I run a tech service. It’s got a guarantee that if we don’t fix it, you don’t pay. All well and good, except for the tire kickers that start out the appointment with, “I want to know what’s wrong with it, THEN I’ll decide whether it’s worth it for you to fix.” Now, we’ve expanded into a pay-by-minute phone tech support. I can’t BEGIN to tell you how many people try to weasel info out of us for free. Our calls all start out ok. We try to get the credit card # in 2 minutes. We’re changing to an automated system so we can just have it up and start charging as soon as the tech gets on the phone. Some true gems from 3 days:
Got cut off in the middle of saying, “thank you for ca–” and asked about printer issues. When I asked for the CC #, I got the finest answer: “Oh, my 90 day warranty expired with Dell, and I didn’t want to pay those guys another $150 for 3 years. I figured you could help me for free, since you’re small and local.”
A woman who gave us an erroneous CC# then said she would give us a good one at the end of the call. No, madam, sorry. That’s called fraud. I believe wire fraud at that. Find another sucker.
A VoIP customer that got tired of waiting for their TS, so called us, expecting us to charge the VoIP provider for helping her.
A guy who accused us of padding the bill at the end of the call, because - get this - we don’t round to the nearest 6 seconds, just the nearest minute. Um, hello? We’re charging you PER MINUTE, douchebag. We didn’t mention anything AT ALL about 6 seconds. That’s your long distance provider.
How about the ESL classes I do for the local Brazilian population. I have a soft spot for them, so I charge $15 a class, or a month for $100. I have yet to keep a student over a month because once their English skills are passable, they stop coming. Ok, stop coming, but then also STOP ASKING ME TO HELP WITH YOUR CLIENTS! It’s insulting to me, which is why I say I’m too busy teaching other classes even though I’ve got none.
Oh, and you HAVE broken the law:
You came here legally, but stayed past your visa time. By 7 years!
-You registered your car in North Carolina or Pennsylvania and pay no insurance (both of which are illegal in NJ)
Is it really any wonder why I won’t help you any more?
One of the selling points of FNAC is “our guys aren’t on commision; they’re here to advise you on what’s right for you, not on whatever will give them the biggest commision.”
I can attest to that: it’s one of a handful of stores where I’ve actually been told “we don’t have that product but these guys scribbles address on a store card may”.
This means that when I’m looking at buying something from FNAC or from another chain and the prices are comparable, I’ll choose FNAC. They’ve earned my trust. And I would call the OP’s non-customer a complete asshole, but my butthole might take offense.
Those are great examples fo the kind of attitude I’m talking about. People seem to think if they can somehow weasel what they want from someone then it’s fair game. Well, you might succeed but you’re still a weasel.
When I sold computers this happened all the time. Then they have the nads to act all offended and insulted because you won’t let them get away with it and have the nads to call them on it.
Our techs charge a bench fee. It cost X to check it out, and give you an estimate repair. People act offended at the thought. Occasionally a tech will stop his work to be nice and check something out , and when he says. “Oh we just need to change this tube and resoder this connection.” the customer will say, “I can do that myself” and leave without paying. They don’t think they owe anything for this professional technician to diagnose the problem. It cost something for a professional to spend time diagnosing your stuff. You shouldn’t expect that for free. Sigh!! It’s a freakin epidemic.
One question about your tech service. What happens when you can fix it but it’s not worth it. If it cost $200 to fix a computer worth $250, what then?
I have some mixed feelings here. You don’t say the price of the guitar, but I’d assume it is at least a few hundred. Given that, I’d say the customer was cheap - and a dick. Especially when you indicated a willingness to work with him re: the deal on the case. Maybe could have gone back and forth some more - a set of strings or somesuch. But if I were the customer and I respected the service and advice I received from a local store, I would shop locally in case I needed service or assistance in the future. Always interested in developing relationships with local merchants. And especially when buying something as individual as an instrument.
But I’m thinking about my hobby of planted aquaria-keeping. LFS mark their hardware up incredibly. It is hard to convince yourself to pay a 100% markup on a filter readily available on-line just to support your LFS. If other hobbies are like mine, once you get below the surface (get it? I crack me up!) local vendors are rarely stocked to serve your needs. It just makes more sense for me to buy my chemicals and such in bulk either on-line or from other sources.
