Is it wrong of me to tease? (PC Store experience)

saintdefender

saintdefender

saintdefender

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was at the shopping center and just for the hell of it, I popped into a high street PC retailer with the mrs, started having a look at what desktops they have to offer see if they have improved them since last time I was there, and well no they haven't simply put lol still cheap lousy parts.

The story goes is that as I was looking at this one PC. it was a pentium E5400 with an intel graphics accelerator and 3GB of DDR3. Now as I was looking, a store clerk came up to me, right up in my face and said your looking at one of our top models, are you interested? As you can imagine my reaction when he said 'top model', but instead of laughing and leaving i decided to.. tease a little. I asked him about the machine, whats so top about it, and he said it has an E5400 its one of the latest processors can run all the games you could ever want. I asked for a joke, how does this compare with I5 and I7 processors, he replies they are about the same only difference is they are "ran at a slightly higher setting". He also told me the graphics card is also one of the best out there, I asked him is it dedicated, he replied yes... of course he would.

Anyway, this went on for a while, I would nod along and agree to what he was saying and then every so often come out with a line he would have no idea about such as whats the latency on the Ram or what brand is the motherboard, overall this was about a 10 minute chat lol

Now I could not believe the people they employ, they have 0 knowledge about PCS accept this is good, this is fast and this is the best. Its embarrassing, whenever a member of my family or friend goes down PC world to look for some PCS im sure you know my exact response? Tell me your price i'll spec one for ya and build it. I do NOT encourage ANYONE to go down to this high street PC retailer , and the customers these places are attracting are people who want to know if a certain computer is any good before buying and the store will just tell em exactly what they wanna hear, its out of order if im honest lol, but not a lot we can do.

Anyway just wanted to share this story, I was very disappointed when this event occurred because all I wanted to do was just see if they actually sell decent stuff now.
 
To be fair. They are salesman at the end of the day. Not I.T technicians. "the shop which you mentioned" sells a lot more than just PCs. They also sell cameras, tablets, routers, tellies, laptops, printers, blu ray players.

To find an expert in all these fields or even someone with a good knowledge of all the products and how they work. I don't think they would be standing on a shop floor putting up with awkward know it all customers all day... do you?

While I don't condone the salesman blatantly lying about the product. He's doing his job... selling you a PC. 90% of their computers are fine for the general numpty that wants to use facebook and talk to there mates. I hardly think the woman next door who works in Asda needs to know what latency the RAM is or what motherboard is in the PC.

People don't want to know this, nor do they care... therefor the salesman doesn't need to know either.

You wouldn't walk into a car dealership and start quizzing the salesman on the torque or the weight/power ratio of the car you are about to buy, or what it's like to change a clutch on it.... that's what the mechanics are for! It's no different at these stores.

You don't go into a supermarket and quiz the shelf stacker if she knows how to make a bourguignon sauce with the ingredients on the shelf.

Anyway... I bet your Mrs must love you, subjecting her to 10 minutes of BS when she could have been shopping for shoes :)

P.S. To answer your original question in the thread title... Yes, very wrong! Get a hobby.
 
totally agree with you, i cant believe they are still in business, the tend to employ idiots that know little about pc's yet they then call them experts.... and as you say the sales staff always lie to customers (i thought watch dog would have had a good go at them by now). They clearly work on the model that if they price it very high people will assume it is good, but you can generally buy better from OCuk for half the price. we live in a country where the say we "protect the week" yet some people do nothing to protect the less educated (or plain stupid)....
I have wanted to see high street PC retailer taken down a peg or to for a long time and shown for the con men that they are.... unfortunately i don't think it will ever happen...
 
If you ask me you are right to a certain respect, They do not call themselves experts however just salesman/woman, if you have a specific question go talk to the Tech guys that are normally in the corner of the shop near the customer service counter in their own little room mostly fixing some PC's or performing upgrades, you have to remember that 99% of all high street PC retailers have now merged in with Currys so they need to have limited knowledge in a wide number of products, IE brown good, whitegoods, so to have experts that know everything in all these area's is not going to happen.

But I do believe that they should know the basics for Mr Joe Bloggs when he is in the shop there is always going to be one person that wants exact details latency and such,

The job of the salesman/woman is to make the customer feel happy and confident about the product they are about to buy...

But if you insist on they knowing everything about everything, maybe we should get Stulid working in there :P
 
I think it is fine them not being experts or not even knowing much about PC's the real issue is if they sell something that is not fit for purpose or misrepresent it.
 
Buchanan0204 said:
You wouldn't walk into a car dealership and start quizzing the salesman on the torque or the weight/power ratio of the car you are about to buy, or what it's like to change a clutch on it....
Click to expand...

Want a bet?

More to the point, my local dealer's sales staff would answer correctly, and if they did not know, in my experience, they have not minded finding somebody who does.

The Purple shirt brigade serve the uneducated masses and do very well from it, as the large stores & full car parks sadly demonstrate.

If my other half wants to look at shoes, fine, I'll happily go & wind up the local PC store staff and leave her to it.

Its not just the Purple shirt brigade either, pay peanuts get monkeys & all that.
 
This has just reminded me of my brothers recent experience of high strret PC retailer . Went in to buy a fairly standard laptop to use for internet, office etc. They knew which one they wanted, they didn't need anything else just the laptop. The salesman says yes no problem lets just take a seat here please... okay we have the laptop why do we need to take a seat? Where-upon the salesman goes on about how they must have internet security at only £'s. No we don't need it just the laptop thank you. Answer... no.

