Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth

I have been trying to help this one particular client of mine get a sofa at a pretty good deal for the past few weeks due to a price increment from the supplier next month.

Her situation actually made getting the deal difficult because in order to enjoy the current pricing, we have to order the sofa from the supplier in Italy before the price increment, but her house can only be ready next year, so I had to get my boss to give me the greenlight to actually allow her to purchase the sofa first and then store it in the warehouse, which would incur additional cost, but my boss actually decided to absorb the cost for her out of goodwill because I spoke to him about it.

Current Price of Sofa - $25,000

New Price of Sofa - $28,000

So aside from the price increment, I actually also offered her a huge discount, which meant she will only be paying about $20,000 for the sofa.

   

So here is a breakdown of how the exchange I have had with her over the past 3 months have been like....

The original plan was...

Jan 2022 - She confirms the Sofa Order with my company and we send her order to Italy to start fabrication, ordering within this month would ensure she gets to enjoy the old price, and on top of that, the discount for the month of January.

Feb 2022 - April 2022 - Sofa gets fabricated in Italy and shipped to Singapore

May 2022 - We Receive the Sofa from Italy 4 to 5 months later and store it in the Warehouse for her until December 2022. 

... with this arrangement, she gets to...

1. Purchase the sofa at the old price with the generous discount of the month of January.

 - $8000 worth of savings.

2.  Enjoy Free Storage in the Warehouse for 7 to 8 months, 

- This storage would have cost her about $100 a week, that makes it about $3000 for 7 to 8 months 

This 2 benefits total up to $11,000 worth of savings for her

I mean this deal alone is already insanely generous, seeing how she is only getting a single sofa and only forking out $20,000 for it.

She was happy after that, but then calls me again a few weeks later and informs me of the developer delay in handing over of the keys, so she requested for me to speak to my boss about possibly extending her free storage in the Warehouse for another 3 months, which meant that she will only get her Sofa in March 2023, my boss agrees and I tell her the good news, so this was another $1000 worth of free storage for her, to which she goes...

"But actually if you store it in the Warehouse for so long, won't the Sofa get moldy? Can you get your boss to assure me the sofa won't get moldy? If it gets moldy will your company offer a replacement piece for me? Help me talk to your boss about it because I am pretty much confirmed about getting the sofa already, I just want to make sure."

... and my boss allowed me to give her the assurance and agreed that if the sofa gets moldy during storage, we will replace it for her. My boss is like the gift that just keeps on giving to this customer, but then she calls me again this afternoon, which is when she was suppose to come down and confirm her order, and tells me...

"I just got news that my apartment will be delayed by another 3 months, I was hoping you can talk to your boss for me again and request for an extension of the Warehouse Storage, or if you can get him to hold the order from Italy for me until I am ready."

.... so I inform my boss about her predicament and he agreed to it, this is another $1000 worth of savings in storage fees. He was a bit hesitant but he agreed to it and I was just mind blown at how giving he was because I was completely expecting him to tell me that he wasn't going to anymore, that this customer is not worth the sales, but he actually agreed. He only had 2 requirements for the client.

1. She had to make full payment for the Sofa instead of just a deposit.

2. She can't use her Credit Card (because he didn't want to absorb the 2.7% service fee for her credit card payment)

I thought it was a fair trade because right now, the total amount of savings she gets to enjoy is upwards to $13,000, just for the purchase of a $20,000 sofa, so I shared this good news with my client and told her about the requirements, and I informed her that we can hold the order until she is ready like she requested because my boss has also agreed to that, but instead of being grateful and accepting the offer, she got extremely skeptical and starting asking me..

"Can I just check, why is your company willing to hold the order for me? What about the additional cost of incurred from the price increment?"

... and I told her....

"My company is willing to absorb the charges for you."

... and she just kept asking me why and telling me it was a bit suspicious. I was just flabbergasted that this was the response I was getting, after all this back and forth I had with my boss to get her those discounts and benefits, she then ask me for my boss's name because she wanted to do some research on him and then tells me she will call me back later, she never did, I mean the whole thing is just...

