I received my new BofA ATM card recently. Before you use a new card, you have to activate it by calling an 800 number. The call is completely automated, and you are asked to punch in your card number so it can be activated.
After i entered the number, i was subjected to an attempt, via a recorded message, to sell me a free credit report (no thanks; i’m already in a state where i get one free every year) and a subscription to an ongoing credit monitoring service.
When it got to the end of the spiel, it said: “To take advantage of this great offer, press 1 now.”
I waited for the next words, which i expected to be “To continue without accepting the offer, press 2.”
But they didn’t come. The only option offered was to press 1 to accept the offer. There’s no way i was going to do that, so i just sat there for about ten seconds until another recording came on, saying something like “Are you sure you don’t want to take advantage of this great offer…?” and telling me again to press 1.
I sat there for another ten seconds or so, before finally being told that my card was activated.
Other posters have mentioned the companies I would have mentioned, but no one has made this important point: Any time you give in to upselling, you encourage it. It is just like a dog–feed them scraps once, and they will never quit begging. My husband occasionally gives in to upselling at the movies and it pisses me off. It is ridiculous to pay that much to feed his Diet Coke addiction in the first place, but then to give in to the upselling makes it even worse. If you want upselling to stop, don’t give in to it. They do it because it works. If it didn’t work, they would quit.
I was in the market for a new laptop recently, and after having done all my research, I went to the store and picked out precisely what I wanted. But, since I am a tiny little girl, I obviously don’t know what I really want. After saying no to the warranty and all the other fun extra stuff three times, I informed the salesperson that I was no longer interested and walked out of the store. And damn, it felt good. (Kind of like when a telemarketer asks for my husband and I get to be snarky about not having one.)
With no other real options, however, I just went straight to the next CompUSA in the area. Luckily, my salesman was my former roommate, who told me the warranty was crap and didn’t try to sell me anything but a (very useful) optical mouse because he knows how much I hate touchpads.
I recently had to go through the very same thing. SO BLEEDING IRRITATING. Eff you, BofA.
Good for you! I’m a little disappointed that so many people have gone ahead and made the purchase after being harassed like that. Yes, it’s a huge pain to have to go to another store, but I really think that making them lose the sale is the appropriate response to that kind of crap.
I don’t mind being asked once if I want the warranty/bigger size/whatever, but after I say no once, they need to quit asking.
I’ll note that Citibank does the upselling thing even when you’re calling to report a lost card. Let’s see, I’ve just lost my wallet, I don’t have my driver’s license which meant I couldn’t go to the concert I was dying to see (21 and up) and I’ve lost 4 credit cards. Yep, that is the time to offer me extra stuff I don’t need.
My car’s still under warranty, so I have my periodic servicing done by the dealer, where I have oil changed along with all the other nuisances.
3,000 miles later, I’ll go into the oil change shop for a routine oil change, and they’ll try to sell me a new air filter to replace one that was just put in a few months earlier. Never fails. I feel that I have to be nice, though; they have the hood open and I don’t want to have them mess something up so they could say “We told you so”.
Automobile service chains seem to be notorious about this. I seem to remember a class action lawsuit years ago against Sears Automotive for trying to upsell everyone leaf springs.
Preach it, brother. Once, the guy came over to me in the waiting area and said that their records showed that I had never changed the automatic transmission fluid, and he recommended changing it right away, lest horrible things happen.
I replied, “If you can find an automatic transmission in my truck, go right ahead.” Evidently he hadn’t noticed that I drive a stickshift. I think the other people in the waiting area were amused.
You and me both. I recently bought a photo printer and a steam cleaner from Best Buy (two separate trips), and I don’t even recall being offered a warranty, nevermind being nagged about it. Weird.
Barnes & Noble apparently puts considerable pressure on employees to sell their memberships. As somebody mentioned above, I don’t mind saying “No thanks” one (1) time, but I’ve had their employees, while there was a line behind me, stop and try to convince me how much it’s in my best interest to pay $25 for 10% discount card. I’ll explain to them “The same 10% discount card is ten (10) dollars at Books-a-Million and they have the same books and if they don’t they can order it, plus I can go to bestwebbuys.com and find the same book cheaper on the Internet than at any store, and I don’t live conveniently to a B&N so I won’t buy $250 worth of books to make it worthwhile but I would like my five (5) dollar magazine now PLEASE!”
My Honda service guy did exactly the opposite! I asked them to replace the filters (one for the engine, one for the passenger cabin climate control) because I knew I’d been in alot of dust and grime for 4000 miles. Looked over my bill, noticed no mention of the air filters, called them up to whine and bitch and my service rep said “Oh, I pulled 'em out to change them, but they weren’t that bad. They’ll probably last another 10-20 thousand miles.” So I said thanks and hung up.
