“Never trust a second-hand car salesman”.  That was the received wisdom ever since second-hand cars began to be traded over a 100 years ago.  As far as this stereotypical salesman was concerned, he would lie, cheat and make any promise necessary to secure his commission even if he was selling a death trap to his octogenarian mother; from his perspective, every potential buyer was a legitimate target.  I was actually warned by my own father-in-law, who was a heavy goods vehicle (HGV) fleet salesman at the time, that ALL car salesmen are the same in that regard, they love you and promise you quality, reliability and endless pleasure from that heap of metal they are trying to shift until you hand over the cash and drag your fast depreciating asset out of his sight.  Luckily, I never had a reason to buy an HGV, thus sparing both of us the moral dilemma of judging one another.

In recent times however, and if you ignore the small one-man little garages, the big players have cleaned up their act, or so it seemed, and put on a responsible customer-centric image in order to survive in the modern 21st Century competitive market.

The reputable big dealers receive you with friendly smiling faces, freshly brewed coffee, water coolers, thick carpets, soft music and a very agreeable salesperson who is willing to bend over backwards to answer all your questions or dispel any lingering doubts.

This kind of service was the reserve of quality new cars’ showrooms but, less and less people are opting to buy brand-new vehicles, preferring instead to go for second-hand, low-mileage, well-maintained cars simply because they can save significant amounts of money by taking this option.  So, chasing profitability, the image of service excellence was replicated by this part of the vehicle trade industry by the big players.

I am not telling you this because it is interesting or of vital importance to your life.  Rather, I am going to relate to you my own recent experience and how I discovered, much to my irritation that this ‘service excellence’ ethos is just a façade where the DNA of our old second-hand car salesmen lives on but in nicer surroundings.

Since returning to the UK in January 2019, I was too busy with health matters to even think about getting a car.  I relied on others (primarily my wife Claire) to transport me from A to B, as and when necessary.  By the end of 2019, I was itching to have my own car so, I began researching and searching.  Being realistic and having no need to keep a big car as I always did, I decided on a smallish quality car.  The choices I had in mind were Audi, BMW or Mercedes.  So, before Christmas 2019, Claire drove me to a large national dealers with branches in various parts of the UK, including Swindon (let’s just call them Car Re-sellers And Purchasers Limited) where they had two BMW Series 3 and two Mercedes A160 I identified on their website.

The moment we stepped into the huge building with offices, lounge areas, clusters of desks with flat-screen monitors, and a cornfield-sized showroom, we were greeted by eager pre-sales people who were very delighted to see us and ushered us to one of the empty desks with a computer monitor, promising that someone will be with us in no time at all.  In the meantime, we were offered coffee, tea or water to make us relax, as though we needed to steady our nerves before having wisdom teeth extraction or meet the divorce lawyers.

Soon, a smartly dressed middle-aged salesman (let’s call him Fred) appeared asking how he might help us.  Fred was actually very helpful.  After establishing that I knew what I was looking for, he disappeared for a few minutes and returned proudly brandishing 4 different keys for the cars I had short-listed. Fred asked us to follow him to the different locations in the huge showroom which must have had at least 500 vehicles all shiny and clean, parked efficiently to impress us, like abandoned pets putting on their best cute attitude, hoping to be adopted and taken home by the next family or person they can charm.

With Fred sitting in the passenger seat, I test drove all four cars taking a pre-defined route in the town of Swindon.  In the end I settled on the car shown in this blog above.  In spite of his best efforts to get me to start the process that day, I insisted on taking time to think about it for a few days.  In the end, with my money safely in my pocket (okay, bank account), my will prevailed over Fred’s and after securing a promise that should I decide to go ahead, to ask for him by name and gave me his business card unnecessarily pointing out to me where his personal mobile number was, urging me to call him at any time at all should I think of something else I needed to know but forgot to ask.  I didn’t have anything else to ask nevertheless, Fred called me a couple of days later to re-affirm his availability to help.