... I really don't know how my boss will react when he realizes the customer didn't actually get the item in the end. I am honestly quite relief she decided not to get the item in the end because I really don't think her purchase warrants all these free service we are offering her, plus the fact that it is probably going to be a logistical nightmare to have to hold on to her item for so long, and not only that, the need for us to get her a new replacement should the sofa get moldy because she has to delay the delivery.

My company has offered customers who have purchased much more so much lesser, the fact that he is offering this customer, who is only purchasing a single item, so much really blew my fucking mind, and she just looked a gift horse right in the fucking mouth.

Sure, spending $20,000 on a sofa is a crazy amount, but contextually speaking, you are buying a luxury good and $20,000 is the entry level for the particular brand we are carrying. 

The amount of free shit she is getting is akin to me ordering a single $3 cupcake from a bakery and then getting free delivery, free candles, discount coupons while customers who are ordering whole cakes that amounts to $50 only getting a free candle but still has to pay for delivery. 

It makes zero sense and she had such a insanely good deal but she decided to blow it. I understand the phrase "When something is too good to be true, it probably is", but in this case, it really isn't, you were offered something amazing and you decided not to take it. 

I am never offering her this offer again, the next time she comes back, if she comes back, she is paying full price at minimal discount and if she wants to store her sofa in the warehouse, she is going to store it at the full price. 

Updates - 22/1

Everyone in my household is currently Covid Positive and being the only one who is testing negative, I am the one who is isolating in my own room, not that it's that much different from how things usually are because I am in my own room 90% of the time when I am home. Just wondering when I will actually get infected by it because it probably will happen eventually, would be a nice break from work, speaking of which, work has been feeling very unsatisfying, so nothing new there. 

I lack competence to do the things I am suppose to be doing at work, which is to actively approach walk-in customers and trying to start a conversation with them, I am not good at it because I do not like doing it, it's uncomfortable, it's awkward and I don't like being the one that initiates a conversation with anybody. Ever since I came back from Reservist, I have been very passive with the walk in customers, so much so that the In-House Interior Stylist (who has a very different position from me because I am Sales) ended up talking to more customers than I do when we end up working on the same shift because he will always greet them when they walk into the store, whereas I just can't be bothered if the customers aren't looking at my direction, which is most of the time, so naturally when the customers have any queries, they will approach him first.

So the situation at work hasn't really improved. It just sucks going to work and feeling incompetent, I'm being made to do things I am not good at and the things that I feel I am better at doing, the company isn't really giving me the opportunity to do them, like doing Interior Styling Proposals for prospective clients.  Well, I wouldn't say the company isn't giving me the opportunity to, it's more accurate to say the company is expecting me to create those opportunities on my own by informing every customer who walks into the store that we have that service available.

The amount of talking that is required to actually convert a walk in customer into an Interior Styling Project customer is too much for me to handle, my colleague who is more chatty is able to do that, and he has spoken to dozens over the past 5 months he has worked in the company, out of the dozens he has spoken to, only 2 were converted successfully into Interior Styling Projects, the others who are initially agreeable to it will forget about it the moment they leave the store because they will either have their own Interior Designers / Architect to do that for them, they are only there to get a few items or they are just window shopping.

I am not going to offer doing an Interior Styling Proposal for a client who is only planning to get a Sofa and Coffee Table with a few Armchairs, that's like a homeowner finding an Interior Designer to help them change a Toilet Showerscreen, or engaging a Professional Baker to help them slice their cakes, it's redundant.

 

Customers should be looking for us to prepare Proposals for them and not us looking for customers to prepare proposals for because chances are the latter aren't going to be very receptive to the service, and it feels like such an afterthought, it doesn't' feel like an actual service because sadly, it isn't being promoted very prominently by the company. 

When I first applied for the role back in 2017, I tried to look for the information of the Interior Styling service on their official website and had so much difficulty trying to actually find it because the only mention of that service is right at the bottom of the main page where hardly anyone would ever scroll down to, it was already difficult for me, someone who knows the service actually exist, to find the mention of the service, imagine how much more inaccessible that information is for people who don't actually know the service exist, putting that at the bottom of the main page is the same to not putting it at all. 

Speaking of Interior Styling Proposals, I decided to sent the customer that I wrote about in my last post the Interior Styling Proposal yesterday, I rendered the drawings for him earlier this month, but because of how "pleasantly entitled" ,but entitled sounding nonetheless, he was during our last phone exchange, I purposely delayed sending him the renderings, just to manage his expectations.

