A handful of brands aggressively use mystery shoppers to weed out such experiences (e.g. Maruti (Behind the Scenes: A salesman's life in a car dealership)).

[Sran]

Inherent class-ism fuelled by mass media, television, internet and movie. They have for eternity shown and promulgated that affluent people wear suits and pants. Just like learned ones speak english. Rich ones eat butter and toast and drink juice in breakfast whereas the reality is beyond this. Some of us look down on our traditional clothing. Western dresses are forced in our mind through these means. Nowadays we can see that a successful busineswoman has to be shown only in western clothes.

I know that people are not allowed to enter certain places wearing Dhoti which is our traditional clothing and Dhoti is our single most important piece of cloth. People having Gamchas are also restricted, why do we do this to ourself? I blame media for this apathy because they fanned this class-ism.

[Rocketscience]

The opposite happened to me, was there with my dad to take delivery of our Civic and there comes a gentleman with rubbish clothes, loud tone was sweaty and generally clumsy was talking funny and people were laughing, the guy went ahead and perhaps paid the balance amount or something from his jute bag (not sounding condescending but his attire and bag resembled that of a bus conductor and not even a car driver) but boom, takes delivery of his brand new Accord, my jaw dropped and perhaps many other people's too, I was around 12 at that time and learnt a very important life lesson, I myself enjoy not caring about clothes and looking shabby at times and people looking down only to surprise them at times, honestly we should not relate attire and personality with money, incidents like these have grounded me a lot in life, not that I'am otherwise an Ambani or something but still.

[Vyas]

In my opinion, a happy ending (from the customer's point of view) would be to demand an apology letter and demand (negotiate) a 30-40% discount at the police station to withdraw the case or settle the matter before more media damage is done. That way his ego is satisfied and he gained the upper hand from the situation. If this doesn't work out, just take the apology letter and check out some other showrooms.

Of course, everyone is different in the way they handle such events, but the above scenario would be a good win for the customer IMO.

[Latheesh]

Most of the Bolero customers are farmers, right? Looks like it is an ego clash between a staff and a customer.

[AirbusCapt]

Originally Posted by GTO

This isn't really about Mahindra - happens to all brands and lots of dealerships. End of the day, it's down to that one interaction you have with the salesman. There's huge churn in the sales industry, they're really not that well paid and a majority of dealerships don't even bother with training because of the high turnover.

A handful of brands aggressively use mystery shoppers to weed out such experiences (e.g. Maruti (Behind the Scenes: A salesman's life in a car dealership)).

When a sales person is not paid well and he/she is selling vehicles which they probably can never afford, on what basis do they try and insult customers? Is it the sheer frustration of seeing people much better off then them?
Honestly I have never met a rude sales person, infact they have gone out of their way to mantain sales and relationships.

[WorkingGuru]

Conventionally (since time immemorial), the concept of "work/business attire" exists because a persons attire indicates their identity, culture, opinions & their seriousness. It is polite to indicate so with your outfit and although it is not compulsory, in life it is very important to be polite, both as a customer as well as a business-representative.

The farmer here seems to be behaving very well in person. Sounds like a usually calm soft-spoken reasonable guy who felt wronged & decided NOT to accept it. If his allegations are true, he is right & as long as the salesman/manager has orally apologised, he isn't owed anything else.

This discussion can endlessly go on without much of a fruitful outcome. Mods can decide if they want members to delve further or put the matter to rest.