But if the LFS offered the same price as on-line, I would readily pay the sales tax and buy locally.
Then you have the entire used market and private sellers. So many hobbies have people who go into them big, only to quickly lose interest. Heck, I can pick up more aquaria than I could ever use just by keeping my eyes open on trash day. And local fish and plant clubs offer better stock at a fraction of the price. The internet has made it easier to get advice from and seek out transactions with private parties and manufacturers.
The final things that dissuaded me from dealing with the local fish stores any more than necessary was the repeated instances of downright incorrect information I received, and the “attitude” of many of the store owners and employees. Far too often when I go into a specialty store with money I’d like to spend, I’m greeted with the attitude that the personnel thinks taking my $ is doing me a favor.
It is difficult to blame the customers or the internet entirely for the prevalent attidtude. After instances in which I encountered disinterested, ignorant, and/or incompetent sales staff, I have mighty low expectations going into just about any store.
Actually, I think this is a nice idea. We have something similar in Chicago (WhyNot…are you from Chicago…can’t remember).
The Old Town School of Folk Music Old Town offers tons of classes, demos, and live shows. I think the business model for brick-and-mortar establishments will likely move to a footing where the physical purchase is a side-benefit of the teaching (clumsy syntax, but you know what I mean). I suspect that Old Town’s store section does pretty well.
It’s unlikely you’ll get a comparable lesson or other experience from the Internet.
cosmodan, I usually weed out the "not worth it"s. I take the calls, but dispatch the techs. I’ll answer the phone, listen to the problem, then determine if it’s worth it for us to come out for $120 and hour. A woman with a broken keyboard wanted us to come out anyway, and I was stupid, so I told her no, and go get a new one from the local PC shop or staples or anywhere else. Got a call from her later on to install it.
THAT’S when I made the appointment. And told her upfront the exact price. Didn’t even pause when she said ok. I often will tell people to go to the local store instead of the chains, but lately in this area, they’ve become scarce. And a little too difficult to understand past the accent. Ask for RAM, get a LAN. Not good business.
Old Town is a pretty good example of what I’m thinking of, although you can still go into their store and pick the brains of their clerks. However, they are a nonprofit, so I’m not sure if their business model will translate into the for-profit industry.
According to their annual report (warning, PDF!) , in 2004, they made 3,964,295 from tuition and spent 3,862,138 on instructional programs; they made 1,466,802 from Music Stores and Cafes and spent 1,536,831. So they’re definitely making more money from instruction than sales, in fact sales are costing them money.
lissener, I think you may be describing my family’s pet store. Not that it is/was at all unusual for small, service-oriented pet stores to be driven out of business by large discounters, but there weren’t that many 70-year old same-family-owned pet stores in Chicago to begin with. Were the initials “V.O.” by any chance?
Preach on, brother. Sister the Rhymer is utterly shameless about this (and also about returning items after a ridiculous period of time), and when I worked in retail it infuriated me (particularly when she did it at my store). She’ll quiz a salesperson when she has no intention of buying from that store, or come back to a different salesperson without even trying to find the person she spent an hour with a day earlier. Her rationalization is that the big stores are the only one being hurt; she didn’t seem to get, or care, that she is TAKING TIME AND MONEY AWAY FROM THAT COMMISSION SALESPERSON.
I saw this happen all the time when I sold televisions. One particularly egregious incident involved a woman who wanted to buy a 36" sony tv and was choosing between my store and Wal-Mart. My co-worker explained quite patiently and clearly between two models, one of which had dual-tuner picture-in-picture while the other had single-tuner (so you could only get the PIP with a VCR hooked up). The “customer” then went to Wal-Mart and found a 36" set for less, but no one there could tell her the difference; she called our store to ask what the difference was but could tell us what the model number was, then wanted one of US to go to Wally World to find out FOR HER. She bought the Wal-Mart set, which, it developed, was cheaper because it didn’t have PIP at all – then came to us wanting to take one of our display remote controls, figuring that was the only difference.
(This is the perfect time for the Putz smiley. Gosh, I miss him.)