Spy Girl In Game Stores

1up.com has a great feature up detailing the exploits of a young woman they sent in to various game stores under the cover of a clueless girlfriend. The results are both informative and hilarious. From the article: "Spy: When are the new systems coming out? Clerk: Sony just came out with a new version of the PlayStation. It's smaller, more compact, that's about it. Xbox--they haven't mentioned anything about something new coming out."

Comments

clueless like a fox? :)

[Xtifr]

I'm not sure the clerk was actually clueless. Consider:

Clerk: the new PS3 and the new XBox/360 are both expected within the next few months.
Customer: ok, I'll keep my money in my pocket and come back some other time (maybe). Bye!

vs.

Clerk: well, there's this new, small Playstation that we have in stock, but I don't know of any plans for a new XBox.
Customer: cool, I'm going to pull out my wallet and buy one each of the machines you've got right now. Ring me up!

I mean, duh, these guys are trying to sell stuff, not keep you up-to-date with the latest industry gossip! If you go into a store and ask questions, you should expect to hear answers designed to separate you from your money. It's that simple.

Bad questions, what did they expect?

[thesandtiger]

The quality of the answers was directly related to how dumb her questions were.

I used to work in retail, selling PCs, and I have to say that I quickly used a triage system for customers. Being asked a relevant and technically accurate question (ex: Does this machine have an AGP slot? or What kind of memory does this one use?) would get friendly and helpful service. Being asked a bizarre question (ex: How many bauds can I fit in this hard-drive? [to which I responded "All of them, if you buy the extended warranty."]) would get less helpful responses from me. Why?

Because customers who ask random noise questions like that have no fucking idea what they're talking about, but it is clear that they either think they do, or at least want to portray the idea that they do so they don't get taken advantage of. People who approach a purchase with that kind of idea are not going to take well to being (gently) corrected by the person they're asking the questions of. They will, almost universally, go and bitch to the manager that the salesperson was throwing all kinds of complex jargon around like "mouse" and "keyboard" around, trying to confuse them.

If I worked at a game store, and someone asked me about progressive scan and online gaming, I'd give them answers. If they asked me which one had more polygons, I'd make fun of them - I'll get bitched at anyway, might as well get to enjoy myself first.

So, their article showed that, if you act like a moron, you'll be treated like one. What a shock!