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Terrible advice heard at PC World

i've learnt from experience to never go into pc world unless i have no other alternative, Currys Digital is the same.

Popped in earlier this year to check out the imac prices, first salesman comes over, i ask him if they stock the iMac with the i7. First one didnt know Apple used Core i chips yet and the 27inch Core 2 Duo was the "top of range model, Apple dont make a faster computer"...........okay! a few minutes later over comes another, he didnt even know what Core i7 cpus were.

Went in to price up an internal WD Green HD and the salesman tried to sell me this "tech guys" branded thing saying it was just as good. Asked him what manufacturer it was and after a few minutes of grilling he admitted "sometimes the drives are really good, sometimes they are alright, depends on what you get"

My family+friends mostly dont know much about computers but they insist on going there to get their computers and they are always given the most rubbish, bargain basement stuff its shocking. 2 years ago they sold a mate of mine an Advent laptop with a Celeron chip, half a gig of ram and Vista Basic for £400, took about 5 minutes just to switch on :rolleyes:
 
Even the apple store staff don't always know the correct answers. I spend quite a bit of time in the Bluewater apple store while the rest of the (women) family spend an eternity shopping. I do correct the sales staff if they get it wrong though :)

Yesterday a man was looking at buying a new 11" air and he wanted to know if there was any possible way he could copy some DVD's to the machine to watch while on the move. Now at this point the sales guy said that there was no possible way of doing that and all he could do was to buy films on iTunes.

Now I know that probably towing the apple store policy line. But to use the words "no it is not possible to do that" just got to me. I did tell the guy that he could do it and told him how as well.

But it is no where near as bad as the incompetent staff in PC World and the other stores that are not "Specialists" as they advertise themselves as! I have heard them say that the memory is upgradable in an iPad as well as they have inbuilt SD slots.
 
I've had someone on these Mac Forums tell me that Apple get better "Quality" CPU's from Intel than are used in PC's!
 
Not trying to defend bad salespeople, they are everywhere. And as others have said, if the stores train people better, they will just go to higher paying jobs. I've seen situations like you all have described COUNTLESS times. As such I rarely listen to anything a sales person tells me and just do my own research.

On the flip side, though, having worked in retail, let me tell you, it's no picnic. You will get asked the most retarded clueless questions over and over by customers. If you try to really educate the buyer, 9/10 of the time they will ignore you anyhow and just buy the cheapest alternative even if you try to tell them it's complete junk. Then the'yll come complain to you 2 weeks later when it's broken and you can't take it back because its outside the 14 day return policy....

The simple fact of the matter is that most people have no clue how most technology works. They all expect it to be like operating a toaster... The various marketing ploys that companies use don't help matters either (using their own proprietary names for features, proprietary "standards", messing with model numbers, etc.) Often, companies will send marketing reps to your stores to "train" the sales staff on their products, and of course the sales staff is told how great this company's product is and how bad the competitor is... So they are going to form opinions.

Remember, an informed buyer is an empowered buyer!

Oh and don't expect that a salesperson is going to know every little detail of some new product that they just got in the store yesterday!
 
-Garry- said:
Criticising the sales rep is all well and good but you had an opportunity to step in and stop an unwitting member of the public from wasting his money on a device that might not suit him.

Not only that, but you also had a chance to embarrass the salesman and maybe even educate him too!

But nope, you kept quiet and walked on by. Shame on you.
Click to expand...

i was going to but i was in a rush plus did not want to create too much of a fuss.
i still think the guy would want the ipad even though he cant put in his memory card so your reply was just downright rude........ shame on you!!
 
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