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How Office Depot Pushes Service Plans On Customers
Harry writes "I was amused, appalled, and angry — yes, all three — when I spotted signs above every register at my local Office Depot with handy scripts for clerks to use in 'recommending' that customers buy extra-cost, extremely profitable protection plans. And now Laptop Magazine has posted an eye-opening investigative report that charges local Office Depot stores with instructing staffers to lie and tell people who want to buy laptops without service plans that they're out of stock." Update: 03/13 00:53 GMT by T : An employee with Office Depot, somewhere in the southeastern US, wrote to respond to this story as a employee of the company, but in his off time and not in any official capacity:
"I will only say that what is described in your article and the Laptop
Mag article is not something that occurs across the entire company as
sanctioned or ordered by the Corporate Higher Ups and is certainly
nothing I have experienced as a 10-year employee of the company, we
want sales. Yes, we want add-ons, but we will take the sales regardless."
I bought a keyboard yesterday. I was asked if I wanted a warranty. I said "On a keyboard?" with a sardonic sound. It went right over her head. Then she put a tape over the edge of the box "Whats that?" I asked "our return policy" she said. "So if I break the tape I cannot return it? You do realize I need to open the box." " I'm sorry sir, that is the policy" she smartly replied. I left with my wallet, but not wits intact...
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
I used to work for Office Max for over a year. These exact same employee "policies" were in place there too.. though our plans were called "Max Advantage". We'd be told to only help customers on the floor that were looking at or thinking of purchasing items that carried a service plan... and got "write ups" if we didn't sell X amt. of plans per month. And since the day I quit, I haven't worked retail again...
Id still say the same thing about best buy.
Office Depot does not pay commissions. Instead, they just threaten your job if you don't sell enough. Since the employees are easy replaceable, even at near-minimum-wage, they don't have to care.
Yes, I used to work there as a 'customer service representative' (or some stupid title) and I was told 'never lie', etc etc... And then told that if I didn't sell enough plans there would be problems.
I refused to lie and refused to even -try- to sell the plans to people who didn't want them. Most of the time, I didn't even mention them. The only way I survived was that I was the -only- employee with any actual computer knowledge. I could actually fix computers where others couldn't even name the parts if they weren't labeled. (Okay, there were a couple that could install RAM, if they -had- to.)
They don't just push those plans, though. They also push overpriced ink, paper, cords, power strips... Anything and everything to add money to that sale.
Obviously, the employees hate that shit as much as the customers do. I'm not surprised that they've resorted to lying directly from management to the customer to try to sell the extras.
The one article claims a really odd commission system... While it wasn't in effect when I was there, it was the kind of bullshit they'd pull, so it might be true. They're really, really cheap though, so I seriously doubt it's true.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Selling up is hardly new with computer stores. Long time ago I bought a high-end VCR (Yup, THAT long ago) from a Silo store I had frequented. They always tried to sell the warranty, and this time I was damn sure I wasn't going to buy one. The sales lady rung up the order without asking, so I sarcastically asked, "Aren't you going to try to sell me one of those extended warranties?" "No," she said. "I can see it in your face that you aren't going to buy one." which I thought was pretty funny.
About the scripts: I worked retail for awhile and I gotta tell you, some of these 'sales associates' are so afraid of what to say that they demand scripts. They'll say, "What do I say?" so I'd say, 'Just talk to the customer and answer his questions.' "But what, exactly, am I supposed to say?" and it just goes on and on until you write them up a script to keep them quiet. This was especially true for customer complaints where no one wants to say the 'wrong' thing. As you know, once in awhile a customer can be kind of unreasonable, and there's this old aphorism that "the customer is always right." But as far as I'm concerned, that doesn't mean a front-line flak catcher has to take abuse. What the phrase means is, "The customer knows what he wants to buy, and if you don't have it, you screwed up." It doesn't mean if he starts yelling at tou that you have to stand there and just take it. Leave. get a manager. Whatever.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
When I was 17 I worked for Office Max.
