Charles Lau dot Com

I was on my way driving back home after doing some bank transactions at Clementi. While driving down the multi-storey car-park, there is a van driving past me and the driver was waving at me. He winded down his window, shouted to ask me if I was interested in home theater system. I was all puzzled about what he was trying to say, so both of us stopped by the car park inside to have a chat.

He opened up his van door, and let me see a few sets of home theater systems. He was telling me that he is a deliveryman who was on his way delivering the goods for his boss to the retail shops. And he happened to have some extra sets appeared in his van after tallying the goods with the invoice. So he would be bringing them back to the company. He thought of making some extra cash from it, asking me if I am interested to buy to use it myself.

The home theater system is sold at $1500. To retailers or to consumers? I am not sure. Anyway, he was telling me that he is now trying to clear the stock so that he can make a bit from there. And he gave me the power to come up with a price. Naturally speaking, I would ask for $100. Also naturally, he would think it’s too cheap for that price. We negotiated for quite a while inside the car park as I am considering all factors. The price is very attractive for me to sell it at a profit indeed. And I finally come up with $200 so that they can profit $100 each. But he continued to negotiate higher…

After brooding through a while, I told the guy that I am not buying because I cannot afford right now. I just went off but he chased after me, giving me at the price of $200. I told him that I will not buy because I can’t afford to buy it right now and I don’t know what brand it is. He assured me that it is very good, and that he keeps on showing me his NRIC, his van number, his company name he is working with, and all the details. He even showed me how to get my warranty card registered. (After doing an internet search, I realize the warranty comes from the distributor himself. So, it makes sense for me that this thing might not have warranty since I don’t have authorized dealer stamp.) I rejected this person for those things that he has explained and he gave up while his other friend continued to convince me.

His friend said that this is a good chance as they are into delivery service and they seldom get to have extra goods in their van. He even let me resell this item if I want to, but I can’t resell to the retailers. He is showing me all the concerns that I may have… I told him that I don’t think I want to buy. Left with no choice after talking to me for 30 minutes, I left the place to head home.

Conclusion
After talking to the both of them, I realize how good their sales skills are. They understood about my concerns, and making things easy for me to settle the deal. I can easily identify this as an opportunity or a scam. But to measure this sudden opportunity versus my dealings with my own distributor, I would rather choose to be loyal to my distributor to sell his products so that I can enjoy a longer term of business. I did a search on the Internet, and found similar scam cases in Singapore as well. This scam is being posted as a sticky thread in the forum! You can imagine what will happen if I really buy from them… Another forum identified this as white van speaker.