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."

Comments

Better Question

[moniker127]

Why would you buy a computer at office depot?

Re:Better Question

[Narnie]

Why would you buy a computer at office depot?

Because you need something with enough mass to make it through the store window when you plan on returning it?

Because you don't feel satisfied with a computer purchase unless you know you've been ripped off?

Because Office Depot is the only place that will extend you credit because you put a months worth of hookers and blow on your creditcard?

Re:Better Question

[IANAAC]

Why would you buy a computer at office depot?

Not so long ago you could have said the same thing about Best Buy - why would you buy a computer from them?

If you can find a better deal at Office Depot, why not?

Re:Better Question

[bretticus]

250MB hard disk

In this case, I think I'm going to have to agree with the OP.

Company or store policy?

[Ethanol-fueled]

Heh, that sounds about right.

I worked for OfficeMax a few years ago. Everybody who worked there received commissions for selling those overpriced plans to customers.

I'm wondering if the examples discussed in TFA are a companywide policy a la Best Buy with their seperate pricing for internet and intranet, or the brainchild of some greedy store manager. When I worked as a film-developer for a major drugstore chain, the store manager approached me about finding a way to cheat customers using standard processing for customers who turned in their film with premium envelopes(which means that customers who wanted offsite "premium" processing would instead have their stuff done in-house, saving us tons of cash and leaving us hoping that the customer wouldn't notice the lack of the extra features they wanted ^_^).

My biggest mistake in that job was mentioning the word "ethics" to my manager. I was never promoted ^_^

Re:Company or store policy?

[Yeef]

I used to work at the local Best Buy and, like most big retailers, they had us pushing the service plans and other stupid add-ons (magazine subscriptions, credit cards, etc). While they never told us to lie, they'd often tell us to omit mentioning any potential negatives unless the customer specifically asked about it.

Best Buy employees don't work on commission, true, but of course they gave more hours to the people that managed to get more customers to sign up for service plans. There's nothing wrong with that. Now, most of my co-workers were honest people; it wasn't uncommon to see some of them give the customers faulty information, but it was usually out of ignorance rather than trying to purposely be deceptive.

There was a handful of people, though, that would tell outright falsehoods to customers to get them to get a service plan or what have you. There was one employee in particular that would sign people up for the magazine subscriptions without even asking then (the 'free' trial that they charge you for after the 8th week if you don't cancel).

Of course, since I worked Customer Service I was the one who had to deal with all of the angry customers. Easily the most stressful job I've ever had. On the one side I had customers venting their frustrations at me. Then, with the way Best Buy's hierarchy is set up (there were about 12 managers, all with the same level of authority and conflicting sets of instructions) it was chaos trying to figure out exactly what they expected from me. So, I simply stuck to the official store policy and, of course, I got 'spoken to' (but not written up, because they really wouldn't have a leg to stand on) for accepting too many returns even though I was following company policy to the letter. After putting up with that shit for two years, I'd finally had enough and quit.

I suppose I'm going off on a tangent here, so let me get back on topic. I think that, with the exception of a few people, most retail employees loathe using lying to people, even if only through omission. Unfortunately, the way the system is setup, there isn't really much of a choice. I was fortunate enough that I could afford to quit a job that I hated (and that was back when the economy was still relatively good). But not everyone has that luxury. If you have a family to support or are a student paying your own tuition (as a lot of my co-workers were) it's not really an option. When I was working at Best Buy, the only people there that seemed to genuinely enjoy their job, other than the managers, were the people working in the warehouse (away from the customers). Most everyone else just sort of begrudgingly accepted that things could be worse and did their best to bear it.

Appalled?

[phantomfive]

Wow, if you get appalled over scripts for cashiers, wait until you find out about telemarketers, what THEY have. I fear the day you learn about politician's speech writers. Oh, and did you know? Those bills that get passed through congress, often the congresspeople DON'T EVEN READ THEM.

OK I'll stop now to keep your rage meter from going overboard.

(This message brought to you from the 'please channel your anger towards things that actually matter dept').

Man, I must be feeling bitter today.

Re:Best Buy tried this as well to "fight" piracy.

[MrEricSir]

"Sir, I saw you put those CDs in your pants. Are you stealing them?"
"Yes, well I wasn't going to download these, but then I saw your sign..."

Re:Best Buy tried this as well to "fight" piracy.

[MrEricSir]

-wasn't
+was

Guess I should have bought an extended warranty on my original post.

Re:the slide shown

[vux984]

Not at all. The true reason the salesperson recommends the extended warranty is because they get commission. The reason given in the script is an unrelated fact, so by following the script the salesperson is lying.

No. By following the script the sales person is giving you a true reason why you might want to buy it. It doesn't happen to be the reason he wants to sell it to you, but what has that got to do with anything?

The true reason the store exists at all is to extract money from customers. So if I walk in an ask to buy a single pen, and an employee suggests buying the 3 pack for twice the price 'because you get 2 for the price of 1' he isn't lying to me. Its the truth, and perhaps even a good reason to buy the 3 pack.

The fact that he makes more money from the sale this way is the reason he suggested it, but that doesn't make the rest of the conversation a lie.

Re:Here is what I do

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you could try my favorite.

Oh its out of stock? Damn thought you guys had a good service plan too. Guess I will go to insert other store here.

Magically in stock again? At register with item in hand. Service plan? What service plan? I didnt say I wanted one please take it off.

Bait and switch works BOTH ways.

Office Despot

[tverbeek]

I've avoided buying anything at Office Despot since I walked into one years ago and they had a sign boasting that they test their employees for drugs. Even aside from the fact that I find that invasion of employees' privacy troublesome on principle, why would I - as a customer - care whether the guy ringing up my sale smokes a little weed once in a while, or even if the girl restocking the shelves does a line of coke every night? What kind of business brags about how worker-unfriendly an employer they are?

Re:Office Despot

[interkin3tic]

I suppose that's one way to think about it. Another is that since those drugs are illegal, they tend to be supplied by large drug-smuggling operations.

I run a mom-and-pop drug smuggling operation, you insensitive clod!

Office Depot CEO: "Worst CEO of 2008"

[Futurepower(R)]

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.