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In order to be fair, I won't be disclosing the names of these stores. Store A, again remaining anonymous, is a huge electronics store that has a really big blue and yellow logo. The other store, Store B, tends to imprint their equipment with a picture of half-eaten fruit on it. Draw your own conclusions. When I was a teenager my friends and I used to go amuse ourselves by asking difficult questions of people in computer software and hardware stores and listening to their amazingly creative lies as they never once said "I don't know". I have a lot of respect for these fokls - they deal with quite possibly the crankiest and most irritable annoying demographic group of consumers, yet they do it with a smile. However, I lose all respect for people who would rather lie to you than say "I don't know" or "I'm not sure, let me go see if I can find someone who knows." All I ask for is a little honesty. You'll see in my transcript below which store was more honest. Note that I checked - neither store works on comission, and as far as I know, neither store has a sales quota related to employee payouts. (As far as I know...)
Store A (blue and yellow logo)
Me: "So, what's the difference between this 2.4ghz Core Duo and this 2.8 ghz centrino thing?"
Them: "Well.. this one here has... duo cores, and that makes it do stuff twice as fast like edit your photos and go online. do you play games? This definitely makes gaming better"
Me: So why would I buy a laptop here instead of say, online, from someone like Dell?
personal note: I fully expected this guy to say "because Dell's laptops have been declared a fire hazard", but he didn't take the bait...
Them: Well, because here you get our [name left blank for anonymity] Squad service plan here. You can't get that from Dell.
And the best one-liner of the day:
Me: So, what's this "built-in Wi-Fi" stuff it talks about on this sticker?
Them: Its like Hi-Fi, except for your computer. It sounds awesome! [employee actually made a thumbs-up sign here]
Store B (half-eaten fruit logo)
I actually expected similar results here that I got at the first store. As you'll see, I was quite surprised
Me: So I hear I can dual boot [name clipped for anonymity] and Windows on this machine. How do you do that?
Them: Its called Boot Camp. I can show you how it works back at the Genius bar, or you can come back on Saturday where we've got a guy teaching people how to do it on their own machines. If you need to run Windows, this will do the job. Its not emulation or a virtual machine - its a legit copy of Windows.
Me: The specs on this are decent, but equivalent PC laptops seem to have more horsepower. I'm not sure if I can get all my programming in Vista done w/Boot Camp on a laptop like this
Them: We've had a few complaints that the 1GB RAM just isn't enough to keep windows happy. Thats the big bottleneck with Windows. You can upgrade these to 2GB, which makes Windows plenty happy.
Me: I've heard rumors that you guys are coming out with 64-bit dual-core laptops maybe in September or October. Any truth to that?
note: I expected him to deny it so that he might try and convince me to buy a laptop today
Them (went back to check with manager): As far as we have been told, thats still a rumor...but, if you really want the extra horsepower and you can wait another couple months, that might be better than buying this laptop now and regretting it in a few months.
Me: I'm all about the hotkeys. I control pretty much everything I do in Windows with hotkeys. This OS seems pretty mouse-intensive. Can you show me some hotkeys and tricks to get around quickly?
Them: Two store employees then had a 15 minute competition to see who could show how to do various tasks without touching the mouse once. I was absolutely blown away. One guy got himself trapped in the DVD editing software and had to resort to the mouse, the original salesguy kicked butt and went 10 minutes without a mouse click.
So, to summarize. I am not attemptig to make any statements about these stores or the companies they represent. The statement I want to make is that there are honest salespeople and their are complete idiots, and then there are dishonest "snake" type salespeople who are brilliant but use their mind for evil instead of good. If you know how to spot them, you're ahead of the game. Personally, I've never purchased a big-ticket item from Store A... I wonder if that's at all related?
Disclaimer: For those of you who have criticized me for wasting the time of the employees... I didn't actually go into the store with the purpose of quizzing or insulting these people... what kind of a person do you think I am? I've actually been shopping for a new laptop for the past 4 or 5 months, trying to find the single laptop that will suit all of my needs (I currently own a laptop, a tower, and a tablet, and am looking to consolidate) and have racked up a lot of interesting stories in my quest for the "ultimate laptop".
