8 Minutes I'll Never Get Back...

...it's not that I don't have 8 minutes. We're empty nesters. We have all kinds of minutes. It's just the way it was "taken" from me.

Hope you've been good and that Santa has taken appropriate note and will reward you accordingly!

Here's the story on my 8 lost minutes.

We are going to have twins after the first of the year...not us personally (whew) but Vicki's son and his wife.

Soon-to-be Grammie Vicki has a 2-door, 9-year old car which she loves but it is not at all conducive to getting anything in and out of the back seat, let alone twin identical boys.

So we winnow down the many choices and finally pick out nearly-new wheels...now Grammie V. will have four doors.

All that is left is to meet with the dealership's business manager, hand over our check and sign a few documents.

He starts going thru the numbers but the very first one is wrong...by $1,000...not in our favor...so he has to check and sure enough, he was $1k too high.

Reset.

Then he goes through a bunch of other stuff until he gets to the "extras" sheet. This is where they try to upsell about 10 different things, protective coating, special wheel and tire insurance, extended warranties, etc.

I had been looking at the list and has he starts into his spiel, I say, "Thanks but we are not interested in any of these."

This is where I lost the 8 minutes.

He says forcefully, "Just bear with me here" and proceeds to go through each service/add-on we do not want and are not going to buy while we just sit there...for about 8 minutes.

What does this have to do with branding promotional products?

Probably not much but what struck me was how unabashedly forceful they were in trying to sell us stuff we'd already said we did not want to buy.

This is so against our MARCO ethos, trying to stick people with promotional items that they don't want, that I wanted to just get up and take a walk while he was babbling on.

Our job is to help you fill your promotional marketing needs, to make suggestions when you ask, to remind you (softly) of custom imprinted promotional items that you might also need but not to try and strong arm you.

Your time is valuable and you can be sure that we'll do our level best to be sure you never have "lost minutes" when dealing with us!

Happy Holidays!