The first rule in sales when you have to disappoint the customer

[dob1]

... is blaming somebody who is not in the room.

Whenever I read stories about ADs who have specific rules, all of which are of course mandated by Rolex, I wonder how often it is either an in-house policy or you have a salesperson in front of you who is fishing for an excuse. I don't doubt that Rolex has a set of rules in place and they do react on the market dynamics of ADs vs. 2nd hand market dealers, but it is always convenient to defer responsibility.

It's easier to say 'Sorry, we don't even have a waiting list - it might take years to get you the model you want' instead of saying 'Sorry, we don't sell enough volume for Rolex to send us more' or 'You don't look like somebody who drives a Bentley, so I'm not going to give you access to our buffer stash in case we really run out that particular model'.

What would be a really funny experiment is if you have various different people go to an AD, asking for the same watch, and see what they say. All customers with different race, age, gender, and purchase history with that specific AD. I bet the 'new rules from Rolex' would suddenly be different.