A man from a company offering kitchen renovations and bespoke furniture called my wife and she agreed to have them make us an offer today. We would like to have more storage capacity in the smallest bedroom of the house adjacent to the foyer. Another man, a young one, arrived telling us about a group order that would allow all customers to save money just for our area. My wife had said on the phone that we are not interested in kitchen remodeling as the kitchen furniture is still in pretty good condition despite being 20 years old (quality stuff) and because of our priorities. He still tried to sell us a new kitchen. We also had to listen to a presentation about the company, which was mercifully short.
He took the measurements of the bedroom and we went over specs and drawings also for the foyer as per my wife's request. The bedroom wall that the cabinets are supposed to be installed against is 2.8 meters long and the segment of the foyer my wife wanted new furniture for was about 1.2 meters long. The total with all the "generous" discounts was about €6100.
The guy was very talkative and nice but he didn't want to give us a printout of the offer nor did he want me to photograph the screen on his computer. Instead, he was pushing us to sign the contract as soon as possible if not today but tomorrow. The conversation was pleasant until he sensed any sign of hesitation which is when his tone became unpleasantly tense.
Our intent was to use this guy only the for measurements and for helping us make up our minds about the colors and other options, unless his offer happened to be genuinely good, which of course it wasn't.
The psychological tactics he used were obvious to us. The guy was doing what he had been taught to do. I enjoyed the good bits of the conversation and it was helpful in gaining clarity as to what we wanted. I did not have any compunction about using the man's time for our purposes because the offer he made was outrageous and the marketing tactics used bordered on unethical. A couple of years earlier, I had had to almost throw out a salesman trying to sell us a bathroom reno for a small bathroom upstairs at double my estimation of the going rate based on similar work done in one of our previous homes. What kind of people do these firms make money on? I do realize bespoke furniture can be more expensive than off-the-shelf furniture but these companies have huge marketing costs, which means that going to a regular manufacturer is most likely a lot cheaper.