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Bad PC Sales Staff Exposed
Barence writes "An undercover investigation has revealed how Dell's online sales staff take liberties with the truth when trying to sell customers new PCs. One member of staff told an undercover reporter that he would need a PC with a good graphics card to download digital photos. Another, who was more incompetent than devious, was asked how many photos could be stored on a 250GB hard disk. 'Its[sic] on average 2 MB then 1024 MB * 2,' came the bewildering reply. Meanwhile, a sales assistant at supermarket Tesco told the reporter that netbooks got their name because 'a Japanese man on a plane fell asleep with a laptop on his thighs and was horribly burned, so the industry has dropped the name laptop.'"
Q: What's the difference between a computer salesman and a used car salesman?
A: The used car salesman knows when he is lying.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Drones who sell stuff are prone to lie about their products? HAS THE PRESIDENT BEEN TOLD?
Life needs more saving throws.
PC sales staff are clueless droids - film at 11. It's been this way since PCs hit retail sales floors. Anybody with the smarts to sell a PC with competence has the smarts to not be in retail.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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Completely agreed. The staff at Best Buy or whatever other brick and mortar store carries computers is so completely clueless that it's comical. Why should online vendors be much different?
The best part for me was seeing that they outsource their sales staff, too. Shouldn't they just be moving their headquarters to India by now? So much for the "American" company started out of the guy next door's garage.
The tesco one isn't so bad in fairness. The rep could well have been thinking of NOTEbook - rather than NETbook. To be honest I thought that was the reason why PC makers no longer refer to laptops as laptops, but instead notebooks - so there was no implicit liability with someone burning their special parts from keeping a hot laptop in lap.
And of course like a noob I just read the article and indeed that is what happened - the rep thought notebook - and the article takes a shot at the rep for saying a netbook is: "They're just small notebooks without word processors."
So now im really pissed at giving pcpro a page click.
While we, computer elites can laugh, or cry, at some of the stupid, stupid things that come out of the mouths of the sales drones - for a lot of people they are the experts. Most people neither know nor care about computers. They just want to GET STUFF DONE. They don't know or care about Gigahertz or Terabytes: just as they don't know or care about the kilo-Watt rating of their electric kettle: it's merely an appliance - it works or it doesn't.
Maybe the IT industry should look inwards on itself and consider how we've failed to educate the public about the technology we make them use. Even worse, maybe we should reflect on how we've turned a subject that has such a huge potential for good, into a nerdy hell: full of jargon, technobabble and misinformation. To the point where the sales-staff don't even know when they're talking rubbish.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Sales people's job is to move widgets. Sell more widgets == more take-home pay.
-They aren't paid to be factual.
-They aren't paid to keep the best interests of the consumer in mind.
-The job, as designed, requires no training. In fact it rewards the absence of training.
This is the same all over. Laptops, packaged investments, American health insurance. Doesn't matter.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
I think at least some of the computer salesmen know too. Sorry.
I'm sorry, but when I witness some computer store guy tell an old geezer that he _needs_ the latest top-end NVidia card to watch digital photos of his grandchildren, 'cause photos are video stuff and and a bigger video card is better for that, right?... or that buying the latest Intel CPU makes their Internet go faster... I know Hanlon's Razor, "never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity", but it still trips my suspension of disbelief big time. Especially when I can have a more technical talk with that sales guy afterwards and see that, well, he may not be IBM research labs material, but he's not exactly the kind who thinks that Megaherz is what happens when you stick your fingers in the PSU either.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Completely agreed. The staff at Best Buy or whatever other brick and mortar store carries computers is so completely clueless that it's comical. Why should online vendors be much different?.
I think what's worse is when the sales person is actually good and can persuade someone into buying a product they don't need. I have to go to computer stores with my Dad when he tries to buy something simple like an ethernet cable or a power strip or he'll come home with a Cisco switch and an APC rackmount battery backup.
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
I run at least one instance of Windows on at least one of my various computers at home.
Last time I formatted: last year. Reason: wanted to.
Last time I formatted before that: probably 4 years ago. Reason: didn't want XP x64 anymore and went back to 32 bit XP.
Last time I HAD to format: no clue. A long time ago....
I really don't buy into the "if you run Windows, you're going to have to format yearly just to keep your computer at operating speed" stuff anymore than I buy into the "if you run Linux, you will never have any performance problems anymore" stuff.
the term "netbook" comes from the fact that because they are small lightweight laptops, they are much more prone to contamination than regular laptops. therefore, they require the use of hairnets during operation. why this is true requires profound technological expertise i don't have the time to educate you fools on in this venue, but suffice it to say that it has to do with the cube of the static charge carried by the contamination proportionate to the surface area of the hard drive
and i am flabbergasted and horrified evey time i see someone using their netbooks without the mandatory use of a proper hairnet. just one little hair sliding in a crack in between the keys on the keyboard! you fools
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I was shopping for a new laptop for my wife a year or two ago and browsing Circuit City (no intentions of buying there, I just like to get my hands on the products before I buy them online). One of the "salesmen" asked me if I needed help and I decided to play along. I told him I was just checking out a few models for an upcoming purchase for my wife.
Him: Will you need a Microsoft to go with it?
Me: A Microsoft what? It comes with Windows Vista, doesn't it? Microsoft makes a lot of software.
Him: Will she need any office software?
Me: Yeah, but I've got a copy of Office XP (maybe it's 2003, I don't recall) I don't use anymore since I bought a Mac, so she'll just use that.
Him: Oh, no, you can't do that. Office XP won't work on this computer
Me: Huh? It should work fine, it's recent enough, Vista works with just about anything.
Him: Nope, Office XP/2003 doesn't work on Vista at all, you need Office 2007.
Me: Are you sure that it's not just that Office 2007 works better than the older versions on Vista?
Him: No, it's not going to work at all.
