Sadd City

We recently had a company, let’s call them Sadd City come to our door. The door-knocker, a nice, friendly guy (of course, he’s getting paid for this), asked what projects we were looking at doing around the house. I mentioned that the roof was our current priority. He, of course, persisted (this company doesn’t do roofs you see). “Any other projects you’re looking to do?”. So I mentioned “well somewhere on the list is the master bathroom.”

Side note, I’ve been slowly working on this project since we moved in a couple years ago. I’ve come to realize I don’t like working on the place I’m living in. I struggle to find time to work on it when kids are not sleeping. without feeling like I’m abandoning my wife to handle all three kids (6 and under) on her own. If I’m working, I want to get paid. I get that I’m doing the work myself and saving money, but I’d much rather do work for someone else (client/customer) to make money. Doing work to spend money (even if it’s less) just doesn’t interest me. I’m still figuring this one out.

Back to our regularly scheduled program. So the friendly neighborhood door-knocker says “great would you like us to come out and quote a bathroom remodel? You’ll get a quote that’s good for an entire year?” Now, I’ve not actually priced out what someone would charge to finish the disaster I’ve created in there, so I’m curious what it would ballpark. Having a year to save and think it over sounds great. My first mistake - not asking how long this will take. So he calls up the office to schedule the meeting where we repeat almost verbatim what we just told him. We have a bathroom, it’s a walk-in shower, our priority is the roof, etc. He heads out, I turn to my wife and mom (who was visiting at the time) and say “they’re going to run screaming when they see that bathroom, they are too systematic to finish what I’ve been working on.” To be fair, it looks pretty rough. I had to rerun some vent pipes to expand the shower space, rip out some plywood that was falling apart, and “while it’s open”, I should fix everything else I have access to right?? I can rerun PEX for the water pipes, fix the other shower’s plumbing I now have access to (both bathrooms share a wall), as usual I have more ideas than time.

Saturday morning the salesperson shows up. She’s right on time, which is great! She starts by sitting down and introducing the company. She talks about their “system”. At this point she’s lost me, I understand how showers and baths work. I’ve taken them apart and put them together. I’m no expert (see first side note), but it’s not magic back there. Are you setting up a Rube Goldberg machine? What do you mean by “system”. I finally start to catch on that they have their own proprietary manufactured products that they install (why can’t they just say this up front?). She asks us what we’ve considered installing in the bathroom and we talked about tile, fiberglass, etc. She proceeds to show us horror photos of tile installations and starts using a lot of vague language. This feels like a script. She frequently posits statements and then prompts us to agree with it. I felt a bit like an LLM enthusiastically agreeing with every ridiculous thing said to me. Statements like “so you can see how great our product is, can you think of any better product than ours?”, “after seeing all the terrible things that can happen with tile you’d agree you wouldn’t ever want to install tile, right?”, and of course complimenting us “I see you really pay attention to details and ask great questions”. Have you ever played repetitive word association games to trick someone into saying the wrong answer? “Spell MOP, Spell TOP, Spell HOP, What do you do at a green light?” That’s a bit what this feels like, you get the idea.

Second side note, during a career transition I worked for a window and door company for a couple years. I was the guy who came after the salesperson, who frequently blustered (not all of them, we had some great guys who sold solid solutions) their way to a signed contract. I had the pleasure of walking the fine line between informing the customer and the salesperson’s commission check. I remember one house that was especially sad. The person was clearly struggling and needed a cleaning service (and maybe therapy) much more than our $$$ windows. I’m ashamed that we walked into that house looked around and said “clearly they need help, but darn it we can sell them some windows!”

Back to it. We talk for about an hour before we ever step into the actual bathroom. She tells us all about how their company is very reliable and how all the other companies rip you off, are incompetent, or install inferior products/solutions. “You probably have never heard of us?” she says. She’s right! I’ve never heard of this company and I worked in the industry which is very strange. She goes on to explain this is because they don’t waste money on advertising they “get out talk to people in person!” That’s great, I’m all for the human touch and removing unnecessary machines, processes, paperwork, etc. from interactions and relationships. Also, it’s probably a lot easier to control what people know about you, your pricing, your work, etc.