To cut a long story short the salesman literally refused to sell the laptop without them paying for security software, even going through the 'well I'll check with my manager' etc. Not surprising they told him to stick the laptop went next door to Curry's. Curry's didn't have it in stock so they simply went into high street PC retailer took the laptop off the previously salesman and sold it to my brother.
 
You have the benefit and wisdom of being an enthusiast in a very niche market place and as already said, they are just sales people. The general consumer just needs a PC they can turn on and works. I'm the same with cars, i don't care what's under the bonnet, I just need to know I can get from A to B safely and that's the extend of my car knowledge.

Personally, I find pedantic that anyone would purposely go into the shop and scrutinise such personnel in those circumstances.

Please note - just a reminder that the mentioning of competitors is against the rules.. Thank you
 
Admiral Huddy said:
You have the benefit and wisdom of being an enthusiast in a very niche market place and as already said, they are just sales people. The general consumer just needs a PC they can turn on and works. I'm the same with cars, i don't care what's under the bonnet, I just need to know I can get from A to B safely and that's the extend of my car knowledge.

Personally, I find pedantic that anyone would purposely go into the shop and scrutinise such personnel in those circumstances.

Please note - just a reminder that the mentioning of competitors is against the rules.. Thank you
Click to expand...

Exactly.
 
Admiral Huddy said:
You have the benefit and wisdom of being an enthusiast in a very niche market place and as already said, they are just sales people. The general consumer just needs a PC they can turn on and works. I'm the same with cars, i don't care what's under the bonnet, I just need to know I can get from A to B safely and that's the extend of my car knowledge.

Personally, I find pedantic that anyone would purposely go into the shop and scrutinise such personnel in those circumstances.

Please note - just a reminder that the mentioning of competitors is against the rules.. Thank you
Click to expand...

Ok, but how does that qualify him to speak total BS? Theres one thing not knowing the ins and outs of a computer/car, but its another just assuming the computer you are selling is 'top of the range' and then selling that to a customer who is maybe after 'top of the range'. At least be honest about it, not tell me that this computer will run all the latest games and is just as powerful as an I7. If he doesn't know, don't say it.
 
I can never understand a sales man who doesn't understand the products he is selling. I encounter this daily. Even car dealerships suffer from this.

e.g. I went out in a test drive in a Polo GTI the other day, my current car is a Polo SE, iasked the women what the extra's were over the SE other than the wheels/engine/gearbox and she was like "errrr". SO useless.
 
saintdefender said:
Ok, but how does that qualify him to speak total BS? Theres one thing not knowing the ins and outs of a computer/car, but its another just assuming the computer you are selling is 'top of the range' and then selling that to a customer who is maybe after 'top of the range'. At least be honest about it, not tell me that this computer will run all the latest games and is just as powerful as an I7. If he doesn't know, don't say it.
Click to expand...

It's called sales pitch, if they went round telling every one it was a outdated 2 year old base unit they wouldn't sell much.
 
saintdefender said:
A sales pitch is mean't to oversell on what the facts are, not lie outright.
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Agree totally. They are mis-selling the product, and if the OP had bought it on the basis of it being able to play games properly, he'd be entitled to a refund.

A sales pitch is one thing, lying to a customer and talking complete BS is another.
 
Also it's worth noting, if these sales staff had an interest in, or knew enough about computers to satisfy you, they would not be working in a hight street store.

They would be working for a specialist store or even higher up within the computer industry.
 
Admiral Huddy said:
You have the benefit and wisdom of being an enthusiast in a very niche market place and as already said, they are just sales people. The general consumer just needs a PC they can turn on and works. I'm the same with cars, i don't care what's under the bonnet, I just need to know I can get from A to B safely and that's the extend of my car knowledge.

Personally, I find pedantic that anyone would purposely go into the shop and scrutinise such personnel in those circumstances.

Please note - just a reminder that the mentioning of competitors is against the rules.. Thank you
Click to expand...

Yes! but you dont expect to go to a car dealer and him tell you its the newest model when its 2 generations behind or that it does 80mpg when it does 40! Whats pedantic.. no OUTRAGEOUS is that they take advantage of people with little or no knowledge to sell them what they can and once the deal is done then they dont care/denie the bs that they spouted!

What if it was your mum/gran/sister that wanted a pc and didnt know anything about them. Went in there and was told it was the best blah blah blah and she bought it. The next week you visited her and she showed you her all singing all dancing new computer that really was worth less than 50% of what she has paid? (And probably paid anothe 30-50% on top of that for extended warranty) Would you be happy with that? or would you be rather mad? and get her to pack it back up and go and have a word?

Yes they are sales people, but they should not lie to people about things like that. When i was selling systems i would never bs anyone because in the end it would come back to bite you in the ass!
 
I've been into 'that' store a few times recently and always ask for someone who has knowledge of [insert product here].......You have to lol at how long it takes to find someone with any product knowledge of anything in there, except how to pick their nose with the other hand in their pocket shuffling their ******, and looking very disinterested.
They really are dross and it surprises me that anyone would defend their methods.
"If you don't know, ask!" That should be their ethos, not the customers.
 
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