Well, I didn't manage his expectations enough because this fucker decided to just ignore my messages, I guess because my proposal wasn't send to him quickly enough, I no longer warrant a reply from him. Not even a courtesy response, nothing. I feel like I want to actually call him up just to incite some sort of response, but then I also don't really want to because I just really do not want to give him anymore attention and assistance unless he actually shows up to the store to meet me in person.

This is a customer who requested for the service, imagine if the customer was offered the service by us, they would feel even more entitled to it because I am the one who is offering to help you as oppose to you requesting for my help and the sad truth is, majority of the customers that I have spoken to so far who visit the store are a little entitled, that is why I am unable to have conversations with a lot of them because I just really do not want to.

Speaking of entitled customers....

I had the unfortunate pleasure of assisting this Caucasian lady who came into the store a few days ago, asked about this particular table that she was eyeing and it wasn't what she said but her tone that just turned me off completely. 

I was actually busy doing something else and just happened to walk past her, so she ask me about the table's price, ask if there was a showroom discount and then said that it should have a bigger discount because the table was a bit stained, she then ask me if the stains can be removed and since I didn't really have the answer to that, I told her I wasn't sure. She was already using an unpleasant tone with me from the start, so I just really didn't want to assist her further by helping her check if the stains can actually be removed. 

I told her what I know and that is that before we send the table to the customer's place, we will clean up the table first, and she goes...

"I'm not asking about the cleaning, I am asking if the stains can be removed. If the stains are still there after the cleaning then what's the point?"

... in a really annoyed tone, so I told her I wasn't sure and just can't be bothered to deal with her attitude anymore, so I just walked away to deal with something else because thankfully, I was actually busy with something else and had a valid reason to just walk off. My colleague then assisted her and she was equally unpleasant, she was with her husband and toddler, and the husband is so passive throughout the exchange, when I see couples like that, I can't help but wonder, what exactly did he see in this woman that made him want to decide to spend the rest of his life with her because she was also quite rude with him, such a horrible personality.

I have seen her in the store before and the reason why I remember her is because of how unpleasant she was during that visit as well, and she is the type of customer that comes into the store, asks a lot of fucking questions, is very rude about it but then doesn't get anything. When she finally left the store, my other colleague then tells me he has served her two times before and every time, she doesn't end up getting anything, that's why he didn't bother approaching her. 

... anyways, I digress, back to the original topic of Interior Styling Proposal Customers.

 

The other customer who requested the service on the other hand, the one who physically came to the store to ask for the service, well, he came down with his partner again to meet me in the store for us to run through the proposal together and I was more than happy to give them a copy of my proposal, the space planning layout and quotation after we were done, this is what the customers should be doing, and I am very grateful that out of the 2 proper Interior Styling Proposals I have done so far, at least one of them had the common decency to meet me in person for the run through. 

I have already been with my current company for 5 months as an Interior Stylist and till date, I have only done 2 proper Interior Styling Proposals because barely anyone knows that Interior Styling service is actually available and I am lucky that I happened to be in the store when the customer walked in and actually requested for the service, otherwise I wouldn't have had the chance to properly do one.

Doing these proposals is what I want  to do as an Interior Stylist and it's what I was expecting I would do when I first join the company, but at the present moment, I am barely doing any of that and am instead doing more sales, which is frustrating because I do enjoy doing the proposals, I like sitting down and looking at a floorplan to best optimize the furniture layout, creating 3D renders. I enjoy talking to customers who are there to talk to me about their home, who actually want me to help them and are actively asking me questions.

I would very much like to just leave this current job and go back to doing Interior Design, because I do miss it, the customers that I meet in retail are very different from the ones I meet as an Interior Designer, as an Interior Designer, I get to form relationships with most of my clients because we will end up working together for months, they tend to be more understanding and patient and I can feel some warmth from them usually after the first month, whereas with retail customers, there isn't any warmth that radiates from them, they come, they buy, they leave, the only nice ones are usually the couples in their late 60s to 70s. 

Likely gonna be stuck in my current company for a while because the pay is decent and I am really enjoying getting a fixed salary every month, it just doesn't feel like a very fulfilling position to be doing long term.