And then people wonder why sales dropped through the floor when they laid off their best staff.
As we're speaking, I'm working on a laptop from a lady who came from Best Buy. The "Geek Squad" claimed that she had a failing hard drive, and that she would need to buy a new one, as well as a Windows Vista install. The only symptom was "My laptop is running slow"
One pass of Malwarebytes, thirty minutes later, a S.M.A.R.T. check, the machine is performing properly.
The trolls even left their stupid "GeekSquad" system checking software on my customer's machine. I checked the logs of the program, no found errors.
People disgust me.
fascinating video from inside Dell's phone sales team....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TROhlThs9qY
I feel like you didn't read your parent post before replying angrily to it.
He said:
Reason: The type of people who have to talk to a sales person, will run windows in a single partition, and will have to reformat before filling their drive.
He didn't say, all people who run windows can't manage their pc and should be put out to pasture.
Probably better explained as an example of Hanlon's Razor ("Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity") than outright intentional deception.
What I find weird is... I walk into my nearest Best Buy: Their mobile staff is really REALLY knowledgeable; their computer staff are knee-dragging morons! Is the mobile section of Best Buy a better money maker and worth having knowledgeable staff more-so than the computer section?
There are some very knowledgeable salesmen out there. Unfortunately, they are the minority. That's because being knowledgeable is not a particularly well-rewarded attribute. Take a look at the following:
1) When you walk into Best Buy or call Dell, you've already committed yourself: you are pretty much ready to buy, or you wouldn't be there.
2) Salesmen are paid on commission. The more you spend, the more they make.
3) Most people can't define the difference between a megabyte and a megahertz.
4) If you leave without buying, the salesman will lose the commission, even if you buy later based on their advice.
Put it all together, and you have a situation where salespeople are highly motivated to spout whatever bullshit they can concoct to get you to buy the more expensive doohickey RIGHT NOW, as long as they can get you to buy it. Since people typically judge the truthfullness of other people based on the confidence that they seem to have in what they are saying, you end up with a pack of know-nothing liars who make any kind of bullshit... with confidence.
It's really not much different than the techno-babble bullshiz that they say on Star Trek - the words are unimportant, but it's important that it sound real. And since any computer that anybody buys can do pretty much whatever they need, the people are typically content with the scenario because they got something that actually does what they need. They will tend to accept this as evidence that their salesman was telling the truth in the first place.
It's a sad, sad situation, and one that's not likely to improve any time soon.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Returns are more of a pain to deal with.
Of course, that's just anecdotal stuff. Plenty of stores do give out bonus goodies (or firings) based on total money made per individual worker, and there are plenty of people that just don't anything about electronics but needed a job badly.
Excellent point. Machines don't matter. People matter. ONLY people matter. Machines exist only to serve humans.
So, the deal is this. They paid money for your POS OS, machine or software. It had better work. Period. End of story. They don't care about closing processes, ending threads, reclaiming memory from the stack, optimizing the sorting algorithm, and so on. What they care about is the when they ask the computer to jump, the only question the computer has is "how high?"
Seriously, computers are about money, provided by users who DO NOT CARE about any of the mechanics any more than you care about the mechanics of your local sewage processing facility. Your job (and mine) as a programmer is to wipe their hineys gently and dispose of the waste, preferably without asking. You may hate it, as I do, but THAT'S YOUR JOB. Get over it. Don't like it? Get a new one.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Best Buy Sales Girl: Now you know you'll need to buy anti-virus software don't you?
Me: No, no I won't.
BBSG: But without anti-virus software your computer will {insert non-sequitor that problem mentions terrorists winning}
Me: First, that's not quite how that works. Second, I'm planning on installing Linux on this laptop.
BBSG: I see, but you're still going to need anti-virus software, I recommend you get {insert name of crappy anti-virus software}
Me: Please just ring up my computer.
The mobile section is actually only half Best Buy, and half Carphone Warehouse. They work on a different bonus structure and different power structure than the rest of the store, which the Mobile Manager reporting directly to a district manager and skipping the General Manager of the store, unlike every other dept.
So I mountain bike. Turns out these bikes have become more and more complicated, with more and more features, and I'm at the point where I don't really care about the latest carbon-fiber whatsathinger I just want to get on my bike and go, and have it not break. But when I need to fix the bike, or buy a new one, I've got to talk to sales people some of whom have a clue and some of whom don't.
Computers are like most other reasonably complex products - you've got to do your homework and never, ever trust that the salesperson knows what they are talking about. Because most don't, whether we're talking mountain bikes or personal computers.
A knowledgeable computer person can probably find a better job. There's not so many other jobs for people who know about cell phone handsets...
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Thing is, we don't expect people to be able to walk in off the street and adjust a carburetor. We demand training, and credentials and certificates before we let people monkey around with car electricals. But somehow, somehow it's ok to hire clueless people to maintain and service the PCs that people's livelihoods may depend on. Sure, they may not -die- if you do a bad job, but you can end up wasting thousands of their dollars and still not fix the problem.
We don't need to educate people about computers - we need to educate people about the value of professional IT training and certification.
No, you don't have to be a mechanic to sell a car; but that's only because cars come as a prefabricated system where your only choices are what colour and what model of CD player to put in. If you were selling cars assembled from any number of subsystems you -would- need to be a mechanic to offer useful advice.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
The incompetence of the sales staff at Best Buy is not restricted to the computer department. Case in point: the other night I went to look for a cordless phone with a switching power supply - i.e. something that could run on either 110V or 220V.
Looking at the shelf of phones, none of the boxes gave any indication of input voltage or being dual-voltage capable. I asked a droid which of the phones would accept 220V and he said
"All of them."
"Are you sure? All of them?"
"Any of these will work."
I looked over the phones on display until I found one with a power brick attached. It clearly said Input: 110-120V AC.
