Jacques Marten's Yacht Blog

My wife and I was travelling through Monte Carlo last month, where we stayed at the Hotel de Paris one night before moving to our next destination. We were walking around the hotel and window shopping at the nearby stores where I saw a nice Rolex watch with diamonds. We walked into this store to see the watch and also curious about its price. The nice Indian man at the store told us it was platinum set with 300 diamonds and was priced at 55,000 Euros.

On Saturday we stopped by the Westchester Mall in White Plains for some last minute Christmas shopping. I saw the Tourneau Corner store and wondered how much the same watch would be in U.S. dollars. After waiting for a while and meeting a nice salesman who helped us, we learned that the store actually did not carry the watch but they could order it for us.

I asked how much the watch was. The nice salesman said the price in the catalogue was listed for $88,000 but we should certainly talk to "Richard the store manager" for details and see if he could offer us any discount.

When we met "Richard the store manager" I thought this man just walked out of a bar fight and was about to break the next bar stuhl on either my or my wife's back. He yelled at us proudly in front of two dozen or so customers in the store that "there was no discount on Rolex watches, we either paid him the list price or leave his store!" Gee, did you ever read the book "Hug Your Customers?"

Plus, it's a small world, I almost bought his "Time Machine" yacht from "Mr. Tournau" this summer, instead I chose to buy the same boat brand new. You should never ever ever never treat any customer like an ape man if you are in business, I mean in retail business, especially in the business of selling luxury goods. Your name and the reputation of the company you are representing is so important that it does not matter how much of a disgruntled employee you are, your bosses would not appreciate your attitude.

Merry Christmas Richard (oh wait, you were screaming that you were not Christian and did not care about Christmas either.)