I don’t like this trend.
When I bought a couch, the sales guy spent way more time worrying about the leather protection plan than the actual couch.
Best Buy and Circuit City apparently make more profit selling warranties than electronics.
A friend of mine works at a rental car place and she claims the training they gave her focused more on pushing insurance and their ridiculous gas scheme than the car renting part of the job. This is a big chunk of compensation for the desk clerks too, I’m told. I don’t understand the insurance pitch. You either have insurance or you don’t, but they try to scare you into thinking your coverage isn’t good enough.
Another friend tells me in salons these days, the stylists make a lot of money pushing products. This is troublesome, because it’s possible for someone to become a successful beautician by giving mediocre hair cuts but being a hell of a gel salesman.
Banks get an increasing share of their profits with silly schemes like overdraft “protection” that generate fee income.
Cell phone companies are way more interested in ring tones and American Idol clips than phone service.
I tried to buy a used car off a fly-by-night lot with cash and was told they weren’t interested, they make more money screwing poor people with bad credit on the financing than they do selling cars.
Don’t even get me started on store credit cards.
Yes, you can easily tell them to piss off with their extras, but the damage is done. Interests are already misaligned. I’d be tempted to hope that the market would sort this out, but have to admit that corporate bean counters and consultants are way smarter than the average Joe consumer. I want suppliers to focus on the original product. If it costs a little more, so be it. I’d start a website or something if I knew how.