"What about this one? It says 110V AC input."
He squinted at the brick and said
"No look. It says 250 here."
I looked where he was pointing and sure enough, it said Output: 250mW 12V DC. ..."
"Okay thanks. I think I'll do some research online or something and maybe come back in tomorrow with a specific model number in hand
If these guys can't master the simple concept of input and output voltages, there really is very little hope of them navigating the world of memory bandwidth, sockets, or video performance.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
It's not just the salesmen who are clueless. People don't know what to ask for, don't know how to describe what they want out of a computer... it's a mess on both ends.
Had a bit of first hand experience with this recently. I've always known Dell has devious pricing systems, the same system will have different starting prices and instant discounts applied to it depending on how you get to it and result in systems with the same specs being priced hundreds of dollars apart from one another.
I own a business and needed some systems quick for new hires. We have a line of credit through dell which has come in handy a few times. The new hires were going to be working heavily in the Adobe suite and needed some firepower but nothing crazy. I just could not price a system with the specs I wanted. I called up sales and they told me that it was impossible to get the system I wanted with 64-bit Vista despite that, when both options were available, there was no price difference, the sales guy made some nonsensical reference to the motherboard (was getting a intel quad-core). I asked could I get the 2GBs of memory that came with the system on one DIMM instead of two, but this was not possible because the system wouldn't support it.
In the end I broke down and now and ordering three systems worth of parts from Newegg, which, of course, satisfies my inner geek but has lead to significant delays in getting the hardware I need.
maybe we should reflect on how we've turned a subject that has such a huge potential for good, into a nerdy hell: full of jargon, technobabble and misinformation.
Right. Because fields like medicine, law, automotive repair, publishing, fashion, cooking, broadcast, engineering, carpentry, literature, mathematics, philosophy, psychology, politics, banking, insurance, etc. don't have any jargon, technobabble, or misinformation.
Every field has specialized language.
You either learn enough of the specialized language to make sure you aren't being taken for a ride, or you trust that the folks you're dealing with aren't going to abuse their position of power.
The primary difference is that many people don't feel the need to educate themselves in any way when it comes to computers. Many people seem almost proud of their ignorance. They'll happily declare that they don't know anything about computers.
Sure, they just want to get stuff done. So do I, when I get in my car and drive to the grocery store. But it's still a news story when the local repair shop is found to be lying to its customers and charging people for repairs they don't need.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Well, I was more like thinking small "mom and pop" shops, where people can still tell their arse from their elbow. They may not have some deep knowledge of either, but at least know what goes on the toilet when you need to take a dump. Or back to computers, to have read some benchmark site when they bought their own graphics card.
Basically: they may not be gurus, but they know enough to know when they're lying to a customer. And that's pretty much what I'm charging them with. Being conmen on a commision, and knowing they're conmen.
And by your friend's description, it sounds like your friend and his co-workers knew when they're lying to a customer too. Your friend quit because he couldn't stand doing it, at least some of his co-workers didn't. That's how you separate those with morals from those without.
But unfortunately the system is set up to reward the latter, not the former.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
No, it's not a real "news" story. But this is Slashdot, and the mods knew that by posting that, it would become nice bait for Slashdotters to share their stories about crappy salespeople and such, so they wanted to drive more people to the site to drive more ad impressions and thereby make them more money,... Basically, the mods are motivated the same way that salespeople are motivated, but just use different techniques. That's also why I'm probably going to get modded "-1 Troll" for this,... ;-)
I had to do something fairly similar for my grandmother's computer. Only problem was, the hard drive was working perfectly fine before she took it to Best Buy. I had given her a hand-me-down computer with Linux on it, and she wanted to install Windows on it. So she had to go buy a copy. Somehow in the process of installing Windows--an arduous task that involves the opening of the DVD drive--they had managed to open the case, unscrew the hard drive from the case, and then bust it up enough that it took over 24 hours for Windows to finish installing. I know this because they kindly provided my grandmother a receipt that had logs of everything they did, which I went over.
The best part is when they decided the slowness was due to the PC not having enough RAM for XP. Which is curious, because I had run XP on that PC just fine. So they tell her they need to buy 2 x 1 GB sticks. Eventually we managed to get a refund on all of that stuff after Windows failed to boot up.
After I had to head back to my home state, she was left with no computer and, even worse, no one who even remotely knows that they're talking about with computers. She went to the same Best Buy and asked for assistance on what computer to buy. They equipped her, someone whose most intensive task is copying photos off of a camera, with a quad core desktop with like 4 or 8 GB of RAM.
SSC
Best Buy is not paid on commissions, BUT each department is rewarded for having high sales, which is kind of like a commission.
Plus, the best salesmen can get on geek squad, where they can use the name to fleece more victims. :D
The guy saying that you need a good graphics card to download pictures is like going to Best Buy and the guy says that you'll get a better picture with the gold plated $200 HDMI cable.
A bit of a different field, but I know that whenever I am at Best Buy to pick up anything home theater related (I help out a lot of friends/relatives with HT setups) I will inevitably end up arguing with some moron trying to sell me a $140 Monster Cable so it will 'look better'. Being ignorant/a liar is one thing, but it is totally something else when they continue to argue with you about it. I have even, on one particular occasion, taken the time to explain to the clown how digital audio/video works and why purchasing the "better" cable is equivalent to lighting your money on fire, and had him still come back with, "Well, I'm sorry but you're wrong, this cable will make it look better." It is amazing to me that this sort of criminal fraud is tolerated -- these people get away with making provably false statements in order to separate people from their money and they don't see any consequences. The average person should be able to walk into a store and at least be confident that the person trying to sell them things will, at the very least, not blatantly lie, but this is not the case.
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
I just bought a new reciever and I was a bit unsure if it was the right one with enough bass, but then the guy in the shop said they could modify it with a tk-421 upgrade. They gave it 3-4 quads more per channel by adding that and they did that modification right in the store.
