As some of you may know, I’m thinking of getting a scooter (landlord be damned). So, we went to the main Honda bike showroom in Aoyama last week, except they don’t stock scooters but the nice front desk ladies helpfully printed out the honda.co.jp web pages for the nearest dealer to me, which is near Jiyugaoka (a 15 min bus ride). So off we went.
As it was a nice day in Golden Week, we walked there, carefully calling ahead to make sure they were open. My mistake here was not saying ‘and do you have this specific model in stock’, because when we arrived they only stocked bikes costing 400,000yen and above. To be fair, they did have 3 scooters in, none of which I was interested in (and neither were the staff). When we asked about the model I like (the chunky Zoomer) they said they didn’t stock them, but we could look at one that was in for repair.
Repair?
Would I like to see a broken one? Maybe I’m unfamiliar with modern sales techniques, but I’m not sure this is the way to sell things. At least she offered though. However, I couldn’t sit on it or touch it (as it wasn’t theirs, which is fair enough), but I could look at it. Unfortunately, I’d already done that a few times around the station most days for a weeks.
The bottom line is that when I try a different dealership next week, I’ll call forward before I go. What’s wrong Honda? Seems you don’t want me to buy one – maybe I should try an alternate vendor.