Tales from the Computer Store

[darko31]

Hey guys, this is my first post but i've been lurking for a while and LMFAO at how familiar these stories all sound. I work at a somewhat major computer store in the West Coast. Now, we do not advertise on TV, but only through word of mouth and the newspaper, due to that, i'd always assumed are customers are a little bit brighter since the vast majority who see our adds can read at an eight grade level.

I've also assumed since we don't advertise like Best Buy, the worst of the worst go there and never enter our store.

Oh boy was I wrong......

So I present tales from the computer store:


I had a lady come in and wanted to buy some laptop memory. She asked for the stick of RAM on sale for $40. I looked up the stick in the computer and saw that we didn't have that RAM for $40 or anything comparable. We had what she wanted but it was $80.

I asked her if she saw it in the add. She told me, "No, the guy at Best Buy told me you had it on sale for $40." I told her that he was incorrect that we have it for $80.

She half yelled at me about how far she drove out here, how we should honor the price "the guy at Best Buy" gave her the usual speil you hear from "victim" customers.

I always wondered if she went back to that Best Buy and yelled at the poor kid who thought we had it for $40. I did a little more digging after she left and found that we had desktop RAM matching her specs for $40 and thats probably what the BB kid was thinking of.

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SC: How much is this ink refil kit? (He shows me an ink refil kit of the colors for an HP Print cartridge)

Me: $16.99

SC: How much is that ink refil kit? (Same brand kit, but it includes the black and the color refils)

Me: $21.99

SC: Can I buy the black+color kit for the same price as the color kit?

Me: No

SC: FINE! YOU JUST LOST A SALE! (Slams the product down and storms out like I just insulted his mother)

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SC: I want to exchange my laptop, it is defective. The battery on my $499 laptop only lasts about 100 minutes. My friends battery on his $1500 Thinkpad lasts 6 hours.

I'm not going to go to into it, but lets just say he "resisted" the idea of paying more for a laptop with a better battery.

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Not so much a sucky customer but a smelly customer. I had an older couple who reeked of high hell who shopped in the store once a month or so. When I say reeked, I don't mean skin has been baking in the sun for too many years reeked, I mean lathered themselves in cat poop before heading out reeked. Everytime a customer would pass in their wake, they would recoil and shot them a horrible look. Anyways, the nice thing about them is that they were BIG spenders (at least $500 every time) and I was the only Sales guy willing to put with their stench to get the commision on their sales.

It always baffled me, these guys can afford to come in and drop $500, $1000, or $2000 on computer stuff and can't figure out a simple shower.

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My personal pet peeve. Sometimes on our endcaps we put more than one product. Now to post a price, we print out one of those big 8x11 price sheets and have it clearly marked in BIG BOLD LETTERS: SELECTED ITEMS STARTING AT $2.99

It never fails, someone, everyday, tries to convince me that the $39 item he is holding should be given to him for $2.99. It never fails, that someone comes up to me with the $39 item and asks me, "This is $2.99 right?" It never fails, someone threatens me or the store with legal action, calling it false advertising and telling me all about their buddy, who is a lawyer. It never fails, that I have to be called up to the cash register to explain to some idiot why his $39 item is not ringing up at $2.99.

God, I hate those "Select Items starting at" signs.

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What is the difference between DVD+R and DVD-R?

Do I have to say anymore?
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Some more coming soon and I hope to hear yours.

[Phone Jockey]

Wow, sounds like my customers who call in & want cable at some ungodly cheap rate that we don't offer. When I ask where they saw that offer, they say something like, "Well, Rick at OTHER CABLE COMPANY told us that YOU have it for that price." I have to remind them that since Rick doesn't work for our company, he quite possibly have been wrong about that. Jeez...

[Jester]

Don't you love customers who try to bargain with you over the price?

One of my favorites was this girl from Rhode Island who walked into my bar. My hotel bar. My major tourist destination very nice luxury hotel bar. And this girl was shocked that we were charging $4 for a Corona. Which, all things considered, I think is a reasonable and fair price.

HER: "They don't charge that much back in Rhode Island."
ME: "Ma'am, you're not in Rhode Island. You are in a hotel bar in a major tourist destination. Things are gonig to cost more."
HER: "Well, I'm not going to pay $4 for a Corona."
ME: "Well, I sure hope you don't get too thirsty on your vacation, because they don't get much cheaper down here."

And I can't count the number of people who have made "counter offers" when told the price of their drinks. Sorry, folks, the flea market is on the other side of town.

