Yesterday I contacted a major motorcycle brand to ask for the price of a particular bike/configuration.

It started by me filling out a form, where one of the fields was “preferred method of communication”. I responded “email”. The form could not be submitted without me filling in a phone number though, and five minutes after submitting, they contacted me. Not by email, but by phone. I declined the call, and seconds later got an automated email saying “When can we talk?”

At this point I was already getting annoyed, so I wrote back saying I just wanted to know the price of the bike.

In the reply they asked for my address, desired method of financing, tax number, and more. I said I had no intention of volunteering a whole lot of information for their CRM system, and just wanted the price list.

Then the reply was to ask for my availability, so that I could talk to a sales consultant.

At this point I gave up. For them, “generating leads” seems to be more important than satisfying their customer. I love their bikes, but this experience left me with a sour taste in my mouth.

And I never got the price list.