Up Selling - Common Sense Distroyed

Up Selling, you know what that is right? Convincing someone that they need to purchase more than they needed so the seller can make a profit. Forget about integrity or trust, just make the margin type thinking. Let me give you my most recent example of this game.

A friend of my took her Toyota in for the 90,000 service. She follows the suggested service schedule pretty good in an effort to keep the car trouble free. Previously, the service manager stated she would needs back brakes during this scheduled service. She asked me to look at the brakes to see what I thought. Having my share of second, third, fourth hand cars, I ran my fingers over the disks, found no real cutting so I told her if she wanted to wait I thought she could at least 5 to 10,000 miles

Several days later, I called her to find out what happened. The service writer did in fact tell her she needed the brakes - okay his call no harm no foul. Additionally, she needed a serpentine belt- at 90,000 miles and that makes sense from my experience with Volvo. Now here comes the travesty, something this agency should be ashamed - the up selling. He tells her, that since they are replacing the serpentine belt, and since they will be able to get to the pump, they should replace the water pump as well which would be about $450.00 [the part being $300 of the $450.00]. I did not see leaking when I looked at the car and asked her if any gauges came on during her driving to which she stated no. Then why the pump? Well, the service manager kind of put a scare into me so I thought it would be a good idea.

I could not believe this, the water pump. In all the cars I have had, I have only replaced three water pumps and they were on the same Mustang II had in the '70s and the second two were my fault. I could not believe this. She took it in for a $49.95 oil change but thinking it could be $400 with the brakes and her total bill was over $1200 dollars all from up selling

My common sense tells me that this is just not good customer relations. Do they laugh at you when you leave? Do they realize once you figure out what has happened, you more than likely will not come back? Do they even care?

So what is my point? My point is that up selling has no place in the long-term relationship building process. In reality, it has no place in transactional sales either. My common sense tells me I do not like being treated this way so I had not treat anyone else in the same manner.

Make sense?