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General Fuzzy McBitty

Electronics store bullshit

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An acquaintance of mine went to a game stop to ask about a wii recently.

The GS employee told her that Nintendo was experiencing problems with the remote (the physical remote itself, not the strap) and would likely recall all units in January so that they could sit in a warehouse until the problem was sorted out.

I called bullshit, but at the same time I'm curious. Have any or you heard anything like this?

What's the biggest load of horse shit a person in an electronics store has tried to sell you?

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All sorts of things. Having worked at PC world, man... we were told to say the stupidest shit, and my co-workers very often did.

"It's not lying," our manager would say, "It's just altering the truth a little because we make more money selling this product than a 'better' product. They pay less for a slightly inferior product, sure... but they'll never know it's inferior because they know nothing about computers anyway. And they pay less. So we all win."

Electronics stores are full of shit ;(

Also once we were told to say that slimline PS2s were faster and had better graphics than the old style ones, and played more types of games. What does that even mean?

Luckily I am no longer a student and so have a decent job ¬¬

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Last time I was in an electronics store, when I asked how much inch a TV screen was the clerk looked confused, then got out a yardstick and tried measuring the screen (which he did nondiagonally and without substracting the edge around it). He probably would have been better off looking it up in their computer system, if he even knew how to use it.

Before that a sales clerk tried to sell me a $1000 BluRay drive (to go with a 32" 720p TV). I began argueing with him just for shits and giggles. He'd never heard of HD-DVD and was unaware that a $500/600 PS3 includes a BluRay drive.

:stan:

I visited 4 stores trying to research a purchase the old school way and it was giant waste of time. Using the internet I could have learned ten times more in that same amount of time.

You'd think with internet shops and all, real stores would want to compete on consumer service, but in fact they are hoping enough people will stay uninformed enough to continue using them.

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Yeah... my mom went to buy a TV, 'cause her TV was broken, and the clerk confused her until she left.

She doesn't even have cable. I don't know why the hell she ended up buying a $700 HD TV.

I told her that she should get a cheap regular one and wait until HD was required if she wasn't going to get cable.

Then my dad didn't understand the manual. He didn't know you had to run the channel scan to get the channels. He had me fixing it over Xmas.:frusty:

Then I had to set up his new high speed. :frusty:

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My usual answer when a clerk approaches me to with the question if he can help me is:

"Depends, do you think you know more about it than me?"

For some reason this often scares them even if I hardly know anything about the products I'm interested in.

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If you're a condescending asshole to a clerk you're bound to get good service across the board. Good strategy.

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Yeah, that's a bit of a stupid thing to say on pretty much all fronts. Is knowing all about every product being sold even part of their job description?

But yeah, salesmen are by definition out to serve their own interests better than yours so doing web research is pretty much vital when seeking a good deal and good value. Avoid dealing with them like the plague unless you want to negotiate a price cut.

Also, Marek wins the prize for best use of a Monkey Island emoticon in 2006. :tup:

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