Are Customers REALLY that stupid?

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I had a race team - had thousands of dollars of inventory.
Decided since I didn't race anymore - I didn't need the inventory.
I had a rear end housing - super speedway - like what you see on television on a Nascar Race car.

A guy called me on the phone -wanted to know if it would FIT in a Chevrolet Monte Carlo.
I informed him - it came out of a Chevrolet Monte Carlo.

So he calls me again today, wants to know if I still have the rear end for sale and I say YES, so he wants to know if he can come and look at it.

So I say YES.

He wants to come and look at it right now.
So I say ok - even though I am cooking supper.

So he comes and I dig it out of the garage.
He looks at it - and I know what he is thinking - where is the rest of it.

I explained to the dumb arse three times on the ph0ne that it is the rear end housing only - included in the sale is a set of very expensive Axles. The whole works for $350.00 - axles and all.
The axles cost $150.00 each new.

I knew what he wanted - a rear end that all he had to do was bolt it in the car and go racing.
When you still have to buy the brakes, the gears, the third member the bushings - then it doesn't look like something that you can just slip under the car and go racing.

So he stands there and talks about it for a half an hour but doesn't buy it.
He measures it 3 times.
Like the dimensions are going to change.

I even let him crawl under the race car and measure the one under the car to show him that was what size it took.

Meanwhile my apple pie is in the oven burning.

A second person calls up, wants to buy a set of winter tires I have for sale.
He wants me to describe the tread pattern of the tires.
WTF - I tell the stupid sob to get on the computer, put the tire in , look at the picture on the computer, call me back if he wants them.

They cost $125.00 each new
I would sell him two with 25% tread for $30.00

So he says - how much tread is on a tire when it has 25% of the tread left.
So I tell him - go on the computer, put in the tire and the size, look at the picture and the description, take the tread depth new, divide it by 25% and that is how much is left ( 5/32 ) on a car tire.

Then he tells me he couldn't buy it unless it still had 80% of the tread left.
I tell him to go someplace and buy some new tires..

$250 vs $30.00 - which ones do you want?

People are such idiots!

And someone else said something about not liking to answer the phone when you don't know who is on the other end.

This comes to mind

I wonder why some customers don't "get" it when you explain it the "first" time.

Had to explain to one twice that I wanted to know if the logo is correct that I proofed him.

He sends me his logo and talks about the "clarity", wtf? Look at my proof as it's the EXACT same.

So I ask him again (I made one with and without a certain thing in it), so he goes, "It looks fine, carry on".

Which one though?

My colleague had to phone him to know which one he wanted and finally we get it done but my god...how hard is it to answer a simple question.

I think CrazyStar that is what they call Multitasking.

Multitasking - where you do everything half assed and ask everyone to do your work for you so you don't have to actually do anything.

Like looking at a rear end housing for a race car or trying to buy a set of used tires on the telephone.

When the phone call doesn't cost anything - cell phones - then the intelligence goes down, because the person not paying for the call does not care if they waste your time or mine.

Had someone call me on the phone yesterday wanting to buy a engine block that I have owned for 25 years.

They called asking if I had a 327 Small Block Chevrolet.
I informed them that I had two of them.
A Large Journal Crankshaft and a Small.

The price was listed in the paper and they said - so how much do you want for it.
The price is $350.00 in the paper?
Duh! - $350.00

They then say that $350.00 is a lot of money for a 48 year old engine block and can I please take it and have it checked for cracks before I buy it.
Or - did I magnaflux it before I put it in storage.
My answer was that it was out of a vehicle made in 1964 and that I have owned it for 25+ years and that there is nothing wrong with it and you can feel free to buy it if you want it - or you can go someplace else if you think that you can find one or a better deal.
Magnafluxing the block costs a couple hundred dollars, depending on who does it and how much they charge to hot tank it before they magnaflux it..
It would be cost prohibitive to spend $300 to magnaflux a block and then sell it for $350.00

So they are fighting with me on the telephone,
I do not know these people, nor do they know me, but they are accusing me of trying to rip them off before they even see the product or before I have even met them.

I told them to have a nice life and hung up the phone while they were still talking..

Nothing worse in this world then to have someone start out a conversation when you first meet them that is negative and derogatory against you.

I knew that if they bought it, they would be just looking for a reason to try to rip me off and that I was going to loose money if I dealt with them so I chose not to.
I have bought and sold automobile engines since 1985 and have never had a single person come back and ask for their money back. My reputation would be at stake if I sold something that was not as represented.

I did have one person - whom was a friend of mine, who wanted to buy just the block, where I paid $350.00 for the whole engine and he took everything off of it and gave me $150.00 - 2 weeks after I sold it to him.
That person ruined our relationship - which we were good friends since about 1973 over a couple hundred dollars.
He could not comprehend that if I paid $350.00 for it yesterday,
I could not sell him the one part he wanted for $150.00 and make a profit.
Especially when I drove several hundred miles to pick it up!