She finally steps into the bathroom (and does not run screaming, I applaud her). She makes a couple very quick ballpark measurements (she’s definitely the salesperson). She talks about how it would “really be best if they just handle the shower portion of the bathroom and save us lots of money”… by doing less work. Back to sitting for another hour or so going over all the options (colors, textures, etc.). She even let’s us feel the product. If they just make it smell and taste like Milano Mint cookies I’d have been sold. She talks about our “dream bath system”. Again with the vague/shadow language. I get marketing and making your product distinct, but let’s be honest, it’s just plastic. So we go through the whole shebang and she FINALLY gives us a number (we’re two hours into this process). She goes out to her vehicle and crunches the numbers. She can’t just outright tell us without playing a game with it which was very bizarre. “If you can guess within $500 of the final estimate we’ll pay for a free dinner”. We can win a free dinner! Do you want to guess what the number was? Would you guess if you could get free dinner?? What is this kindergarten? This is absurd. Spoiler alert, we didn’t get the dinner, but we did save spending… oh sorry you’ll have to wait till the next paragraph while I crunch some numbers.

The first price was something like $20K. We say “great thanks for your time”, we’re focusing on the roof here in the next 6-12 months. We’ll keep your quote in mind when it comes to the shower. But she’s no ordinary sales lady, she’s phenomenal. So of course she brings it down, $15K but only if we sign a paper today that says we’ll pay it off in 12 months. We let her know we appreciate her time and the quote, but we’re not spending $15K after a couple hours of conversation. I agonize over spending $300 extra on our grocery budget (those are my shopping trips that put us over, curse Milano Mint cookies and any pretzel/chocolate combo). Maybe she thinks we are playing a game? But wait, there’s more. She proceeds to call up the office and say “hey are there any more discounts we can get?”. Of course they give her some and she takes the price down to $8K. We AGAIN reiterate, “the roof is our priority”, “we aren’t going to spend $8K after talking to you for three hours and doing zero research”, “we don’t have $8K or even $5K to spend on this project right now (the roof remember)”. We don’t borrow money (except the mortgage on the house and I hate every minute of it). She kept pushing this deal as “same as cash”. I’m really not sure what she thought that meant. If I sign a paper that says “you will pay us $8K” and I don’t have $8K then I’m in debt to you. It’s not the same as having cash and I sure as hell can’t sell it to someone else to get cash for it. Again with the vague/shadow language.

Some thoughts. Maybe I’m just an idiot. I certainly need to do more research on options for our bathroom, pricing, customer experiences, etc. before putting down thousands of dollars on a solution.

At first I felt a little bad (she was good), though more frustrated that three hours of my Saturday just went up in smoke. Then I didn’t feel bad. She waited until the end to give us the price. SHE wanted to play that game. Had she come in, looked at the bathroom and said up front “that will be around $20K, maybe we can get it down to $8K if you sign today” we could have all left with 2 hours and 45 minutes of our Saturday intact!

Second, we were abundantly clear on at least three (if not more) occasions that the roof was our priority. I’m not sure what that word means to her. “This is our priority, but we’re going to do everything else before that?”

Third, do normal people regularly cough up tens of thousands of dollars based on a three hour conversation? Maybe I’m just weird. I know some organizations that will do it. Sheesh, they’re ready to cough up $100K after seeing the landing page for the product. Does no one understand how budgets work? This blows my mind.

I wonder how Sadd City handles their internal finances. A thought experiment. If I showed up at their office, pitched them my dream IT services for $20K, and told them they could just pay me after a year “same as cash”, but only if they signed right now while I was at their office, would they blindly sign up for my services?