[Tria]

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What is the difference between DVD+R and DVD-R?

Do I have to say anymore?
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I dunno what the difference is....

[CanadaGirl]

I dunno what the difference is....

The Standards Differences

1) The DVD-R (pronounced "DVD dash R") and -RW media formats are officially approved by the standards group DVD Forum. The DVD Forum was founded by Mitsubishi, Sony, Hitachi, and Time Warner, so it has tremendous industry support for its technical standards.


2) DVD+R ("DVD plus” R) and +RW formats are not approved by the DVD Forum standards group, but are instead supported by the DVD+RW Alliance. The DVD+RW Alliance is supported by Sony, Yamaha, Philips, Dell, and JP, so it also has tremendous industry support for its technical standards. Note that Sony supports both organizations.

The Functional Differences

The main functional differences between DVD-R and DVD+R are:
1) the DVD recorder's built-in defects management,
2) the way the records format and rewrite DVDs,
3) the price.

[lordlundar]

In other words, not enough to worry about if you have anything but a first-gen DVD writer (they live this long?)

Honestly, the bulk of the difference is who gets the royalties for them.

Too bad our IPG staff lie to the customers and tell them the +R is a newer, advanced format and is a lot faster. (depends on the drive braniac!)

[laughingfuzzball]

The biggest problem I have explaining the +/- thing to people is that they don't understand that two things can be different without one being universally better in some way that can be explained within four words.

[Comp_geek]

3) the price.

At least in my store the prices are the same for both + and -. From what I remember reading about the differences a while back, with a DVD+ you don't have to perform the "closing" operation while with the DVD- you do. I'm not sure how this affects their ability to work on different machines, but it does take some time of recording :D

[Lehk]

At least in my store the prices are the same for both + and -. From what I remember reading about the differences a while back, with a DVD+ you don't have to perform the "closing" operation while with the DVD- you do. I'm not sure how this affects their ability to work on different machines, but it does take some time of recording :D
i know that old sony DVD players will only read +R and on the CD side will read CDRW but not CDR

[Seanette]

I dunno what the difference is.... [re: R- vs. R+ DVDs]
I don't really understand it either, even after reading this thread, which is why I bought a DVD-RW drive that can handle either one. :D

[Clintmax]

Sorry, folks, the flea market is on the other side of town.

I have wanted to say this to SC's for so many years! :mad: They act like I'M the one who sets the price and not corporate. I just wonder how they'd react if I DID tell them that when they were trying to haggle with on the price.:roll:

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

I always wondered if she went back to that Best Buy and yelled at the poor kid who thought we had it for $40. I did a little more digging after she left and found that we had desktop RAM matching her specs for $40 and thats probably what the BB kid was thinking of.

Been there...
"Yes, we have that size of ram in the store for $40, but it's for desktops. The ones for Laptops are twice the price...sorry. Besides, the guy at Best Buy doesn't work here so he is not privy to our inventory. Sorry."


SC: Can I buy the black+color kit for the same price as the color kit?
Me: No
SC: FINE! YOU JUST LOST A SALE! (Slams the product down and storms out like I just insulted his mother)


Done that.
"This is the price on the box. It cannot be changed. It reflects our cost of the item plus a markup that covers the operation costs of the store (utilities, rent, employee wages, etc). Without that markup we could no longer stay in business and as such you would have to drive another 20 miles (burning $3.00 in gas) just so you could save $0.25 on the item."


SC: I want to exchange my laptop, it is defective. The battery on my $499 laptop only lasts about 100 minutes. My friends battery on his $1500 Thinkpad lasts 6 hours.

Bought the T-Shirt
"It is not defective, the battery life is clearly marked on the price/feature sheet on the front of the display model. If it was insufficient for your needs then why did you buy it?"

It always baffled me, these guys can afford to come in and drop $500, $1000, or $2000 on computer stuff and can't figure out a simple shower.

I lucked out and dodged that bullet so far.

What is the difference between DVD+R and DVD-R?

Questions like that I don't mind. After all there some people are just not as computer savvy as we techies are. I pop off a quicky explaination that uses few tech-related words (which I've found only confuses them more) and they are happy that they learned something.

For that question I'd use something like "The DVD industry never agreed on a format and so there are 5 formats to confound and confuse us. If you burn a CD you can make 30 copies, give it out to 30 people and expect that at least 28 of them will get it working with no problems. But since there are 5 formats, it's a bit of a crap shoot. Some of the 30 need -R, others only have players that can read +RW...etc. It's a real pain."