A few days later, I returned and as promised, I asked for Fred and he was delighted to help me start the laborious process of actually buying the car, which I was assured is necessary these days to make sure I was not being taken advantage of by a cowboy outfit.  If that was supposed to re-assure me, I was more bored than re-assured.  He then handed me over to ‘a member of the management team’ who, with a great deal of sense of importance and the same amount of aftershave, went through some more legalese and offered to extend me credit at a healthy interest.

Finally, ‘the manager’ was satisfied that the company sales procedure was followed to the letter and therefore ready to take the burden of the full amount we agreed on off my bank account using my debit card.  Within seconds ‘the manager’ was satisfied the money had gone through and he passed me on to the ‘handover team’ who began another involved procedure before actually before handing me a bulky folder full of formal papers, keys and asked me to conduct a final inspection of the car.  I was told everything that was supposed to come with the car was there, except for a satellite navigation disc which is programmed to upload the latest road network of the UK to enable me to use the car computer and display screen, so I could get to my various destinations instead of using Googlemaps or similar software on my smart phone.

The ‘handover team’ manager turned out to be an ex serviceman who spent some time in Cyprus, and we connected at a personal level.  I thought if for nothing else, he would at least remember our connection with Cyprus and expedite the replacement of the missing disc sooner rather than later.  Not for the first time, I was wrong about judging human nature.

For the last 4 weeks, I have made a number of phone calls to Car Re-sellers And Purchasers Ltd in Swindon inquiring about the replacement disc.  On each occasion, I was automatically diverted to a ‘customer centre’ somewhere in the UK where I had to make my selection of various options until I was finally allowed to speak to a highly-trained living / breathing human being, adept at being very surprised, then sympathetic and finally sincere in giving me a solemn promise that Swindon would be in touch with me within 24 hours.  Each and every time, Swindon failed to call me back. Each and every time I called again, the level of surprise, sympathy and sincerity was increased a few notches by the ‘customer center’ operative, with further solemn promises of redemption.

Last week, I received one of those on-line surveys asking me to rate the Swindon branch by answering a bunch of standard questions in order to gauge my level of satisfaction with the service I received in purchasing my car.  I scored them zero on everything and in my comments box I said something exaggerated and controversial, hoping someone would be alarmed enough to call me immediately in order to rectify the situation.

I was wrong again!

Out of curiosity, I called again yesterday and went through the process all over again with a ‘service centre’ operative who scaled new heights in being surprised, sympathetic to the extent that I felt she would need at least a week of recovery at home.  She asked me if there was anything else should could help me with and I said: ‘just fix this little problem for me please because I have lost the will to live’.  Her reply was: ‘I am really sorry you have lost the will to live, Mr. Sukkar but, I assure you someone from ‘the management team’ will call you in the next 24 hours.  Her reply made me laugh out loud and I decided I liked her as an individual and hoped ‘the management team’ would give her a week recovery at home on full pay.

At long last, I learnt my lesson and I no longer expect to hear from them again so, I am going to trawl the internet and get my own disc from somewhere (there is always someone out there who has a simpler solution at a relatively cheaper price who can solve your problem much more efficiently than the ‘right channels’.

Comparing second-hand car selling in the Seventies and the Eighties when my father-in-law advised me about second-hand car selling, to what it is today, the only advancements have been the technology employed and the façade of respectability we are shown by the service provider.  They essentially love you until you part with your cash and drive off their premises, then they move on to the next victim to love them to submission.

All of the above disservice on offer applies to many other services from insurance companies to banks, car rental companies, estate agents and many more.  As individuals we are at our most powerful when our money is in our pocket and the moment we are persuaded to hand it over, we have no simple and straight forward recourse without investing a great deal of time, sanity and desire to carry on living.

As for the car I purchased, I love it!

There is a touching song from the Seventies by the wonderful Carole King called ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?’  There is an apt segment in it which goes like this:

Is this a lasting treasure;

Or just a moment’s pleasure?

Can I believe the magic of your sighs?

Will you still love me tomorrow?

 

Carole King might have been talking about love and human relations fifty years ago but, she might as well have written the song predicting our modern, highly automated and impersonal lives we lead in the 21st Century.