Have you ever heard, "but the sales person told me __________." I have had customers sit in my office and tell me that my salesperson promised things that not only do we not do but that we never did. I also have had customers tell me that I promised them things that I was confident that I never promised.
I believed the customers were sincere as it was unlikely both partners could lie so convincingly. I was also pretty sure I was not yet going senile nor were my salespeople over promising. I began to believe that the customers were shopping a number of builders and they had been promised something someplace else and mis-remembered who told them what. Either that or when discussing their new homes one would say to the other, "what did they say?" They would discuss the issue and become convinced that we said something we did not.
The issue was not common but happened often enough that we felt we wanted to proactively deal with the issue. We discover the following clause which we added to the end of our contract. We Left about ten lines of space to write in verbal promises. We rarely had a customer add anything and if they did we could deal with it before we started.
Record in the space below any and all verbal commitments that any representative of Robinson Development has made to you. If no additional commitments were made, please write none.
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Original Content copyright 2011 Thomas Robinson
