Customers: Spying, lying and one that comes in twice a day....

If you wonder about pawn shop customers, you are weird, but not nearly as weird as they are. 

This week I have a few stories to tell, maybe you'll like them. 

The first is a tale of deception and diamonds.  Thursday we had a couple of women come in and tell a story of looking for diamonds.  Ok, I have a few.  We had a very nice 2.5 cttw engagement ring with bridal band come out.  It was priced very reasonably at $900 and was actually worth retail around $1200.  According to their story this was a mother/daughter team that wanted this ring. 

They had recently been robbed of over 100k dollars worth of jewelry and were looking to replace it.  Now I have developed a real ability to tell when someone is lying and my detector went off the scale but whatever.  Unfortunately for me they had talked with Eric beforehand and gotten an $800 out the door price. 

So after showing them how to look at a diamond and explain what to look for they purchase it, or so I thought.  Before they leave I offer to clean the rings and when I put it in the sonic cleaner one of the channel set diamonds falls out. 

Dammit, so I'm  off to my friend Vu around the corner and in a jiffy have it replaced.  Vu is a master jeweler and an even nicer guy.  If you ever need repair work just give me a call I'll get you his number. 

Back to the story I re-ring their credit card and off they go, but not the end of the story. 

Now I market a lot on Craigslist and the very next day I see the same ring for sale in an ad that says she had canceled a wedding and wanted $2150.00 for it............good luck sister.  Eric tells me the next day she came in looking for some earrings that are coming out soon.....the price for those earrings just went up. 

I thought about the time I spent, all the effort to buy the ring and hold it for 30 days.  Then I sell it to her for 20% more than I bought it.  For those of you math inclined you will realize that is a 240%+ investment and should be happy, and I am,  I just don't like being lied to.  I can't wait for her to come back.

For a pawn shop you would probably be surprised how much technology we use.  We have eBay stores, blogs, websites, Facebook pages and google adwords accounts and we track everything through google analytics and statcounter. 

If you think that when you are cruising around the internet you have some cloak of anonymity you'd be wrong, really wrong. 

I know where every visitor comes from, I know what keywords you typed in to find my sites.  I know the website you were in before and after you got to my site.  I know how long you stay and what you read, I even know where your mouse goes on the page.  So for all my friends and family and extended family I see you peeking from your FB pages.

Finally, we are starting to develop our own set of regulars.  One of those is Paulie.  Paulie is an extended relative of Eric's.  One of those "Uncles" you have as a kid who really isn't related.  Paulie is a pawn shop lifer who has been run out of Southern pawn and the others around here.  Paulie comes in twice a day every day usually once with stuff we don't want then with better stuff because he gets desperate for smokes.  customers like Paulie are great to have and he already has brought other friends in the shop.  Hopefully we can get the video from the security system going on the website and you can see this guy, he's one of a kind.  That is one of the projects to come this month, live pawn shop video, now that's entertainment.

I will have a listing early in the week of stuff coming out stay tuned.....

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