Basically, there's two ways to succeed at selling: 1) sell a superior
product, or 2) be a weasel.
Basically, there's two ways to succeed at selling: 1) sell a superior
product, or 2) be a weasel.
Hmm.. Sorry about the double post, but the pop up gave me no feedback that
I'd succeeded in submitting a comment.
Thats what I've encountered. You're either selling the best on the market,
or you're lying about selling the best on the market.
Superior product vs weasel product. Best on market vs lying. Extreme
hyperbole with generalizations based on one semi-humorous data point vs
non-information. Yeah, I see the pattern... //unsubscribe
I once waited 20 minutes for an employee of Circuit City to go look for the
DVD version of a game I wanted to buy. They came back and said they only
had the CD version. I scoffed, and to try to get the sale anyway, she
said, "Oh, but I heard the CD version is actually faster."
I've experienced the same thing. In my head, the sales people are very
ignorant by definition. If they were anything else then they would not be
selling laptops at these places. They would have a better job.
I once worked at a CompUSA. The only thing they care about is selling
extended warrantees. The sales people even stretch the rules of the
companies system to discount a product the cost of an extended warrantee so
that they can throw one in and make a buck. I imagine that Best Buy, not
having commission based sales, is similar. I don't know what Apple does,
but at least you know that anywhere you look an Apple computer is going to
cost the same.
NickCody: Please explain, using facts, where "Somehow, the second place
you went seems to have succeeded in seeding it's stores with ignorant sales
people, experienced techies, and an problem/question escalation process
that just works." I'm particularly interested in your evidence that Apple
populates its stores with "ignorant sales people."
My brother was a successful car salesman for most of his life. He currently
has his own business doing sales seminars for dealerships. I will quote
him: “ There’s an asshole for every seat.”
As far as computers go, I’ve built every one I’ve ever owned except for the
first one - an IBM PC with an 8088 processor. If you want a good PC, do
your homework, back up everything important, and spend the extra $10.00 for
the operating system disk.
I would further recommend that you delete the partition, reformat the drive
and reinstall your OS the minute it comes out of the box. Unlike a new car,
off-the-shelf PCs come with a lot of junk in the trunk, the back seat and
under the hood that is useless garbage that PC makers use as an advertising
platform for theirs and others products needlessly sucking up system
resources.
I have had over the years, several incidents like your store "A" (Bestbuy).
They (salespeople) have repeatedly lied to me about one issue or another
just to get the sale. Later, you find out or something doesn't work the way
that they said, and it is frustrating to try and get the truth out of these
people or fix the problem. Circuit City is truly about the service plans.
When you try and use it, they give you phone numbers in other states that
don't work. I have told them to just tell me the truth. It's scary that
this consistently happens with these stores. I definately stopped buying
higher end products from these stores. I haven't had those problems from
Apple. Our store is an Apple dealer though. Customer service in general in
this country has declined greatly over the years. I don't expect Harvard
grads in these stores, but I just simply wanted the truth or simply "I
don't know" before I spent $2000 off of what some salesperson told me.
I was an electronics saleman for a well known department store for a number
of years. Even when I was working on commission I learned that the best way
to get return customers was to tell them the truth when they had questions.
Once I knew what they were looking for I would do my best to help them
figure out what they might want to buy. Sometimes they wanted 'top of the
line features' for 'entry level prices'. I would explain that if you want
more it will cost more. The ones really looking for the higher end product
would buy it and the other would buy the lower level product they wanted.
Of course I loved my sales job at the time and enjoyed learning about the
new electronics so I could explain them to the customer. One customer even
told me he bought a product because I was so excited about explaining it to
him. I agree with the person who said customer service has declined over
the past few years. Jobs these days are more for a paycheck and not
satifaction at doing a job well that you are paid to do.
Actually, there are 4 ways:
Still there are good salesmen out there who don't want to scam or bullshit
you. Take me for example :)
nukemhill:
This is a comment from a salesperson's perspective: All i can say is that
we try. And it's hard to be one of us. Did you know that about 14,000
computer salespeople were subpoenaed recently to testify on how much we
tell the truth. The video clips are on youtube and aol. I was a star
witness. I think I handled myself very well under fire. Here's a link to a
NEWS STORY about it.