I don’t know if I have a reputation at my local Jiffy Lube, or what. They always give me the suggestion, but as soon as I say no, they drop it. This surprises me, because I’m a tiny little girl, and therefore must not know anything about cars (which I honestly don’t)–but they still don’t bug me. I guess I sound certain enough to convince them.
I’ll admit it here… I upsell. I had a customer place an order this week. We make about $20 on the order. It probably costs us $15-20 to process it. We might even lose money on the order. Plus he’s ordering this same, small (by our standards) order once a month. Why not order 500 instead of 100? I’ll cut him a break on the pricing, and he’ll save money on AP processing on his end.
Similarly, I just had a customer order 1000 AP vouchers. She orders them once a month. On this one we make a decent profit, so it won’t save me anything, but it will save her some on shipping and handling if she orders less often.
I’ll also ask if they need envelopes if they’re ordering checks, or do they need anything else while we’re sending things. Sometimes they’re below a minimum order quantity and they’re going to pay extra, anyway, so why not get something else and it’s often “free” or very little additional cost?
My Albertson’s (grocery store) has their “item of the week” which the cashier must push. If they don’t, you get the item for free. I’ve seen people almost pissing themselves waiting to see if the overworked/underpaid cashier will forget to say it and the evil look of glee when they point and say “You didn’t say it!” or “I’ll just go ahead and take the item of the week then.”
I go there often enough (and I look kinda bitchy, too) that the regulars rarely offer me the IOTW and they NEVER ask twice if they do.
I have perfected the cold as steel stare when I say no to the service plans, credit card offers and such. The 2nd asking gets the standard, “Ask me again, and I buy nothing, alright?” My NY accent tend to revv up here too…
Yeah, we know we need to have a minimum order size. But sometimes we do this little stuff because the same folks have larger orders that compensate for it. And sometimes crud just slips through the cracks. Also, for some items, we build the vendor’s minimum into the price. For example, today I quote 25 pieces at $9.95 each; if they wanted to order 50 the each price comes down to $7.75. So I let the customer know; she still just ordered the box of 25. No skin off my nose. We may make a little more that way. But I want them to know how they can lower their unit cost if they’re interested.
Upselling done well by someone who knows their product and cares about their customers is good selling. I have no beef with ShibbOleth, have done similar myself when I sold advertising.
But when the salesperson knows nothing about the product, has never spoken to you before and will probably never talk with you again, or is God forbid an automated recording (!) there is no way that’s adding value.
The worst is shopping at the mall, almost every store nowadays tries to get you to apply for their credit card. They use the line “would you like to save 10 percent on your purchase today by signing up for our card?” It’s so fucking annoying.
My ex worked at REI (outdoor gear store) and all the salespeople were required to ask, “are you an REI member?” and if not, they would launch into their sales pitch that for $25, you can be a “member,” blah blah… It’s really annoying. And for every membership they sold they would get a small commission. The salepeople were like vultures with the membership sales pitch. I HATE that shit!!
A friend of mine who was a car salesman in L.A. at one time was actually fired for downselling. He worked at a Mercedes dealership in a place where, according to him, literally half of the people who walked in were wanting to buy a Mercedes that there was absolutely no way they could possibly afford. These were mostly people in the Biz who were on their way up or on their way down (he mentioned a couple of names of financially strapped TV actors in fact) but image was so important that they’d knowingly buy a car they absolutely could not make the payments on just to be seen driving it.
The dealership had a policy/reputation of “Can’t find credit anywhere else? Come to us”. A huge percentage (a quarter or so, he said) of the cars ended up getting repo’d after a few months. He would try to talk people down from the $125,000 high end Mercedes convertible and into a $40,000 2 year old that he felt they could possibly swing, and was fired.
I can’t really fault his boss, but it was an odd story. I just can’t imagine that kind of status obsession in large numbers.
I understand that Circuit City and Best Buy are currently watching the video of their stores being looted in New Orleans to see if they can ID the people stealing the plasma TVs so that they can sell them the 3 year extended warranties on them for $149.95.
It’s hard to believe that that’s a good strategy for the dealership. Repoing the no longer brand new $100K+ car after a few months of payments has to leave the dealership with less than they started with, right? Or do they have some insurance that insulates them from that kind of thing?
And, I’m clearly the outlier here, but I’ve never been hassled at Best Buy or Circuit City. I am always offered the warranty, but have never had to decline more than once. And, when I bought my digital camera at Best Buy, I had a good salesman who helped me pick out a memory card and a carrying case that I’m quite happy with.