over the past 3-4 days ive been accompanying a friend as he wanted to buy a luxury suv. Inspite of the fact that there is a recession going on, i was shocked by the behavior and attitudes of most of the car dealers in Dubai.
1st we called couple of dealer over the phone range rover, bmw, lexus, porsche just to enquire about prices and if they have stock. over the phone i can understand if they seem non interested and vaguely and with great difficulty answered our questions as im sure they get many calls a day from even non interested parties.
so we thought we would head over personally to the dealerships to get more details and boy was that experience bad lol.
range rover salesman atleast answered our questions and gave us additional info without any hesitation. he even started the car inside the showroom to show the range rover suspension and then thew the keys in the small fountain to show it was waterproof then proceeded to drive over it to show it was indestructible.
bmw had atleast 5 salesmen on the floor idle and still none of them even approached us, once we caught hold of a guy he was completely non interested to answer any of our questions and most were answered with just a yes or no or 'im not sure' or 'il have to check on that'
he did give us a brochure though
lexus salesman had a smile which none of the others had which was pleasantly surprising and was knowledgeable about the car and even offered us a test drive without us asking for one
porsche guy was under the impression cars would just sell if he sat at his desk browsing the net and all the customers questions would be magically answered by the tooth fairy
audi guy too prefered to sit at his desk talking on his phone (nothing car sales related i can assure you) but he did also offer a test drive if we made an appointment and gave us a sheet with all the detailed specs.
overall their had very poor customer service and were not really concerned if they sold a car and didnt bother answering questions and did not give out information freely, we had to probe and ask 100s of questions to get somewhat vague answers.
isnt this the time for the stealerships to up their game and sell cars? they dont want to reduce prices cant they atleast give these so called 'salesmen' some training?
In North America they would be treating customers and potential customers like kings whereas here we get treated as some kind of outcast from society haha.
good thing was my friend is now convinced he would rather save up for a few months and import a car from the US and enjoy a nice vacation there while he is car shopping.
thanks for nothing uae car stealerships