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Office Depot Employee — "We Changed Prices Too"
Avram Piltch writes "Last week, LAPTOP reported that Office Depot employees were routinely lying to customers about notebook inventory, telling them that systems were out of stock if they didn't want to buy extended warranties or tech services. Now LAPTOP has spoken to more Office Depot associates, one of whom goes by the name Alex and reports widespread altering of prices in his region. He says he even Photoshops higher price tags on clearance notebooks so that associates can tell customers that they're getting a free warranty or tech service, when the price has been raised to cover it. LAPTOP also talked to a representative from the FTC, who would not comment on Office Depot specifically, but said that the sales practices described by LAPTOP clearly violate federal law."
Sadly, this is the attitude of many in sales in this country. Good Business is how much you can milk from your customers and how fast regardless of the consequences. I sat with a couple of sales guys (friends at that) last weekend who bragged back and forth about how they were literally screwing associates.
Paraphrasing a quote from The Grapes of Wrath, "Steal a tire and you're a criminal. Sell a man a tire with a hole in it and that's just good business."
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Apparently the rogue salesman wasn't impressed with my wanting a "cheap Linux laptop" and told me there were none left. Never mind I checked the website half an hour earlier before coming in and there were about 270 in stock at that store. So I went up front to customer service. They checked for stock and had two people help me. One to go back and fire the salesman and the other to get my laptop. That store appears to have stopped the practice of giving salesmen credit for purchases soon after. The salesmen no longer act like vultures. Customers do the store and community great service by reporting the problem.
"LAPTOP" is not a universally known group, even among geeks. You need to explain who they are. That's just good journalism.
Haven't you ever hung around a person who said "Hey, man, so did you hear about the thing?" and you just look at them dumbfounded because you have no idea what he's talking about?
I used to work there. I can see how their employee incentives would lead to these kind of practices. There's something wrong when your focus has to be selling an "attachment" item over the actual product. And no one ever uses their extended warranty (don't tell me a story about a time you used it, you're the exception, not the rule) It's dishonest. Insurance on an item you can afford to replace is always a bad deal.
This type of behavior is all to do with the profit margins. They have to cut their profit margins wafer thin on the products themselves due to competition, but extended warranties are mostly pure profit. Most people who buy an extended warranty on any product (not just PCs) won't need to claim against it within the time covered, and even if they do, no doubt the small print will have something which exempts that particular issue so they'll never have to actually pay out on it. The small minority who do have to claim and have the warranty pay out often find that one claim pays for the warranty.
The thing that many people don't take into account at the time of purchase, is that if the unit breaks in 4 years, do you want the same thing repaired, or do you want newer technology? If you bought an XBOX which needed repairing 3 years later, wouldn't you rather use that same warranty cash (in part) for an XBOX 360?
I used to work for an electrical retailer in the UK, and the pressure on sales staff to get a certain percentage of their sales figures in extended warranties and instore credit cards (where the compound interest rates were horrendous) was immense. They'd rather you had a little sale with a large percentage of the total price being a warranty, than a large value sale which was all product. They even tried to bully us into visiting the area manager to explain our lack of target achievement.....needless to say, I'm not there anymore. As a customer, it is handy to be able to cut the sales staff off with "I used to sell these things, I know the deal, forget it" when the "would you be interested in....." line comes up.
We got told we could offer discounts ONLY if an extended warranty was being bought at the same time, or they were opening an instore credit card. We were encouraged to just tick the "payment protection" box because it saves time explaining what it is, and it's more profit. I insisted in explaining to the customer as I felt like I was cheating them if I decided for them.
This type of behavior does go further than my ex-employers would go (at the time I worked there at least). It's gonna be interesting how many complaints / lawsuits they get from disgruntled customers who never realized something was fishy at the time but suddenly the penny drops that it happened to them. If this does get through courtrooms / inquiry where the allegations are proven true and they are punished for it, it'll be a hellava hit on their reputation for a while to come. Right now no companies can afford to lose customers.
Why the heck does anyone buy electronics from brick and mortar stores any more? Yes, occasionally you can find "deals" compared to online - but those always HAVE to be at a loss compared to online stores.
The reason is that online stores have several massive advantages. Economies of scale are one : newegg.com and the others can supply the entire United States with electronics using just a few large warehouses, with heavy use of automation. The real estate, labor, energy usage, advertising costs, management...it's all cheaper with a few large warehouses.
