No one likes buyer’s remorse. You know that feeling... the horrible sinking sensation in your gut because of a bad purchase. With some ill-fated shopping selections, you can shrug your regret off and move on. However, there’s one type of purchase faux pas that is worse than all of the rest. The buyer’s remorse that grows with time.
Michael Boetel, manager of the Sioux Falls, South Dakota Push Pedal Pull recently heard a story of just that type of regret.
For Mike, these stories are hard to stomach. Ask this former trainer why he likes his job, and he’ll reply that it’s easy to come to work when your job is to help improve lives by linking customers to the right piece of equipment for their goals.
Read our conversation below with Mike to hear about what went wrong for a valued customer and how you can avoid this mistake in your machine purchases.
So Mike, please start by explaining this customer’s story.
M: I had a customer about four years ago that was looking at both a treadmill and an elliptical. He came into the store, found which pieces he wanted, went home, and looked online where he found a big discount. He ended up buying the unit online. I don’t blame him for wanting to save money.
But the reason he later had the big regret is that a lot of the internet sales aren’t exactly what they seem to be. The description may say "new in the box” or another phrase, and they may be, but a lot of times, the warranties are void on these machines.
This customer bought two high-end products that typically have 10-year warranties to them. Since they were bought online, the serial numbers had been cut off, so the customer lost the 10-year warranty. Unfortunately, when the treadmill’s motor went bad, the customer ended up eating up the original savings.
If he would have bought the unit from Push Pedal Pull initially, he would still have the same treadmill, as well as close to 6 years of warranty remaining. But since he did buy from an online site that wasn’t credible to sell that product into the Sioux Falls area, he had to buy another treadmill.
Are there other advantages to buying your equipment in a specialty store like Push Pedal Pull?
M: Well, the biggest advantage you get through Push Pedal Pull is that we’ve been around a long time. We’ve carried about every line of fitness equipment, from the high-end to the low-end, to the equipment that people are familiar with using in the health clubs.
Fitness equipment is all we sell in our stores. Not to criticize other places, but a lot of times you go into a big box store and they’re selling tennis shoes, or they’re selling tools, or whatever it might be, and suddenly they have to tell someone about a treadmill that they may or may not know much about. We have the advantage of carrying all of these different products, because most of what you see in these big box stores we have carried at our location at one point or another in the 25 years we’ve been in business.
What other benefits can a Push Pedal Pull customer receive that online shoppers can’t?
M: We pride ourselves for the service after the sale. We don’t just sell it to you and forget about you. We try to keep in touch with you to make sure that things are working well. We want you to understand your programs so that you can accomplish the goals you’re working towards.
And if you ever do have any problems, we have our own service team in house right and most of our manufacturers have great warrantees so you don’t have to buy extended warrantees like a lot of the big box stores sell. Unfortunately that warrantee doesn’t make your product any better, it just means someone’s going to fix it, but you don’t know who and you don’t know when.
Please explain the difference between the price of sale and the price of ownership.
M: If you buy a lower end treadmill, there can be a lot of extra costs, and that’s why a lot of places do sell extended warrantees. So you have a treadmill that’s say is $500 and a lot of these big box stores are selling extended warrantees that make cost you another $100 up to maybe even $200 to $300.
You take that low-end price treadmill, which a lot of people think is what a treadmill costs, but now, instead of $500, it’s $800 and all for giving you the possibility of having someone fix it in the future.
What we’ve done at Push Pedal Pull is brought in manufacturers that have great warrantees to them, so hopefully you don’t have any extended costs to that unit, at least during the time that the manufacturer has said that the treadmill will live.
For a five-year warrantee, they’re guaranteeing for five years. If any parts break down, they’re going to replace those. There may be some maintenance costs, but those are inexpensive. With higher priced, better quality units, you just have less chance of having external costs after the purchase. You don’t want to overbuy but you definitely don’t want to underbuy.
Thanks Mike!
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Have you ever experienced fitness shopping remorse? What did you do?