Are you impervious to sales people?

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I hate shopping.

I have found that sometimes earphones are not even enogh to deter someone from approaching. If I need something I will ask for help. If just ignoring them and feigning deafness does not work I'll just say Im only looking which alot of the times I ain't as I rarely go into a shop just to browse.

However, I can be easily swayed at times due to the fact that rather than leave with nothing I will impulse buy just to get something, doesn't always work which is why I prefer on line shopping as then I can umm and ahh all I like.

One thing that confused me recently was ordering some fast food. I asked for everything individually, i.e burger, fries and drink. The person then informed me that if order them as a meal they would cost less. Call me stupid but I had no idea what he was getting as as obviously it was a meal I was buying. Knowing this place I am sure someone will have had something similar happen.

Some sales people know that there are 2 types of people: those who buy more if left alone and those who buy more if followed around. But other sales people believe only the latter kind exists.

I am impervious to sales people and impervious to advertisements in general. When I'm in a bad mood I just ignore people who are trying to sell their product on the street (often newspaper subscriptions) and brush past them.

Shopping itself is a different matter, though. I actually feel more comfortable going into the store than ordering on-line. It's to do with being able to hold the physical product in my hands, in my case. There is a bookstore which I visit regularly, however, where there's a man working at the dictionaries/grammars section, who always asks customers if he "can help them". I know that he's just trying to be helpful, yet I'm always quite brusque in answering "no". I simply prefer to look around and not be disturbed by anyone. It's also why I initially preferred big super markets to small grocers, though I now prefer the latter: the impersonality and anonymity of it all.

I don't feel sorry for salespeople who fail to sell me their product, I feel quite happy it all slides off my back like water off a duck.

I feel guilty because their tricks are designed for normal people's psychology and how normal people react. And here I am, looking all normal, and yet impervious to normal tricks...

I soooo much more prefer the anonymity of big stores than the smalltalk of the small ones!

I find them overwhelming. They make me feel like I'm being backed into a corner and I just want to fun away.

Ohhh, don't I know it! Sometimes, the sales clerks are trying to strike up a conversation, usually about the weather or something, and I don't quite know what to say in return. And I think that whenever I say 'thank you' and 'same to you' when they say something like 'have a nice evening', it sounds robotic, because I don't know how to be spontaneous in those situations. My mother advises me to 'not think about it and just do it', but I haven't gotten the hang of it yet.

That's the essence of us Autistics. We can't function on intuitive automatic.

I'm distrustful of salespeople but I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt when approached in person or on the phone. I'll usually respond by collecting a lot of facts on their supposedly great product and telling them I'll buy it once I've verified the facts. If the product is so great as its claimed, then it shouldn't matter if I buy it in a day or two.. a salesperson who insists on a lower price if purchased right away raises a serious red flag.

When I see them coming toward me I try to go quickly in a direction that would be difficult for them to follow. I will try to make sure there are as many carts, lanes, and displays between them and me as possible.

If that's not possible, I act oblivious to them being there(and often actually am oblivious to them being there), or I put my phone to my ear and talk into it.

If they do get close and ask if they can help, I often say just "Nope."

Malware topic

Actually, it is Mall-ware. Those mall kiosks where they try to sell you an overpriced hair straightener. I was with my youngest daughter and this guy with some sort of accent I did not recognize wasted 20 minutes of HIS time trying to get me to pay $140.00 something I could buy in Walmart for 20% of that overprice. My daughter, who is NT, wanted to buy it but I said a flat NO. I later told her the guy was trying to make a fast buck off fools, and we are NOT fools.

I'm impervious to them because I'll logically analyze the product, whether it's worth the price they're selling it for (irrespective of whatever price it was before the sale, it's not that price now, so that price is irrelevant), whether I need the product, and then I'll make the decision to buy or not based on that logical framework. The person selling the product is irrelevant to that mental process.

^ I rather hate to admit that at times with salespeople I am a "fool." Time and again i havebeen overwhelmed by them, and i am also naive and gullible, and so they have 'fleeced" me frequently.