Plus it didn't add a lot to the price.
WTF are you talking about? That's absolutely NOT true. All versions of MS OfficeXP and 2003 are listed on the Vista compatibility pages :
https://www.microsoft.com/windows/compatibility/Browse.aspx?type=Software&category=Business%20%26%20Home%20Office&subcategory=Office%20Suites&page=2
Perhaps you should either do some research or work for Dell.
Actually, I still say that a lot of them know at least enough to know they're lying, but even that's beside the point. They should at least know they're making buzzwords up, and that it _is_ lying to a customer.
What makes it odious in my eyes is that they essentially abuse those people's trust. We may argue about how smart it is to trust the guy getting a commission to do a fair analysis of your problem, but that's essentially what those customers are doing. Some old geezer comes and explains it all to the nice sales guy, not because he just wants to give the "I'm ripe for a con job" signals loud and clear, but because they trust that they'll be given a genuine solution to their problem. Because that's how the rest of society works.
If I go to a dentist with a cavity, I expect him to tell me what's the best course of action for that problem -- e.g., just fill the hole -- not to smooth talk me into pulling the tooth out and replacing it with an expensive implant. Sure, the implant would make him more money, but the underlying expectation is that he'll solve _my_ problem not his own mortgage problem.
If I hop in a cab and ask the guy to take me to the main railway station, I expect him to take either the shortest or the fastest route, or ask which of them. I do not expect him to just run in circles for more money, although he's on a commission too.
If I call a plumber for a leaking pipe, I expect him to do essentially the minimum that solves that problem, not take it as an opportunity to invent reasons why he should replace the piping in the whole house. And if he does come up with reasons why I should replace all of it -- e.g., because it's an old house and it's lead pipes -- I expect those to be real, honest-to-FSM reasons, not made up buzzwords that just have to sound real to make a sale.
Etc.
And if your dentist, or your cabbie, or plumber, or accountant, or lawyer, took it as just an opportunity to milk the last cent they can out of you with invented buzzwords, probably most people would take them to court. Because it _is_ blatant fraud and betrayal of trust.
But somehow when a computer sales clerk does it, nah, that's ok. Sorry, it looks the same to me.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I don't mean this to be advertisement, but considering that the typical retail store and most American businesses for that matter treat the customer as some sort of nuisance, I'd like to give some good words to a company that, so far, has been treating me right. Note, as soon as they slip up I'll be the first to slam them.
Disclaimer: This is a sample of one person dealing with one store with about a dozen purchases.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
Years ago, back in the prehistoric era when televisions had things called picture tubes, I can recall a time when a salescritter in a mall electronics store told me that one model of TV was better than another because it had more channels in the picture tube. Sensing that I now smelled raw meat, my wife had to drag me out of the store before I really got going in my attempt to see how stupid this guy might have actually been about the products he was selling.
Then there was the guy that explained to me and a friend that one RF amp cost more than that other one because it contained more dBs. Of course that was at a small town Radio Shack so that wasn't exactly surprising.
There will always be clueless sales people as long as there are retailers that care more about hiring warm bodies at a discount than having a knowledgable staff. Unfortunately, not all of them will see the same fate as Circuit City after they laid off all of their experienced staffers for lower paid entry level people. So we'll all have to do our own homework before walking into one of these places.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
In 1999, I worked sales at PCs For Everyone, a (now-defunct, mostly) whitebox dealer in Cambridge, MA. They were a big operation, with a stellar reputation and good draw. People would drive for hundreds of miles to get a PCsFE system. As New England's largest whitebox dealer, they had about 15 guys in the back room assembling computers on any given day, and the burn-in racks were usually backlogged. We were always busy - when we weren't selling systems we were selling parts, and we got so packed on the weekends that there was a numbered ticketing system for counter help. I worked my ass off there 5 and a half days a week (the mandatory sales meeting was on my day off) and brought in, by my own conservative estimate, about $2M in gross sales during my year working for them. You wouldn't believe how many Celeron A 300's we went through. Those things went out the door like you could get high by smoking them.
I know a lot about personal computer internals. I knew even more back then. I spent at least an hour every night reading up on Anandtech and Tom's Hardware, and the other big hardware sites of 10 years back. I helped set up the demos, and I never sold anyone more computer than I thought they could reasonably need. I did product research, recommended new kit for us to sell, and did basic troubleshooting with customers, spending 1:1 time. I had a base of dedicated customers who would wait for me rather than deal with another salesman.
When stumped, other sales reps would come to me for answers much of the time. In short, if I haven't tooted my own horn enough, I was the goddamn bomb when it came to selling computers and parts.
In that year, I made a little over $22,000, and was shafted out of my bonus . I was gone on day 380, off to a job that paid 3 times as much that I got through a customer.
Taking away for a minute from the fact that my boss / the owner was a crook (and he was), even when shafting me that hard, here's the thing: I brought in $2M to a business myself, and that business 2 years later wasjust an online storefront.
There is no margin in computer sales. Even with a locally-respected brand name that drew customers from out-of-state, even when the owner was as crooked as Quasimodo's back, even when bringing in gross revenues in the tens of millions, the storefront was gone inside of a few years.
The reason PC sales sucks is because the margins are 0. The average PC salesman doesn't make dick unless he's selling in enterprise volumes, and you're lucky if they've even taken an A+ course. Anyone who genuinely enjoys both computers and sales quickly moves into sales engineering, or finds another lateral move that will net some income. The margins on each part are nil, the margins on systems are nil. CompUSA is gone because the margins were too slim. The Best Buy rep and the Dell consumer reps are incompetent because they're given 2 days with a 3-ring binder of training, then set loose on the floor. Like it or not, qualified sales staff costs money, and anyone with the know-how to be an effective salesperson with computers is going to chase the dollar out of that basement as soon as possible.