The second massive advantage is that electronic goods inherently plummet in value very rapidly. The longer something sits in inventory, the less money the store makes by selling it. Again, the online stores need vastly smaller inventories relative to their total sales, and I suspect sometimes work so efficiently as to unload goods from the shipping containers from china and immediatly send it on the buyers.
I know what most of you are going to say : "instant gratification" isn't there. True. Still, electronics are cheap and light to ship. It's cheaper to have a video card overnighted from newegg than it is to pay the usual price the same video card is listed at in Best Buy.
The overwhelming majority of us don't need instant gratification, we can wait 2 days. If we are doing something where high uptime is critical, then it's still cheaper to order a few extra parts from newegg as spares than it is to buy stuff from Best Buy or Fry's. Or just keep your old stuff for spares.
Aware? Do you think a employee would actually care about that crappy company, to pull off shit like that?
I bet they even have to tell the employees that they can choose between lying to customers, or getting fired.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Most salespeople will admit they lie if you ask (outside the store). When I worked at Sears I couldn't stand how much pressure management placed on us to sell ripooff "extended warranty" contracts. We were expected to lie and convince customers that it was a good investment, when in reality most extended warranties go unredeemed. Most hardware will last a long, long time after it survives the initial 3-6 month "infant mortality" period... there's no need to extend the warranty, except to pad Sears pockets with free money.
If I worked at Office Depot, Best Buy, or some other place that engaged in illegal tactics like saying, "We don't have that laptop in stock" even though you have several, or creating false price tags, I'd start collecting documentation so I could turn it over to the FTC.
Yes I'd be a whistle-blower. I cannot tolerate corruption. (Of course that also means I'd probably be blacklisted by our corporate overlords.)
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Just what would DESKTOP and SERVER think of all this? Let alone how NETBOOK would feel about being left out and poor old MAINFRAME in the corner has been all but forgotten.
Seriously though, I can't help but feel there's something inherently lame about naming your group/publication/whatever after a common peice of hardware then capitalising it.
With the random littering of LAPTOP in capitals throughout the summar it read more like an advert.
...that no one ever uses their extended warranty is just fantasy on your part.
That's assuming you actually can use it. Many times, when you actually try to make a claim, the insurance company that backs the warranty, will not back it up - they'll find something in the fine print of the contract that they'll use as an excuse to tell you to take a hike; which then it becomes a battle. Many times, they don't even have a legitimate reason not to honor the warranty, but they do anyway because they're crooks.
A Consumer advocate's take:
Why extended warranties are a rip
Why extended warranties are no good
I think when you get modded -1 troll your IP should be revealed.
His IP is 127.0.0.1, have fun.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
>>>Big businesses like the one mentioned aren't likely to care about a few disgruntled customers
Perhaps that's why Sears almost went bankrupt in 2003, and again this year, while customer-oriented JCPenney is booming (relatively speaking). You screw the customer and soon the customer will shop somewhere else.
Another annoying practice Sears had was to offer "rebates" that had to redeemed from the central Chicago office. So customers come-in expected a sale, but instead they pay full price, and have to go through the hassle of mailing stuff to Chicago to get their refund. I had a LOT of customer come-in and complain they never received the check in the mail. At first we simply refunded the money out of the drawer, but then the stores stopped doing that.
Now you have a pissed-off customer who will go-around the local area "poisoning" the market with stories of how Sears screwed them. It's so short-sighted and stupid. I prefer the Penneys philosophy, which is to follow the golden rule, even if that means a short-term loss. Treat the customer the same way YOU would want to be treated, and keep the customer happy so they'll come back next month & remain a loyal income source.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Why am i not shocked?
I'm growing to hate money and all who seek it at the cost of being fair, honest, and humane. Greed is a disgusting thing.
I'm all for public hangings of guilty CEO and politicians.
I work at Office Depot currently, and I can assure you this is not standard practice where I work, and certainly wouldn't be allowed by any of the managers or corporate. With regards to the issue about people lying about laptops being out of stock, yes, there were some salespeople who were doing that. As soon as it was found out, the practice was halted and everyone was informed that under no circumstances was it to be allowed. (And logically, even selling a laptop without the extended warranty is better than not selling it at all.) I so know that if any of this happened at the place I work, the employee responsible would be fired with no hesitation.
It is true that Office Depot does tend to push for these warranties, add-ons, etc, but you'll find that just about every other store, from Best Buy to Fry's does the same. Like it or not, that's how the business is run.
As a customer, it's annoying, but you just have to put up with it and move on in life, just as you put up with club cards, coupons, mailers, and all the other little annoyances that just about every store dumps on you these days.
