Fun with showroom salespeople

Mom, Elise and I went to Star Furniture in Houston on Saturday afternoon. Elise found a bedroom set that she liked. I liked it. Mom liked it. Elise and I decided to buy at least the bed. A saleswoman approached us. After introductions I asked if there were having any same as cash specials. She said, “No, but if you pay cash you will receive a 12% discount.”

12% is a nice discount and we would prefer to pay with cash but at that juncture, we didn’t have that much cash in our checking account.

I next asked if she could discount the bed as the footboard and a deep scratch on the top. She walked over to her point of sale kiosk and called her manager. We continued to inspect the bed. A few moments later she came back and told us that we would receive an additional 5% for the scratch in the furniture (the floor model was the last in their inventory).

Elise asked the saleswoman if we could have a few minutes to talk about it. She obliged. We talked about it and decided we didn’t need to spend the cash right then. We thanked the saleswoman and said we weren’t going to make a purchase today.

We continued to walk through the store. I was quick to notice a big poster that read, “Pay cash and receive a 12% discount OR take advantage of our two years no interest and no payments.”

We walked around the store some more (a 110,000 square-foot showroom) to see if we could find another bedroom set we liked. We decided we like the one we all had originally agreed upon. We walked back to that wing of the store and decided to go ahead and get the dresser as well.

We walked downstairs and had the business center page our salesperson. She came downstairs and I told her we’d like to buy the bed and dresser with the two years same as cash. We filled out the credit paperwork. Before she took our application, Elise asked to make sure that the 5% discount was applied to the purchase. We all heard her – she said, “Are you going to make sure to apply the 5% discount?” To which she replied, “Oh yes, of course. It will be on your receipt.” She then left and processed our approval. She came back with the the bill of sale which required our signatures. Elise noticed no 5% discount. She asked the saleswoman where the discount was.

“Oh, I thought you said you didn’t want the discount!”

Elise responded, “Why would we not want the discount?!”

Saleswoman’s response: “I don’t know. I was wondering that myself.”

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