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
This is a nasty problem because computers are not quite a commodity and not quite a geeky lab tool. People think of them as a commodity and companies try to sell them as a commodity but they require more care and feeding than say your toaster, microwave or VCR. Frankly if my VCR was as finicky and required the level of hand-holding (think frequent patching, etc) that my computer does, I'd toss it in the bin and get a new one.
It's a problem from both ends. Simple gadgets like a toaster do one established thing pretty much one way. Everybody has the same expectation of the outcome and anticipates the process pretty much the same. So we are intrinsically "trained" to know what to look for in the purchase of a toaster. Computers don't have such clearcut uses and functional pathways. This means that even tech savvy people are a bit lost in what they want from a computer (I'm agonizing on my next media server: atom or other processor, mirroring or raid 6, which case, hot-swap, etc). Combine this with sales staff whose knowledge matches their pay, and you have a recipe for chaos.
We complain bitch and moan about poorly trained sales staff, but at the same time, we want the widget at a brick and mortar store to be only ten cents more than online. We don't value well trained sales staff and good customer service. Some of us say we do, but "we" as a society feed our money to best-buy and wall-marts while many local higher caliber stores suffer and die because the prices are too high (which they have to be to cover the staff, etc). We are voting for crap employees with our wallets.
This extends to Dell online, they are leading the race to the bottom of computer sales. I suspect if you call up PSSC, you'll get somebody who knows something, but expect to pay more.
Sheldon
Best Buy's sales staff are not paid on commission, as far as I'm aware.
True. Most stores do not have commissioned sales staff these days, including Best Buy.
However, I believe that Best Buy people (and Circuit City people to an even greater degree, before CC imploded) are required to meet certain performance targets. I believe one of them is the number of extended warranties they sell. They may also be expected (and even trained) to up-sell from the low-end advertised models. If they don't meet their targets, they may be denied raises or promotions.
Sears, Roebuck salespeople are on commission, at least in the appliances and electronics departments. If anything, I think you get better service from them, but they definitely try to steer you to their highest-margin stuff.
I hope you didn't actually go back there to buy. It would have been better to point out his incompetence, and say "I think I'll do some research online or something and go somewhere else with a specific model numer. Tell your manager that your stupidity as lost the store a sale."
That salespeople lie either deliberately or unintentionally is no news. But why they lie is always the interesting bit.
- Self interest: Here the liar is lying because it will net them some gain. Be it them keeping their job or making more money at the job or whatever. Or even, say when someone like Bill Gates lies, the results of the lie might not be any sort of immediate gain but rather part of a larger plan. (But we can't remove IE from Windows...because...because...)
- Ignorance: The person does not know the answer and is just making shit up. Saying, "I don't know," on the sales floor never looks good.
- Bad training: The person honestly believes what they are saying is true because their training was wrong, be it by design or honest mistake.
- Dissatisfaction: This is a rare occurrence but it is worthy of note. Sometimes there will be a person in a sales job who knows exactly what is going on but out of spite for their employer or some such motivation they are out to mess with people. ('Short timer' sales persons often can do things like this.)
Also keep in mind that none of these reasons are mutually exclusive. So when you get the ignorant salesperson who is highly motivated to keep their job you can really get some whoppers.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
my husband works with a man that used to work for geek squad. He was fired after reporting that fellow geek's were stealing memory and hardware from unsuspecting clients. According to his departure paper, he was fired for not being a team player. Best buy and the geek squad are a bunch of thieves.
Your analogy doesn't really work.
My analogy? What analogy?
I pointed out that other fields have technical jargon as well.
I pointed out that people seem almost prideful of their ignorance in regard to computers. Which strikes me as odd.
And I pointed out that in any technical field you have a choice of either educating yourself or trusting the folks you deal with.
The only bit that was even vaguely analogous was when I pointed out that in any field it is a news story when people are taken advantage of.
How many people, for example, go to the doctor and expect to be told about things like cytokine storms or acetylsalicylic acid? To most people, these terms are just as meaningless as gigahertz or terabytes, if not more so. The doctor is paid so that they don't have to know these things. Part of his job is to translate these terms into things a layman can understand.
All very true.
But that doesn't change the fact that you have to either educate yourself, or trust that your doctor knows what they're talking about.
And it is still news if some doctor has been misleading patients.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
I've worked in retail selling computers for two years now, and i've seen quite a few ignorant people selling computers in my day.
The biggest problem I see is that the associates who usually know the most about computers (myself included) are the worst at the retail side of computers. I.E. making yourself clear to the customer, figuring out what they want/need, etc.
The associates who get the most accessories, services, and compliments are the personable ones, your knowledge is really secondary and can even sometimes hamper your sales ability. I find myself having to use gross exaggerations and generalisations to be able to get customers to understand what i'm talking about (a multi-core processor is like a multi-lane highway...)
Retail has never been about your product knowledge, its about your personality. As long as you know more then the customer (which is so so very little...) they think you are a computer expert. There are very few times in a work day I have to actually think about what i'm saying, its always the same responses and the same questions. I don't even remember the last time I talked to someone who knew what a front side bus was (can't people understand there is more to a processor then just the clock speed?).
Doesn't matter what industry your talking about, welcome to retail.
The mobile section is actually only half Best Buy, and half Carphone Warehouse. They work on a different bonus structure and different power structure than the rest of the store, which the Mobile Manager reporting directly to a district manager and skipping the General Manager of the store, unlike every other dept.
I have no idea what you think you're talking about, but that is absolutely not true. Mobile is treated just like every other dept in the Best Buy stores. The only that is any different at all is the Magnolia sections, which work off of commission.
