Too rich a customer

[earl colby pottinger]

Has anyone else had to deal with a customer with too much money, a sales person looking at a fat commission and being asked for an honest opinion on what to sell them?

Worse, having to deal with the same customer years later in the same situation?

While I am no longer a computer tech, I worked in the business since 1979 (Yes, I am old).

First time I meet the customer I knew this would be trouble, I was young, foolish and shy. But when someone walks into your store in the middle of July (40C in the shade) wearing a full length mink coat and enough rings with big gems that they could replace a knuckle-duster - even I knew we were in trouble.

This woman wanted a SuperPet for her 10 year 'genius son. The son wanted a VIC-20 for all the games his friends were playing. Problem, except for some educational games written in Basic the SuperPet can not run programs written for the VIC. Both the VIC and The SuperPet designs branched out from a common machine The Commodore Pet, but one was designed for home use and gaming, and the other was designed for university course work. Supporting not just 'Basic' and '6809 Assembly' but also 'COBOL', 'APL', 'PASCAL' and FORTRAN' checkout http://www.commodore.ca/gallery/broc...t/SuperPet.htm

The salesman of-course wanted the big sale with the big commission, but he was smart or had been burnt before. He asked both my boss and myself what we thought. We just asked the kid genius a few question. He be lucky if he could find the power switch in less than a minute. This kid was not bright, he just wanted to play games with his friends.

Now the fun began. We tried to sell the woman the VIC-20. She would ask if the SuperPet was the more advance computer. We would say yes, but the SuperPet would not match her son's needs. She insisted that she wanted only the best for her son, and so the wheel turned over and over.

It took an hour but finally she left without buying anything. The salesman by the way sold three to four VIC-20s to walk-in customers during the entire time she was there. When she finally left we talked among ourselves and agreed it was probably a good thing not to have sold the computer since it was clear how stubborn she was, and there would be problems since the SuperPet really was not what her son wanted.

Jump forward 12 years. I am at a different business, and guess who walks in?
Middle of summer - yes.
Mink coat and lots of rings - yes.
Car right outside left running of the A/C? - yes.
Son need computer for university - yes.

I quickly dashed over to my boss and explained what happened in the pass. By this time of-course most people are using PCs. Then he and the salesman did something smart that could not been done in the old store.

They steered her away from the Macs as we were the only repair center in area, and sold her a very expensive Compaq Laptop plus extra batteries, external floppy drive and docking station. Additionally they sold her a manufacturer's direct service contract with Compaq. That is a contract where if something breaks Compaq will mail the customer directly the replacement part and includes labeling to automatically send the bad part back in the same box. That meant except for a broken display we never have to see the customer, better the son did call us about software problems from his university (over 300 kilometers away) and all were of a nature that we could tell him to talk with his university's IT department.

In all I figure this woman paid almost $3000 more on her son's machine than most other parents spent on the computer when sending their children to the same school.

[MadMike]

I would have been about the same age as the son back in '79, so my computer experience doesn't go back quite as far as yours does. I didn't get into them until a couple years later.

I do know what you're talking about, though. Up through most of the 80s, there were many different brands of computers, and almost none of them were compatible with each other. It's so much easier now that you only need to know "PC or Mac?"

[earl colby pottinger]

Real problem

The real problem however was the woman wanted to:

(A) Keep up and surpass the Jones by having the most powerful machine available.

(B) Local schools had standardized to a large extent on Commodore Pets - So of-course she wanted a SuperPet even though neither her son, the school teachers or local TPUG computer group knew how to use the extra features.

(C) She just could not believe that her son was *NOT* a computer whiz. We see that in many parents even today, but most quickly adjust what they think their kids need once they see a $5000 sticker price.

At the first store we knew what she wanted to buy could not do what the kid wanted - period.

At the second store, the computer could do the job - she just paid too much - but she would have walked if we tried to save her money!


Some people are just too rich for their own good ... they spend just to show that they can spend.

[FritzCat]

So how much were those machines back in the day?