Then I'd look up their DVD player and find out what format it can read, show them how they can look it up themselves, and sell them a 5 format burner so they an write to everything.

Mongo

[Moirae]

Actually, I've been wondering that myself. When they complain about the price, what do they honestly think I can do about it? I'm just a tech at a call center, corporate sets everything else.

[protege]

When they complain about the price, what do they honestly think I can do about it? I'm just a tech at a call center, corporate sets everything else.

I can never figure that one out either. I mean, if the price is just "too high," why don't they go somewhere else :confused:

[darko31]

A lady, her husband, and her teenage son start playing on the xbox360 display and procede to turn the volume up full blast. It was loud that I couldn't hear myself think when answering the question of a nice customer five isles away. I went over there and turned it back down and the mother had the gal to say, "They wouldn't turn the volume down at Best Buy! We were thinking of buying the xbox here, now we will go somewhere else that will let us expereince the full xbox 360 effect. (to her husband) Circuit City closes at ten, we can go play there."

I was more than happy to let them go and "risk" loosing the $400 sale (I work on commision) and go back to helping my nice customer with her $20 sale.

Of course they would have never bought the system, after all, if they were that interested they would have just bought from Best Buy when they went before and blasted the volume there.

Heck, I wouldn't be suprised if they were asked to leave Best Buy for spending all day and night playing on the game machine.

Even working on commision, I will be totally honest and move heaven and earth to help a nice person with a $20 sale and be a total dick and flat out lie (especially about warrenty coverage) to a big spending customer who is an ass.

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I had another lady come in today and ask me if we had keyboard covers. I said no. She asked me why not. I told her because we do not carry them. She told me that EVERYONE else has them, and we should have them also. I asked her why doesn't she just buy a cover from another store?

That made her mad. Needless to say she will "never shop here again."

[Depot Denizen]

At the campus computer store/service center I work at, I try to dissuede people from buying the laptops from Staples/Best Buy/Circuit City/etc for their son/daughter. You do get what you pay for, and you want a computer that's going to last for the better part of four years in a college environment. Our comps aren't cheap, mind you, but they do come loaded with the better warranty. Dell has the 3-year accident-protection and parts/labor warranty, Apple has the 3-year parts/labor warranty, and Gateway (blech) has the 4-year accident-protection and parts/labor warranty. And still people buy the $700 HP from Staples that has the limited warranty. Sorry, but we can't touch anything except what we sell.

I notice that most of the parents get extremely irate when we can't do any hardware repair on the el-cheapo deluxe that they got their kid. Or they argue about price. Or they complain about not getting it shipped home (despite the fact we allow it for the first month).

[RecoveringKinkoid]

I have wanted to say this to SC's for so many years! :mad: They act like I'M the one who sets the price and not corporate. I just wonder how they'd react if I DID tell them that when they were trying to haggle with on the price.:roll:

I actually did tell a guy once that the Gospel Mission (homeless shelter a couple blocks down) was down the street and maybe he was confusing us with them. He was suggesting his order should be free for whatever reason and trying to get out of paying.

[Moirae]

Well, according to alot of the customers I talk to "Your company has a monopoly". Yeah well, welcome to the American economy.

[lordlundar]

A lady, her husband, and her teenage son start playing on the xbox360 display and procede to turn the volume up full blast. It was loud that I couldn't hear myself think when answering the question of a nice customer five isles away. I went over there and turned it back down and the mother had the gal to say, "They wouldn't turn the volume down at Best Buy! We were thinking of buying the xbox here, now we will go somewhere else that will let us expereince the full xbox 360 effect. (to her husband) Circuit City closes at ten, we can go play there."

Hehe! the 360 displays we have came with a special LCD TV. Only the remote operates it. They can try to crank it all they want.

We also had to move the Nintendo and Sony ones, so I took the opportunity to "forget" to plug in the audio.:devil:

Besides, at that price, commision is zip.

[Broomjockey]

Huh. I never knew their was a difference between +/-. I know R/RW differences. Nice to learn something new! :)

[Dreamstalker]

I went over there and turned it back down and the mother had the gal to say, "They wouldn't turn the volume down at Best Buy! We were thinking of buying the xbox here, now we will go somewhere else that will let us expereince the full xbox 360 effect."

ZOMG her XBox experience was ruined!!!111
:p
*runsawayveryfast*