Carphone Warehouse is a European company. They announced a merger with Best Buy in May. Your info may be either out of date or country specific.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
>>>Somehow in the process of installing Windows--an arduous task that involves the opening of the DVD drive--they had managed to open the case, unscrew the hard drive from the case, and then bust it up enough that it took over 24 hours for Windows to finish installing.
>>>
They probably got confused when they saw Linux.
I think I would file fraud charges against this company. If they are doing that to your grandma, just imagine who else they are screwing.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Not that they would be trained in any specific area, although the burned lap response is quite impressive (sounds like a retail worker chinese whisper to me). It's a supermarket - the consumer does the research. It's not a specialist retailer who should know the answers and find the device ideal for you, but at a higher price.
In the investigation they even found some Dell outlets were selling computers to pimps and prostitutes, even after they explained that they were going to use the computers to keep track of illegal alien prostitutes.
Wow, what a revelation! Dell has some sales people who don't know everything about their products, are not technical experts or use "tricks" to close sales! Revelation!
Welcome to the real world.
This isn't anything new and this kind of thing occurs everywhere. I could call HP, Lenovo, Walmart, etc etc and have the same kind of thing happen. Dell has thousands of sales people on the phone.
I'm not saying it's right, it's not "right" to make mistakes or mislead, but I really don't think this is some kind of "omg EXPOSED" news story.
Wattage. Voltage. Its just numbers on the box, man. You shouldn't be so picky, God, I hate these customers. Oh well, time to go on break and smoke a fatty behind the store with Tim from stereos.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
We all talk about the features that a computer has. That's wrong, the users don't care, they want to know how it will improve their lives: make things easier, let them do things cheaper or faster or better. So instead of a salesperson saying "this computer has a 1 terabyte hard drive and a quad core I7 processor" and expecting the victim^H^H^H^H^H^Hcustomer to understand how that helps them, we should know what their goals are and explain what model will best suit them. Even a car salesperson can do that (though soe might choose not to, they could if it pleased them.)
Plus all this garbage about compatibility just shows what an immature industry we have. We're at the same point the car (american: automobile) industry was at when they were still trying to decide whether to have a steering wheel, and which position the various pedals and levers should be in.
Most industries: medicine, law, engineering etc. use jargon as a way of excluding the general public. It acts as a barrier to entry for their arcane knowledge and practices - thus preserving jobs and keeping fees high. That only works when an industry regulates it's own people with professional qualifications, guilds that enforce standards and legal obligations that they have to comply with. When you're trying to sell commodity goods at knock-down prices; especially when customers don't actually need to buy them, this doesn't work. They just spend their money on beer, or something else.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
The multiple partition thing really grinds my gears. There is no reason to make multiple partitions on a single drive. There are lots of myths floating around which are based on nonsense.
Myth 1. Seperate partitions will make your system faster
Bullshit, the hard drive will be thrashing even more trying to get to the swap space that's on a partition that's at the edge of the platter.
Myth 2. Separate partitions will make your system more reliable
Bullshit, if the hard drive crashes the whole thing is gone. If you get a destructive virus all your files will be affected.
Myth 3. You can upgrade hard drive easier if you have data in a separate partition
Bullshit, I've upgraded many computer hard drives by simply copying the single partition to the new bigger hard drive and expanding it to fill the new drive. Takes only a few clicks. How do you idiots upgrade hard drive? By reinstalling the whole operating system and files?
Myth 4. Separate partitions are less likely to get fragmented
Bullshit, the separate partitions means it's already in two giant fragments that can't ever be defragmented.
Myth 5. I have to use separate partitions because I really like having data on D: and other crap on C:
Bullshit, use subst instead.
Myth 6. You can reinstall windows (or upgrade windows) easier if you have data in a separate partition
Bullshit, this is only true if you're idiotic enough to actually put all your data into random folders on the main drive. If you have a propensity to place your mp3 files in "c:\program files\" and your p0rn into "c:\windows\system32" then you have other problems and shouldn't be using a computer. All your data files on a Windows XP machine should be in "c:\documents and settings\username\", that's it.
The truth is, if you have partitions C: and D:, it is very likely that you'll run out of space on one partition when you have plenty space on the other, then what? You'll have to resize your partitions or get a new hard drive. What a waste of time.
The whole multiple partitions on a single drive was the product of people trying to find some advantages to the shortcomings of FAT where 512MB was the reasonable limit for a partition. Sure you could do a 2GB partition but the 32kB slack space per file would suck up a quarter of the drive. So people resorted to doing multiple 512MB partitions, one for apps, one for data, one for p0rn, etc, avoiding the slack space problem. FAT was all we had back then, but there's no reason to keep doing this in NTFS or any other semi-competent file system. Get over it already!
I've heard it all, people go through great lengths to defend their multiple partitions idea because they were convinced by someone 15 years ago that it's a good idea (it was back then, but not anymore) and they can't accept that things change. Now they're just zealots who have no clue about what they're talking about. The multiple partitions died in the 90's. As the New York Times headline from December 31st 1999 puts it best: "MULTIPLE PARTITIONS ARE A THING OF THE PAST"
Years ago, when to walk into a store and buy a computer meant you were going to drop at least $1200....probably closer to $2000, having someone to walk you through the buying process seemed pretty natural. Computers were high ticket items. You probably wanted to make sure you were getting the most for your money.
Nowadays, when it is actually pretty silly for an average user to spend more than $400 on a desktop or $600 on a laptop (TOPS) for everyday use, how necessary are "Sales Staff"? At what price point will places say screw it and just toss the stuff out on the shelves like coffee makers and toaster ovens?
Depends by "questionable", I've had many bottom-line computers keep chugging right along while I've had high-end systems fail quicker. In fact, I prefer buying the cheaper hardware because there is usually less proprietary crap and components are usually a lot easier to swap out.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
They equipped her, someone whose most intensive task is copying photos off of a camera, with a quad core desktop with like 4 or 8 GB of RAM.