Over the course of my life I have repeatedly been talked into buying because I just want to be left alone and have felt so confused and overwhelmed i have not known what else to do.

Three years ago, this happened in a camping store where i bought a 1,000 dollars worth of camping equipment, a tent that was TOO big and not really what I wanted. I wanted some camping things, but I walked out of the store with a boot load of things that were not right for me. My ex and son were with me that day and I could not keep up with all the conversational exchanges , s o i just kept saying yes to the salesman to escape. My partner at the time was furious with me, and the salesman must have laughed all the way to the bank after my shopping excursion.

since being diagnosed, I am much better at just saying NO - often aggressively!
Phone sales people who ring my home have always received the BIG F OFF.....

What concerns me is that so many ASD people can and do get fleeced. I was actually reading about a case of a chemical engineer - very smart aspie - had been defrauded numerous times throughout his life, of his savings. I have countless similar examples of this kind of thing.
It was worse earlier in my life and pre-dx than it is now.

I'm also pretty amazed by this thread - and how few people have actually had the experience of being "done over."
In my mind and experience, one of the glaring difficulties i have faced recurrently, is this inability to read people - even salespeople who I know are sharks. I suppose my sensory issues make this worse for me, because my level of sensory overwhelm out and about is quite high and i often just want to escape and will do anything to do so...including parting with my money. I also blur with my environment, and often in exchanges with others I do not know, i cannot find my centre because of the sensory overwhelm - and so that makes me a waling target i presume.

I hope a few more people contribute their experience of being fleeced. Are we really all that cluey and savvy? all i know is that I am not..

Last edited by millie on 20 Dec 2009, 4:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

My parents aren't aspies and they don't fall for that stuff either. They just leave. My mom got rude down in Mexico when the sales people kept holding her up and my dad and two friends they were with. Then the sales person who was tyring to get them to buy more timeshare said she was being rude and my mom said "Look, we have used our time listening to you guys tell us more about this and we just want to leave now and enjoy our vacation, we already have timeshare."

Completely impervious, yes.

In fact, the harder they try to sell their stuff the more I become convinced that their products or services are useless and thus should be avoided.

Good products sell themselves. Here's what I do:

Identify what I need.

Google for it to find the top 2 or 3 products.

Read user reviews.

Hit up the manufacturer's site to read the specs, and specs only. I don't bother with: "revolutionary breakthrough turn-key solution minimizing costs and increasing your blah blah f*****g blah". It is all meaningless talk.

Use a shopping search engine to find the lowest price.

Buy.

Kris is like that.. I think that really smart people who are near the spectrum can just not care about what people think/how they think/what they're trying to do in a way that people who are more disabled can't manage to do. Like, I know I'm horrible and a failure, so I'm constantly worried about being screwed over or what people think and stuff.. constantly analyzing. Kris doesn't care what people think, so he doesn't think too much about people.. and doesn't notice when they totally manipulate him. And then I can get hesitant to point it out right away, because he's so smart and generally handles life so much better than I do, but so many people will totally manipulate him so easily, and think nothing of it because he doesn't notice and get pissed off. He also doesn't have a temper, at all, so he tends not to get all that pissed off even when he realizes it.. I think part of why people get so pissed off about being taken advantage of isn't so much actually about what they lost, but about feeling like a fool. So if someone is a ridiculously smart engineer and knows that they're not a fool, they don't feel like a fool for not seeing through people. Always before in my life "not caring what people think" was something that was really about what people think. I wanted to not care what people thought because my parents would think I was stupid for caring what people think. (even for caring with they thought!) But there are things Kris can do (especially at work) that nobody else can do.. so he really doesn't have to care at all.

the worst are Indian sari stores. i'm not Indian, but I used to like visiting sari stores on Devon Avenue (the Indian area in Chicago) to look at the fabulous fabrics they had. but the saleswoman will always follow you around the store, quite literally behind you, waiting, i suppose, expectantly. you can't just browse freely this way, and it makes you feel suspicious and very uncomfortable. i haven't been back there in years and years.