The incentives that they gave the salesperson who sold the extended "warranty" on any electronic/furniture item far outweighed any moral obligation for me. I would push a $5.99 1-year replacement warranty on just about anything I could, selling someone a $29.99 inkjet printer with a warranty gave me an extra $12 bucks in my check. Some weeks my check gross amount just about doubled from the volume of extended replacement plans I sold.
I don't blame them.
*sigh* -1 ruined joke. what I meant to say is ...
How do I make a clam?
Get a mother clam, a father clam, and put them in a clamhouse.
"I never found out for sure, but I've heard that store managers receive bonuses for keeping payrolls low. My store manager was paid 63K a year while the understaffed underlings often work for minimum wages. Keep that in mind the next time you visit a drug or grocery store with 30 people in line being served by only 2 cashiers."
Oh please. Everything up until that paragraph I would buy as plausible. But do you know WHY they pay their employees so little ? Because people are willing to take the jobs at those wages. Do you know why they only have 2 cashiers working ? Because people are willing to wait in line a little longer to pay cheaper prices (otherwise Walmart would not be in business, let alone so huge).
Do you know why the employer wants to pay as little for labour as possible ? Because labour is an operational cost, just like leasing office space, buying equipment and paying for advertising etc. EVERYONE, whether you're a business owner or not, always wants to sell high and buy low. That's not greed. It's common sense. However, what people really don't get about it is that by keeping operational costs down, the prices get kept down. So while people's wages may be lower, their costs of living is also lower. Raise the wages, raise the prices. We all make more money but not really because everything costs more.
As for managers, managers are not entrepreneurs. They are hired by the owners to oversee departments and divisions. Their wages are just as much an operational cost as any other employee's. Now, sure, of course they will do what they can to get a higher pay for doing less work, just like any employee will. But in the end the entrepreneur needs to keep ALL costs down in order to compete with other businesses. You know, to stay in business.
So if the owners are paying the managers ridiculously large wages while the people actually doing the "real work" are getting cheated then the entrepreneur will not be in business very long. It will only take ONE company to pay his manager just a little less (since apparently there's so much of an inflated salary to cut into right there), and pay his employees better (he'll take all the good employees and undermine his competitors on service) and presto, he's got the market share.
I recently purchased an HP laptop at Best Buy that ended up being a few dollars cheaper than what it would have cost to buy direct from HP once you added in the shipping costs and the sales tax.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law - Aleister Crowley
Circuit City had a bad reputation. If you could buy something somewhere else, you would probably go there. Now it looks to me as though Office Depot is ODing on the same foolish management ideas.
It would be interesting if we could know two things: 1) Exactly how much Office Depot makes by selling overpriced "protection" plans. 2) How much it will cost Office Depot because of stories about the company being abusive on Reddit.com, Digg.com, and Slashdot.
That Digg link leads to a New York Times article about the Office Depot CEO. Quoting: "The worst chief executive of the year was Steve Odland of Office Depot, according to Glassdoor.com's reviewers. He had an 80 percent disapproval rating."
CEOs in the U.S. often make 475 times the pay of the average person. I suppose it doesn't matter to many CEOs if the company they are managing dies. The CEOs make millions as fast as possible, and when the company dies, they retire or do something else.
That isn't honest, I think it is psychologically self-destructive, but it seems to me that's the way things often are.
Warren Buffett warned about bank failures in 2003. It was certainly no secret; anyone with any interest in financial business knew about the problem. Bank executives knew that what they were doing would be the end of their companies. I suppose they were making so much money (sometimes $40 million per year) that they didn't feel it was necessary to care. It was understood, and often discussed even on TV, that the U.S. taxpayer would pay for any problems that were created; that is happening exactly the way it was planned.
I worked at ChimpUSA in college (same shit, different company), and once of my co-workers with less than stellar morals managed to sell some lady a 1 year warranty on printer ink.
When the boss found out, he yelled at the guy, not for being a total slimeball, but because the woman could have probably come back and got free replacements for her 'defective' (re:empty) ink cartridges for the next year...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!