So they were getting her ready for doing the same task on Windows 7? I would thank them.
Same here, and the worst part is, my dad was a CAR SALESMAN for 25 years (both new and used). You'd think he could recognize the smell of bullshit.
Don't you realize how our senses work? For the most part they pick out contrasts. This is why camouflage works. It's also why you can walk into the kitchen on a cool day, and know where the stove is, just by the radiated heat. If however, the room was on fire, that trick wouldn't work.
In other words. A used car salesman's BS detector is so saturated with internally generated noise that he has little chance of ever detecting BS around him.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
I happened to be over my gramma's house when a window sales guy was there, so I sat in. He was pushing very hard on a price, about $4000 for all windows in the house (was about 20 years ago), but he'd "knock off a thousand" if she signed right that instant.
I pointed out how an honest organization would be capable of knocking off that much tomorrow or the next day, too.
High pressure tactics on old people is an ancient right of dishonor among the fraudulent.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Did you actually format, though?
I think the last time I re-formatted the system partition (on my primary comp) was in 1998. That was about the time I figured out that there's absolutely no need to format the drive when you can simply install windows into a different folder, or rename the old folder(s) before you do the install. I've run the gamut from win9x to win2k, XP, Vista, and now Windows 7, without ever bothering to reformat my system partition.
As for your main point - yeah, I haven't had to reinstall an OS due to performance issues since win2k. The "format once a year" nonsense seems to have become a widely accepted urban legend.
Exactly. I knew this guy who owned a car dealership (this was before all the American car companies started failing and demanding taxpayer funds) who had about 10 Sony Vaio laptops (between him and his family of 5) over about 3 years. And several high-end HP desktops. The guy didn't need them, he replaced them because they "broke" by broke they just started going "slow" and he in all of his wisdom thought that that was simply going obsolete and making them slow. Of course the guy didn't bother getting a decent enough virus protection or bother scanning his machines... Because the 30 day free trial of Norton is enough protection for anyone, right? Of course this was also when getting Linux to work on a Vaio required black magic, so basically the guy kept spending money every 6 months for computers he didn't need. The guy's computer needs were simply A) Browsing the web B) Checking stocks C) E-mail. A basic, cheap, low-end laptop could have worked just fine and the guy would have had $10,000 or more still in his pocket.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The problem is not these clueless idiots working in these corporations. It's the braindead HR people that hire these people to fulfill these positions. My beef is clearly and squarely with HR, they're obviously not doing a good enough job of filtering out the clueless from the clued up. If HR *were* doing their job properly then we would be working in a wonderful environment.
-Zero Tolerance for Zero Intelligence-
Having installed XP over Linux a few times, I can tell you that it's little more than deleting everything in the installer. It's definitely not more confusing than installing it on a blank slate or an old Windows installation. If they couldn't manage to wipe it and move on, there's something wrong.
Yeah my sister got a virus on her new PC and brought it to the Geek Squad. They told her she needed her hard drive wiped, but she had already spoken to me and I told her to hand them this piece of paper with the name of the virus on it- and for them to get the proper removal instructions and clean it off- no formatting the HD! (I didn't have time to do it).
They came back to her afterwards and said "Gee, that was easier than we though it would be!". *face palm*
I used to work at an office store doing printing and copy work, sometimes a little graphic design, photos etc. When I had nothing to do at my counter I would wander the store and talk to people. I'm a horrible salesmen, and my managers know it, because I don't try to push the expensive crap. I tell them what they need and the cheapest way to do it. Often times I've sent people out of the store with a notecard giving instructions on how to find some opensource app, especially if it is something not stocked in store. Printers can be pretty fun to sale, because most people really have no idea the difference between inkjet and laser (hint, its in the name) and most of what I do "selling" is really giving a tutorial on the technical functions and options available. Rarely do I try and push any particular model, although I tend to steer towards HP units.
:D
Selling computers on the other hand, SUCKS. There really isnt much of a valid selling point to a "better" computer to most consumers. Rule of thumb, if you have to ask what one is the best, you dont need that one. The only things I really talk about are screen size, weight, hard drive size, and battery. Other than that, any computer is going to work for most people just as good as any other. They aren't going to fill their 500gb hard drive, even if they ask how many photos they can put on it. They aren't going to tax the 2.0ghz dual core, even if they ask if it is fast. 3gb ram is plenty unless you are going to be gaming. Yet I still have people who are worried about if it is a good deal (another hint, you are in a RETAIL store buying a computer. Its not a good deal.) What they do with it after they take it out of the box affects how fast it is way more than the technical specs on the box. The only thing I try to push are netbooks. I've found customer satisfaction is usually a lot higher with them, because you are only getting what you need and nothing more.
As for BestBuy, we recently had two new hires who came from there. One is our new tech manager and the other does the same stuff I do. Both are really good guys, not the sterotypical geeksquad loosers. I asked them once how in the world they could stand working at BestBuy when they really are geeks, not just wannabes. They both looked at each other, laughed and said in sync "Employee Discount". Turns out, their discount is 5% over stock price on EVERYTHING. That is an amazing deal. They told me about getting $1500 TVs for under $600 and computers for almost nothing.
To sweeten that, their standard policy is like a 60 day probation period after hire before you get the discount. Not a bad idea all considering. However, that probation doesn't apply to seasonal workers, they get it from day 1. If you can take the abuse, not a bad idea to swing over for a few weeks/months, get a seasonal christmas job, load up with everything you wanted to buy all year, then after Christmas you're done
The BIOS was probably not set up to check the optical drive for bootable media first. So they insert the CD, boot up and stare at GRUB. Given what I heard about those guys, it probably didn't immediately occur to them that the bootable media order is not fixed and so they decide it must be a hardware problem. They probably tried to hotplug the hard drive before ever checking the BIOS.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
You also can't be fired when you're trying to report a crime (theft of customer property). That's why I mentioned the whistle blower law that's supposed to protect employees when they report illegal acts performed by a company.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Several years ago, I was working in computer repair at a locally owned business "competing" with the Geek Squad and a few others. And by "competing", I mean we were the place people came to get their computers fixed after the Geek Squad fucked them up even more.