So I ate the $200 loss

3 years later, he calls me on the phone and said he had a customer for the block and that it had a chip missing out of it and he didn't want to weld it and could I take it back and get him another block off the person that I bought it off of?

Answer was NO!
You had it for two weeks before you paid me for it.
YOU didn't pay me - even what I paid for it.
I lost money on the deal.
There is no way I could drive several hundred miles to return it.
Even if I could - no one in their right mind would give you a 3 year warranty on a used engine block and hung up the phone.

So the answer is - there is a lot of idiots out there that wants everything for nothing and no matter how far out of your way you go to accommodate them you can never please them.

If you are the person requesting special accommodations - always remember to say -
May I, Please and Thank You.
Don't you just love old Barney Songs!

Too many to tell, but the one that comes to mind is when I worked at H&R Block and this girl applied for one of the rapid refund loans, which of course is subject to approval. The classic RAL takes a day or two for the bank to approve the client for the loan. If the client is denied, he/she has to wait about two weeks for their refund. Well this girl, thinking she was going to get the money on her emerald card, took a trip to Vegas. Her mom called the office asking about the refund because apparently she was denied for the loan and thus stuck over there.

Well... after reading the other used parts stories of horror, I will post my own. I was trying to clean out a lot of unnecessary parts I had in my collection and one of them was the grille to a 1972 Buick Skylark. One guy says he will come pick it up from me and can I hold it for a few days. I tell him that it's not a problem. Two weeks go by and he hasn't shown up and so I give it to someone else. He calls the next day to see about it and I told him it was gone. he starts swearing at me and calling me every name in the book! Remember: This is a part he needed for his project and he could have had it for free. All he had to do was come pick it up. I am NOT going to hold something for someone indefinitely when they are not paying for it!

As to the original question starting this thread, I deliver pizza for a living and yes...customers really ARE that stupid.

Well, I guess stupidity is in the eye of the beholder.
If you understand a concept then you cant understand other folks not grasping it.

In the eighties when we (and many other store chains) got our computerized scanning cash registers installed and up and running in our drugstore chain the boss lady explained that the "P" in UPC means "PRODUCT, not PRICE" ( universal product code, not universal price code). Im talking about the bar codes on all products with the little numbers under the bars.

Having that simple little fact empatically explained I guess made a difference. Immediately the whole future of our company-indeed all of america's retail system-fell into place in my head.

The products come from the factory to your store with the UPC printed on them. The customers bring em to your register. You scan 'em- and- the register reads the bar code which identifies the product ( like your name badge id's you to other humans). And then in the hard drive of the cash register there is a database of all of the merchandise the store sells, and that data base matches the product with what your chain charges for that particular item on that particular day.

And presto- the cash register adds up the customer's bill.

When the company raises the price of product due to inflation -the price is changed (by wire or however) in the database. IF the price is reduced for a sale- its changed again- if the price returns to normal- its changed in the data base again. But the bar code on the product is not changed (just like the spelling of your name is not changed even if your body wieght or income does).


It just fell into place -thats obviously how it all must work.

But the dumb public didnt know what I knew-what the P in UPC stands for. The public was (probably still is) convince that bar codes are universal PRICE codes.

You get customers asking things like "do you have to change the bar codes every time you change the prices?"

You have to bit your tongue and not wise-off by saying something like "exactly! We have a smoke stack factory in the stockroom. When ever we have a sale we melt the products down and re manufacture them with new bar codes!"

The public did (probably still) assumes that the price is somehow coded into the digits in the bar code.

Many people will say "I cant read bar codes so I dont know what the price of this is".

One day I just gave in.

A middle aged couple couldnt believe the high price tag on some item (forget what it was).

So I just gently took the object from them and held it in my hand and then ernestly starred at the bar code and started to PRETEND to be decifering it aloud in front of them just to see if they would fall for it!

"Well it says here....ahhhh.. Seven...teen....ninety eight! Well, I guess it IS... 17.98..like the pricetag says." And then I gave a little shrug.

Imagine someone trying to "decode" your body wieght in pounds by starring at the digits in your social security number- thats how absurd my little charade was.

They turned to each other and "Well I guess that price MUST be right."

And I made the sale.

People get weird ideas sometimes. Like that there are Cliff Notes to every book ever written. When I worked in a bookstore, someone actually asked for the Cliff Notes to Less Than Zero. I told him to rent the movie.

One case happened when I was doing seasonal retail, and some older couple kept asking about pets, when the only thing the store sold was pet supplies. I wonder sometimes is those people were showing early signs of dementia as they did look like they were in their 80's. After all, most customers realize that big box retail stores only sell pet supplies and food, and it only occupies a small section.

There was also one time at my last job where someone in the drive thru didn't realize that a special only happened on Tuesday nights, and as this person drove off without paying, those of us in the kitchen heard the tires squealing, and you could see the tire marks in the drive thru lane for about a week before a good rainstorm removed them.

Some of them can be really stupid for example i was serving one passenger and he wanted to go to Southall and said can i take the Heathrow Express and my reply was no you need to keep an eye on the departures board once the platform number is ready then you can board on a local First Great Western train.