BTW Lies, damned
lies, and car sales
It should have been a pleasant experience. After years of using public transport and
hire cars it was time to buy our own.
Thanks to a small legacy we could afford something
modest. The Low Cost Green Car project
initiated by the former government had helped create four locally-built models.
When President Jokowi was Jakarta Governor he criticised the
LCGC program for putting more wheels on the road. Now as the Big Man he could
undo his predecessor’s initiative by adding higher taxes. Best buy now.
By using the Internet we knew exactly what we wanted. All that was left was to agree on a price.
Oh ye unwise and foolish virgins! Know ye not the way of the car lots?
The Internet price was Rp 113.8 million. ‘Sorry, we haven’t got round to updating –
it’s now Rp 128 million’.
Try somewhere else.
We took a test drive and agreed to buy, particularly as the
salesman had offered a Rp 8 million [US$ 620] discount. We paid the Rp 5 million [US$ 385] deposit to
settle the legal Offer to Purchase and awaited confirmation from ‘upstairs’.
Three days later the ‘discount’ had shrunk to one million
and it would take up to a fortnight to return the deposit. It arrived next day only after threatening
legal action.
The original ‘discount’ was never a reality, just a bait for
suckers like us. We’d been gazumped.
On to showroom two. A better price and deal. Licking our burned fingers we asked: “Do you
have the car we have just described?”
Yes, indeed, esteemed sir and madam.
Wrong question. We
should have asked: “Do you have the car that we want in your yard in this city that
is ready to go and that we can buy right now at the agreed price?”
This is the question the salesman chose to hear: “Does your
company have a car that we don’t want, but you want us to have at a higher
price?”
Through a Guantanamo Bay interrogation process we discovered
that ‘our’ car was still iron ore in the Western Australian Pilbara.
Walking out we overheard our ‘friend’ being admonished for telling
lies. A hint of honesty - or a ploy to make us return? It failed.
The next salesperson
was a lean lady on heels so high they made her hazardous to low-flying
aircraft. To show she understood
performance specs of an OHV 3 cylinder engine she wore a skirt so short and
tight it deserved a fatwa [ban].
That was according to my wife. I was too busy with my head under the bonnet
to notice.
Yes, they had the model we wanted [the car, not Ms Micromini]
and it would come from Surabaya.
We viewed next day. So could we drive away after a wash and licensing?
Sorry, no. That would
take two weeks and we, the buyers, would have to negotiate registration – even
though the advertised price had included ‘all on-road costs’. The deal had changed because the car had come
from another city; naturally this hadn’t been mentioned earlier.
Referral to a mysterious manager who kyboshed carefully
constructed deals and demanded more was standard practice in all yards.
Surveys of trusted professions regularly rank nurses and
other health workers at the top, with politicians and car sales staff squirming
at the bottom.
Also lurking in this bracket are journalists, which just proves
the public can get things wrong.
Though not with car showrooms. The folk who work in these glass-walled
citadels of capitalism operate with different values to those who expect
integrity in business. They think ethics has something to do with film
animation.
Jokowi was right.
There are too many cars on the road so we won’t add to them. Using angkutan
keeps us in touch, physically and
emotionally, with other ordinary folk.
Public transport is
cheap and efficient. The drivers look scruffy, belch kretek smoke and scream
Javanese obscenities at other road users.
But unlike a local airline, angkutan run
regularly, stop where you want, and for a set price provide a straight no-nonsense
deal.
Which is more than the suave game-players in car lots can
manage. Duncan Graham
##
(First published in The Jakarta Post Sujnday 15 March)
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