During my time working there, I had written several custom diagnostic tools, and eventually a handy front end for them so we could have a single disc with most of what we used daily on it. The front end was configurable to some degree, so we could add new tools without having to recompile the front end as well. Unfortunately, as tends to happen, periodically some of these discs would get left in a CD-ROM drive when a computer went back out.
A few months after I originally created it, we got a computer in from someone who had recently taken it to the Geek Squad. In their CD-ROM drive was a utility disc from there. Upon further investigation, it was a CD running my front end that had been slightly modified to make it look like their own software. In one part of the program that doesn't get used frequently, it even still had the name of the company I worked for. So, as many others have said, they really are thieves.
This will undo some mods I've made on this topic, but oh well. Ask a linux geek, online, or at LUGs http://www.linux.org/groups/ Most linux people know hardware due to having to figure out how to get stuff to work, and what scams people try. They may try to "upsell" you to linux, but if you say you're fixing a gaming rig or somesuch, they'll help out ;)
Besides, most computer savvy people I know like to help people out, as long as it isn't a long term commitment. Most of us have figured it out on our own (best way to learn). I'll help as long as it doesn't take too much of my time. And all bets are off if it's a pretty girl :)
(disclaimer: married to female geek)
Just do what we all do, Scroogle it!
Failing that, don't authorise any repairs until you have asked (us?) someone on IRC if the proposed fix sounds right.
Pro tip: Use Linux and people on IRC will be falling over themselves to diagnose your problem. We love to help.
Small caveat: Free advice is worth what you pay for it.
Do not meddle in the affairs of geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger
Yes, it would be absolutely awesome if he did, but it's shit he doesn't need
No, NO!
...you luddite. !
Sounds completely cool to me!
He could very well be on his way to a Beowulf cluster! Don'r discourage this behaviour!
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Extracting sunbeams from
A used car salesman knew about cars, knew what to hide and what to talk about. The way it works for computer retail sales is quite simple, you see, there are quite a few people who are very knowledgeable about and understand computers, they of course need to be paid quite well and in fact they need to be paid even more to have to work in ugh 'retail sales' as for that group it is a very unpopular segment of the employment market. On the other hand you have a whole group of people that work the counter at junk food outlets, they are very cheap, minimum wage in fact, they will say exactly what they are told to say and sell exactly what they are told to sell, they neither know or understand computers but they are cheap and thus more 'profitable', so smile, be polite, say what you are told to say, make everything else up and try to survive for as long as you can before ending about back behind some fast food sales counter.
Quite some number of years back most computer retail outlets simply sacked their expensive staff and hired new staff for about a third of the prior wage about the same time as computers shifted from technical market to consumer market.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I recently decided to try and validate my years of experience on computers, by taking some courses and getting some proof that I know what I know. But there is a maze of options out there and I needed some help from someone who understood all the options. So I applied to a company called Skills Train (amongst others) for some information on what they could offer in the way of distance learning. I first received a phone call from a sexy sounding woman, whose soothing voice promised me that they were sure they could help, and that they would have an expert call round to my house and discuss the options in person. The alarm bells started ringing right there. But I accepted her offer to see where it would lead.
The next day while driving, I received another phone call, this time from the expert that was assigned to my case. He proceeded to embark on a lengthy sales pitch about the different options they offered, even though I said I was driving and could he call back. He was trying to enrol me on a course as a computer technician, something that I was doing as a business 10 years ago, and for which there is very little market these days, at least not if you want to make a living. I told him I wasn't interested, and was there anything else that was more knowledge based rather than practical. So he then tried to get me interested in web design, something I was also doing commercially 10 years ago. I let him blabber on because it became truly amazing the things I didn't know about computers.
Apparently, HTML (according to this "expert") stands for Hyper Text Multi Lingual ! I laughed and ignored him. He then tried to tell me about a more complex course where if I passed, I could earn 100k working for the National Health Service. Apparently the NHS uses software called SQ and L which only runs on Cisco servers ! At this point I was in danger of crashing, so I told him to put his proposals in the post, and hung up.
Of course, they wanted 1000s of pounds for each of these courses, which could be paid back in "easy instalments" and they could even help find me a job afterwards ! So I am slightly perturbed when ever I see one of their TV ads where they promise the earth to people- earn while you learn - utter shite. If the guy selling the stuff can't even get his shit right, how good are the courses going to be ? He even told me that he had done the web design course and had ended up working for the training company. It saddens me to realise that there are probably many many people enrolled in their stupid schemes, who went there to learn, and are being made to pay for useless dreck.
On another occasion, I applied for a training course as an energy consultant, which exist because of government mandates that require all home being sold to have an energy efficiency report available. Apparently there is a desparate need for these consultants, with unlimited earning potential. So I arranged an interview for the next day, and sat back feeling like I was going somewhere. But me being me, I decided to learn as much as I could before I attended the interview. What I discovered on the internet was that not only was this the worst training company in the whole UK, charging the highest fees and responsible for the most malpractice, but also that the market for the consultants is dead, there are probably 3 times the number of consultants needed already trained and they are mostly out of work ! This company is still pushing this course in the job centres and newspapers. I have complained already, but to no avail. As far as the government is concerned, if you are training, you are not unemployed, and therefore you don't show up on their figures. No matter that you will show up there later, now is all that matters.
and into sub-prime mortgage brokering. In part because he couldn't stand all the lying required.
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I make people cables for free and have them return the one they just bought at best buy. It costs me next to nothing, but best buy looses a fortune.