As an employee, it can be stressful, but it's unlikely that you'll get fired if you don't contribute to the "quota." (And remember, this is retail. Working in retail sucks in general.)
And just as a final word, I'm not a manager, or corporate, or any higher up at OD. I'm just a lowly employee working there to pay for my textbooks because the hours are flexible enough to accommodate for my classes. I don't particularly have much company loyalty, but it does tick me off that people are spreading what is essentially tabloid journalism without giving any thought as to whether it's a widespread practice, or just some individuals who are giving the company a poor image.
Interesting anecdote. The wife and I were at a mall and she decided that she wanted to stop by Sears to see about some new bedding. She rifled through the various sheets that they had going, picked out one she liked, and we proceeded to check out. I handed the lady at the checkout stand my credit card which she tried several times to swipe. After those unsuccessful attempts she gave up and handed my card back. I thought it odd that it wasn't reading correctly considering we had just made some purchases with it a few minutes previous, so I asked her if she could manually punch the card number in.
She looked at me as if I were accosting her to do such a thing! She quite reluctantly did so and the purchase went through. It astounded me how poor the whole payment experience was. This experience left an indelible impression that I would not be returning to Sears anymore. If they were going to put up a stink over punching in a credit card number, I would not want to know what they would do if I had a real problem.
Long story, I know, but with all these companies racing to the bottom of 'low price guaranteed!', the biggest differentiator is going to be service. This is why companies like Newegg will always get my business and peer recommendation. I've had some really big problems with them, but in the end they were able to sort things out and make them right. Now if I could only purchase bedding from them...
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
The trouble is you are taking a long term view... Businesses these days aim for short term profits and big bonuses because the people running them just couldn't care less about the long term success of the business, they are just in it for the maximum gain they can make in the quickest time, and will then move on. That's why small businesses tend to offer a better service, because the people running them usually are interested in the long term viability of the business.
A couple of years ago banks were making huge profits and paying out massive bonuses, this year they're making huge losses and going bust... All because of short term profiteering.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
So do like I did - one time, the bozo left the keys in the tow-truck while arguing with someone about whether they would be towed or not. The tow-truck operator was trying to shake them down for the $65 towing fee even though he hadn't even hooked up. When they balked, he then "offered to settle" for $25.00 cash ... which we all know would have just gone into his pocket. While they were arguing, I pocketed the tow-truck key, then walked into a restaurant and called the cops about a tow-truck driver blocking someone's car.
Went home, got changed (different clothes, a hat, jacket), went back and sure enough, 2 hours later, the tow-truck was still stuck there - but getting ready to be towed.
I simply don't like people trying to scam (or in this case, outright extortion) other people.
Now if I could only purchase bedding from them...
http://www.neweggmall.com/ Looks like today's your lucky day =oD
Hey, stop, that's Philip's head!
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
The extended warranties and service plans would be FAR easier to sell if *those* things were honest in the first place!
Honestly, I tend to *like* the service plans, in theory, on many of the things I'd buy at a store like Office Depot. My resistance to them comes from being screwed over on multiple occasions when I went to actually USE one of them!
As one example, years ago, I purchased the 2 year extended plan for an HP inkjet printer I got for my work. I knew that out in the shop where it was used, they had a track record of breaking or wearing out the things on about a 1 1/2 year basis, so I figured it was a good gamble we'd use the plan. Sure enough, it broke down - so I called the ext. warranty toll-free number and tried to make a claim. Turns out the company went bankrupt and all warranties were transferred to a different firm. When I called THAT firm, they had "no record" of my warranty - and told me I needed to go to Office Depot and have them look it up in their file, and fax over proof.
I went through that whole fiasco, only to have the place refuse to pay to replace the printer with a comparable unit. Instead, they said all they were willing to do was mail me a check for the cost of the extended warranty and wash their hands of it!
As another example? I paid about $100 for a furniture warranty on a new sectional I bought at "Weekends Only". The microfiber started tearing in a corner, so I called to make a warranty claim. The place was *impossible* to work with though! They kept putting me on hold for 30 minutes or more and hanging up on me, or insisting the person handling the "Weekends Only" warranties was out of the office, and to "leave a voicemail". After leaving numerous messages, I got them to return my call a total of 2 times, both at odd hours (like late evenings, at my work number, when I was already long since back at home), so they left me messages simply saying they "tried to reach me" and to "give them a call back at my convenience". Never was able to get any service before the warranty expired, and I *still* have holes in my sectional!