Oh, that kind of salesman. That’s roughly the point at which I say ‘no, thanks’ and gently shut the door in eager young employee’s face 
I’ve actually encountered very few salespeople of this type back home (excluding real estate agents offering free appraisals) - the initial contact is usually made by telephone, I believe, because people really don’t like you turning up on their doorstep unannounced.
Corporate sales, photocopiers etc. may be a different story.
Oh, that kind of salesman. That’s roughly the point at which I say ‘no, thanks’ and gently shut the door in eager young employee’s face [/quote]
Especially if they look like this:
Just a personal thought
Oh, that kind of salesman. That’s roughly the point at which I say ‘no, thanks’ and gently shut the door in eager young employee’s face [/quote]
Especially if they look like this:
[/quote]
Hey! I did not give permission to post my pic here :fume: :raspberry: 
Some very interesting stuff in this thread, I’m going to resist my usual urge to reply to all of it and litter the thread with short replies. The comments about buying things based on price alone and ignoring quality (or not even knowing what quality is) seem VERY valid to me. I’ve had several people (Chinese, one friend who has never set foot off the island) mention the exact same thing. As I think about it, it makes sense. Quality costs money, and many people don’t want to spend money. Maybe it is the recent history of Taiwan actually coming out of being one of the poorst nations, people didn’t have money in the past, and now that it is there, it is gonna be held on to and stay in the bank on the off chance that things go back to the way they were 20-30 years ago (a very subtle subconscious decision maybe? but I’m speculating and really don’t know the answer).
One observation is that we charge NT$5500 for 3 months of English classes, 2 days a week, 1.5 hours per class (3 hours per week, 12 weeks…lesseeeee, that’s 36 hours). We charge NT$500 for van service (which we end up subsidising, what we make on the van service doesn’t pay for the van, gas, and driver’s salary). We get constant complaints that we are too expensive, my wife has ended up discounting sometimes, so we actually make on average, 95% of the fees that we publish. We STILL get complaints that we are too expensive. Our classes have 12 students max (and average about 6-7). We tell the parents that we COULD charge less, but we’d have to cram 20 students in a room and very little functional teaching would get done (yep, I’m targeting my services at the 20-30% of our students who WANT to speak English, not just go through the motions). The general response to this being explained is “You are too expensive.” There is absolutely no acknowledgement and seems to be no understanding of the quality issue of small classes in 100% of the people who complain about price. I THEN point out that in minor cities like Hsinchu, the price for what we offer is 3x what we charge, and in Taipei can go as high as 5-6x or more. The response is always “You are too expensive.” No understanding or adknowledgement that in addition to pricing our services to reflect our lower operating costs out here, we have also taken into account the lower salaries of the working class out here and if we charge less, we close down. When I point out that there are schools that are cheaper in Toufen and Chunan (4Km away with vans that will come collect the little Johnnys and Suzettes) but they will have to deal with teachers who can not SPEAK English, let alone teach it, the response is “You are too…” You get the point 
.
We went through a LOT of expense in opening a licenced school, we have MORE safety equipment than required by the very weak safety laws. We have MORE space than the matchbook’s worth of space required by law for each student. We actually FOLLOW of number of student policies (unlike every place my son has studied anything, one of which charged us for 1 by 1 swimming lessons, then crammed 12 students into the class, the other told us that there would be 4 students per art class, then 2 months later had 30). We are also having to “compete” with illegal schools (20 of 'em at last count) which the MOE is unwilling to do anything about. Only one has foreign teachers, and when I did the numbers they are LOSING money on their English classes taught by foreigners. They are making it up on An Chin Ban and math taught by Chinese. They also pay very little for rent (the building is not licensable, we checked and tried to rent it when we were looking for licensable space).
So…quality is not even important enough to rank as an afterthought for MANY people. Now, that said…about 30% of our students are in our school because of the quality, and many of those come from the same 3-4 families. 40% are there because we are the most convenient school (quality is not part of it, we are across the street from the local grade school), and 30% are there because we have a good reputation and it gives them face to survive my classes without being burned at the stake.
And now for something completely different…the understanding of many salespeople/laobans of the products they are selling can be abysmal. Look at air conditioners. When we bought ac units for the classrooms (and for my mom’s house) from two different suppliers, we measured the rooms in pings and requested units rated for those sizes. The response from both places was "those ratings are often high, so you can save money by buying the next size down. We did. And they were too small. When I complained about it, I was told “but there is cold air coming out, they are the right size.” The concept of “thermostat” was non existant. The concept of the fact that a compressor runnung 100% of the time using more electricity and wearing out much faster was non-existant. Basically, the only HVAC concept that existed was that an AC was a fan the blew cold air instead of room temperature air. The “satisfaction guarantee” that supposedly exists was quickly forgotten and ignored, and I am now stuck with 5 units that are too small because salespeople/laobans at two shops didn’t know shit from shinola. This also reminds me of the fact that it is impossible to get across the concept to ANY of our Chinese staff (including my wife) to leave an AC on unless you are going to not be using it for 3-4 hours. It costs MORE to re-cool the room than to simply allow it to maintain the temp. It is also impossible to get across the idea that turning the THERMOSTAT down to 18 degrees will not cool the room any faster than if the thermostat is set to 25 degrees (but the number on the LCD is smaller, so it MUST happen faster). Thermodynamics must not be taught in physics classes…