I embarassed and annoyed a "big box" employee yesterday...

[Wozza]

There is two sides to every story...

I work in the electrical department of a store a little simular to those and mainly sell TV's and such. Whiteware ect is also part of our section and whilst I don't know much about fridges and washing machines ect, I have to serve a customer over there if no one else is and there are no people looking at TV's.

I'll help where I can but if a customer starts asking stuff I don't know, I'll tell the customer I don't know but I can try and find out.

As far as TV sales go, I know my stuff and will try and get the TV that suits the customers needs and budget. On the other side of the coin we get a lot of customers that come in thinking they know more than the sales people, when in fact they are quite mis-informed. Some of the articles on the net, even published media are based off second hand information, or have not done enough research because of deadlines. I should know a 'researcher' for a leading consumer advice magazine here came in and wanted to ask me advice for the article. I told them where to go because I didn't want to be mis-quoted.

I truely feel the bulk of my customers leave with a much better understanding and it is really frustrating when a customer doesn't want to listen to you or quotes some badly researched article. I don't let it bother me anymore now if one of these customers leaves with an inferior product because they wouldn't listen to my advice. (I could tell some pearlers)

Sure management has items they want you to sell, fair enough - it's a business. I just won't sell something if I know it's not going to suit the customers needs as you will get it returned and likely lose a customer. We work on commision so repeat custom is important, if you get a few customers that ask for you by name, money comes a lot easier - which means more toys for me.

Sure I will occasionaly get a fact wrong or a feature mixed up but when products change so often and you sell so many, you often don't get any information before the item is on the shelf. I'm not perfect, but I'll admit a mistake - sales people are only human too.

Sorry, some of these comments just got on my nerves, there will be a few people as described above in every store, but at least in my store I know most of the staff will give good advice.

I've worked three years in photdev and I much prefer being a salesperson.

(Funny story is that I'm more into photography when I'm not developing other peoples shots)



That said, the advice in the original post was completly off the mark! lol

 

[xfloggingkylex]

well the difference in your story of selling TVs versus the guy "selling" the XTi is that you know most of what you are talking about.

But not knowing the type of memory the card takes is pretty major, especially since it sounds like the guy said it takes SD because thats what the customer already had.

The battery isn't a huge deal, yeah it's sad to not know it, but like you said - only human.

Then of course there is the whole no film EOS lenses work on the digital canon bit, and that is just poor customer service.

Really, if you dont know the answer you say that, dont give false information.

Personally if I was buying a camera and realized the people working there knew nothing about it, I'd go somewhere else. It's the same with everything I buy - cars for example. If you go for a testdrive in say a Acura RSX-S and they salesperson tells you its the faster car in its class, takes regular fuel (this one I find to be the most common) and has a 200 horsepower v6 in it... well thats just sad. (RSX isn't fastest in its class, takes premium, and is a I4, not a V6.)

I just dont like being fed mis-information that could possibly alter my opinion of the product. Im sure the lady in the OP though "awesome, I can use my current SD cards in this XTi" and that probably would have been a big selling point for her (not to mention she'd get home and not have memory to save pictures on.

 

[Wozza]

I agree 100%, just wanted to point out we aren't all BS.

 

[sothoth]

it is almost our duty to the aspiring photography community to provide information and to dispell mis-information.

I agree with that statement. Hearing that, its no wonder a lot of people are turned off to photography when they go to shops and they're talked to like they're idiots, or talked to by idiots, or both.

Did the salesman at least show here where to load the film on the dSLR? I mean, he's a serious photographer and all, you think he'd know that kind of thing.