[auntiem]

I get this too sometimes. Most of my well off clients are practical and spend money when it is worth it - as a treat since they worked so hard for the money. A few other fall into this lady's catagory - they want the bragging rights to spending that much money.
For example:
The former will book a longer stay in the Cook Islands at a nice place. The later will insist on booking an over the water bungalow in Tahiti for three times the price and less time, regardless of any imput I have.
The ones that drive me really crazy are the people who insist on staying at the most expensive/exclusive resort even when they know it isn't a good match for them.

[Kiwi]

thats nouveau riche, you can usually tell, they are SO tacky

the truely wealthy dont usually stand out from the crowd because, you dont ever see them, they dont "hang out" in the same places that we common folk do.

[bigjimaz]

The very first computer I ever used was a Texas Instruments TI99/4A which was highly advanced for it's time. Check out the specs:


Released: June 1981
Price: US$525 (without monitor)
CPU: TI TMS9900, 3MHz
Memory: 16K RAM, 26K ROM
Display: Video via an RF modulator
32 characters by 24 lines text
192 X 256, 16 color graphics
Ports: ROM cartridge (on front)
Data storage cassette
Audio/Video output
Joystick input
CPU bus expansion
Peripherals: Speech Synthesizer
Peripheral Expansion Box
Data storage cassette
300 baud modem
OS: ROM BASIC

I remember hating it back then, if for no better reason that this computer stuff was pretty new to me. But what do you want to bet that if Mrs. GotRocks was in the market for a computer back then, this is the one she would get, but still not know how to operate?

[earl colby pottinger]

Pricing

So how much were those machines back in the day?

Honestly, I don't remember but if you really want I can check my old Byte Magazines.

Just guessing, a SuperPet was around $2000. But this woman instead of getting the external 4040 floppy drive or the single 8050 drive would had insisted on the top of the line twin drive, dual sided 8250 was about another $1200. Add in Commodore's best quality printer, and a modem and the IEEE-488 cables at $50 per cable and you over $4000 dollars right there.

I don't remember if she mentioned any extra software, but she could easily waste a few hundred bucks that way too. WordPro and Visicalc were over a hundred bucks each, and she kept insisting her son was a computer genius who needed it all.

[protege]

The very first computer I ever used was a Texas Instruments TI99/4A which was highly advanced for it's time.

I had one of those! It didn't have all the add-ons though. IIRC, we got the speech synthesizer by saving the codes on the backs of the game manuals. After so many, TI sent us one. My original TI is long since dead...but I have a few others carefully packed away in the basement.

[powerboy]

I have a few customers that comes in from time to time. They only buy a few items for their kids. They are really nice people to deal with.

[cinema guy]

I remember my dad borrowed a ZX81 from somewhere. That was 1k and had a thing about the size of a brick that plugged into the back that upped it to 16kB!

Me and my brother got a ZX Spectrum for Christmas, that was 48k and cost £125 IIRC. That was great because it had a colour display, but it was usually set up on the portable TV in the spare bedroom. The portable was black and white, so we didn't get to see the colour much!

Loading things was always fun - from the audio cassette player. Boy was that noise horrible, WEEEECRRRRRRRRCCCCCCRRRRRRWEEEEEEEE

I guess I'm old too.

[Shabo]

I work in a tech support job on a college campus. Over the summer, we have parents that call in and want to know what kind of computer to get their incoming freshmen children. I give them all the same answer. Brand names all have their ups and downs, go with something they know and trust, and don't buy the cheapest thing on the market. No, they are not required to get a laptop. No, I don't recommend they do if they are going to live on campus since practically no one lugs theirs around with them (it's a 5-10 minute walk from the dorm buildings to the main campus... with a 5 lb laptop plus books, notebooks, paper, etc hanging on their back. No thank you!) and they can get a better spec'd desktop for the same price as the laptop. I've never had the pleasure of anyone asking me what was the most expensive thing they could get for their little computer whizzes though. Kind of a shame.

[Tigress]

I'm dreading late July/early August, when parents start buying their college-bound kids laptops. It will be Black Friday X 1000. Every five minutes, parents will want the cheapest laptop we have and a month later their kids will be bringing them in because they broke the screen or used LimeWire to FUBAR their system.

[wagegoth]

the truely wealthy dont usually stand out from the crowd because, you dont ever see them, they dont "hang out" in the same places that we common folk do.

It's "old money" because they never spend it.