Thou shalt not trick

Friday, December 17, 2010

I posted an entry a long time ago about people tricking us into buying their products. We 'accidentally on purpose' won a grand prize. Kinda like a once-in-a-blue-moon winning. Like winning the lottery, I guess. It happened in Limbang. Pretty convincing. I won a home theatre. Too much talk, if you ask me. Maybe that's how these people confuse customers. So remember, I'll talk about that again later. That's clue number one. NYANYAH. So anyhow, the theatre's all mine - IF! Aha...there was a condition. IF I bought their other products that cost like, RM2k. If I didn't buy, I was not qualified to get my grand prize. Pui. Never wanted the home theatre that much. Can just buy one if I want to at a much cheaper price.

Days ago, de ja vu *swoooppp* It happened in my own country. Shocking. But I reckon they were not Bruneians. I would be surprised if any Bruneians would wanna do it. Not that I'm being racist, just realistic. My first mistake was agreeing to accept their 'free gift'. One of them said, come ka, take our free gift. It wouldn't be long. Cannot hear the words free gift! I really forgot! No such thing as free gift! At least not just like that.

It was me, Anis and Innah. They sat us down. They were friendly and all. Asked about our jobs, where we lived, etc. Who the hell does that here in Brunei?? I mean, seriously. We could have just sat there in silence while waiting for our 'free gift'. No need to make small chats. But of course, it was important. They were about to start their sales talk. They needed these small chats for warming up. Right at the beginning I could sense this would not lead to a good ending, but as long as I knew that, I thought, what the heck. Let us entertain these people. They of course thought they were the ones entertaining us. LOL.

They asked us where we lived and I said Bandar. One of them asked, where in Bandar? *silence* shoot! Why did I have to say Bandar. Should have just said Mulaut kah, Sengkurong kah.

So anyways, one by one they introduced their products. We'd nod along sarcastically, shoot exaggerated yet insincere remarks, smirk and sneer and sometimes laugh. Dalam hati, "Ladieeeees, you're not fooling us one bit." We weren't interested at all. In the end, I stood up, looking at the watching and telling them we had to go soon. They said our gifts weren't ready yet and I said never mind if it was going to take longer.

So they gave us each a voucher, stapled. They asked us to open them so they could write down the running numbers on the vouchers they said. It was, I don't know, I didn't really listen. But these 'certificates' were supposed to deduct $50 from the price of any of their products. Ironically, all the numbers on our certificates were the same. What the heck?? Then theatrically, Anis's certificate didn't say $50, instead $700 was written. And as expected, the sellers were shocked. They said this didn't normally happen. Uh oh, sure. They were about to call, I don't know, their boss perhaps? You know, to ask whether that $700 was valid or not.

We didn't stick around for the call to be made. We stood up, acting like we were in a rush (suddenly right haha). They stopped us at first, and I said, "that's okay, we'll just take the $50 ones. No big deal. Forget the $700." Anis agreed and said, "sorry we're really late! OMG kana marah ni karang!" Handal belakon kami atu. I accidentally took someone else's certificate. Their victim before us. They reused certificates? So cheap!

Turns out Anis had the same experience before. Seriously, does anybody ever get through with this? Have they ever succeeded to convince someone to buy their products? Induction cooker lah, apalah. Well, good luck lah with their business.

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