Pushy salesmen...gggrrrrr!!!

DoubleCheese

DoubleCheese

DoubleCheese

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Joined
26 Jun 2005
Posts
1,487
So, my mum wants a laptop and we spend a few hours scanning the net for different models. She decided on a competitor, but they can't deliver one for 14-21days....but that PC place has some competitor PC's in stock so we go for a short drive to check them out.
After 20-30 min of browsing the laptops there we spot the 17" laptop and its at a great price of £479 with Norton AV or £449 without. The first sales assistant says they only have one left in stock and its the Pink one, we wanted the Red or Blue. She left and another guy came along and said we have some in stock, all colours infact. Hmmmm...that otehr girl just said you only had oe and it was Pink? No answer....

Can we have a blue please? Sure, then he starts the sales pitch. Do you want the half priced Norton 360?
No thanks, I'll use Avast or Avg. He then starts on a tirade of how useless the free AV's are and that you'll (we'll) end up getting a virus and spending the money on a paid for AV anyway... I'm getting a weired vibe off him now.

He goes on...Do you want the 24hr technical support at £8.99/month? Politely I said no thanks as the hardware is guaranteed for a year anyway and I'll troubleshoot for my mum. He goes off on another 5 minute talk on the pro's of having it. Politely, I declined again.

He goes off to get the laptop and meets us halfway to the tills to pay. He stops short and says, "So why do you want this laptop? Have you seen the other models we have? Do you want to come and have a look at some other models, maybe we can do you a deal on another laptop?"

No thanks, we just want the laptop. At the till, he tried it on again, "I can do you the Technical support and give you the first month free?" You can cancel it......blahblahblah......I almost lost it. Just this laptop here thanks.

Now, I'm aware that he/they are on commission to sell the extra's. That's fine. And I probably could have taken out the Technical support, then cancelled it and done him a favour, but he really didn't do himself any favours with his sales technique. He was relentless and if my mum had been on her own, she'd have been taken for everything she had.

So the upshot of it all is that we ended up with a competitor laptop for £50 less than their site!

/end rant.
 
Yes they're a PITA, which is why I'm usually a lot firmer than you are and a lot sooner too. If they get the definite vibe early on that you are entirely bored by their patter, they usually give in.
 
They probably are told to tell the customer about all the extras available to them, in these times any extra bit of money they can make is important to the survival of companies. Also you might have wanted technical support and then be peeved off when you didnt offer it to you.
 
They are just doing their job, but firmly tell them you are not interested.

Often a lot of these places now also have something that will pop up on the till screen when the barcode is scanned saying "Have you offered this customer the warranty and help deal on this item?"
 
Fishfingers said:
They probably are told to tell the customer about all the extras available to them, in these times any extra bit of money they can make is important to the survival of companies. Also you might have wanted technical support and then be peeved off when you didnt offer it to you.
Click to expand...

That is the main issue if you don't offer and then it breaks customers go off the wall because they were out of warranty, but where I work we always offer warranty but don't push it. I see it that if the customer doesn't want it fine but at the end of the day I have bought it on my computers and it has always been really good to have, and the same on my camera equipment.
 
Agree it is their job to make money, though some do go a bit far sometimes. If someone says they don't want something they shouldn't keep going on about it trying to preasure you into it just to shut them up.
 
If that was me, when he went over the line and didn't stop when he knew that he was being ridiculous, I'd have got to the tills and when he asked me the same question again about the technical support, I'd have told him, "I already answered you, I don't want it, you are annoying me so much you can keep your laptop, I'll buy it somewhere else, you pushed your luck too far, cya later" and then walked out.

If it was the cheapest I'd have come back tomorrow and got it from a different salesman.
 
Kindly tell him to bugger off and if he still presists go else where, its not that hard is it?

KaHn
 
Used to work for the group, I always used my own judgement to decide if it was worth the effort attempting the sell warranties and extras based on what Id learnt about the customer whilst finding the product for them. Id always ask as it was my job, but If i felt from the off that the customer wasn't going to be interested id brush over it very quickly.
If you take the time to build a Rapport with the customer you will have a rough idea of what they want by the end of the day.

I reckon that you got passed on to the assistant manager or head sales guy, due to the girl being new and not confident about selling warranty etc. Most of these type's push with every customer and never know when to give in.
 
You should have tried phoning Dell direct and haggling them down. I did this with my Vostro and saved a fair bit, and got a few nice extras included.
 
DoubleCheese said:
Now, I'm aware that he/they are on commission to sell the extra's. That's fine. And I probably could have taken out the Technical support, then cancelled it and done him a favour, but he really didn't do himself any favours with his sales technique. He was relentless and if my mum had been on her own, she'd have been taken for everything she had.
Click to expand...

Actually they're not on commission, they just have targets to meet.
 
Id write a letter of complaint... when I worked there they made a big fuss of the way that they should sell things. There was this new scheme where we had to ask the customer what they wanted rather than forcing it on them.
 
As I said, I know its his job to offer these extras and he earns his commission from selling them, that's not the problem. It was his relentless approach to selling them to me that really got to me and a lesser willed person would have wilted and bought everything he offered.

I also wonder whether the first female assistant was trying it on too. She clearly saw we were after one, and then made the usual " we only have one left in stock" line but then followed it up with the fatal remark that it was Pink, assuming my mum would want a pink one. She didn't!! At that point we were actually gutted and contemplating leaving to try another shop nearby. Clearly desperate sales tactics.
 
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