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[Manics]

This is a true story.

So a friend of mine recently told me he went into Best Buy and asked a salesperson about the Ipod mini-dock. My friend didn't know too much about the dock, so he asked the salesperson if it had a line-out. The salesperson says : "Nope. It's just a stand". My friend says: "It is? I thought it was a syncing cradle too". The salesperson responds again: "Nope. It's just a stand for the Ipod"

Now, I can forgive my friend for not knowing much about the dock cause he's just a simpleton and didn't do any research into it. What the hell was the salesperson's problem? He works in the bloody store shouldn't he actually KNOW the products he's selling?

 

[DarienA]

This is a true story.

So a friend of mine recently told me he went into Best Buy and asked a salesperson about the Ipod mini-dock. My friend didn't know too much about the dock, so he asked the salesperson if it had a line-out. The salesperson says : "Nope. It's just a stand". My friend says: "It is? I thought it was a syncing cradle too". The salesperson responds again: "Nope. It's just a stand for the Ipod"

Now, I can forgive my friend for not knowing much about the dock cause he's just a simpleton and didn't do any research into it. What the hell was the salesperson's problem? He works in the bloody store shouldn't he actually KNOW the products he's selling?

While there are some BB employees that permanently work in each area there are some who rotate through areas IIRC... your friend either got an idiot or a rotater.

 

[Manics]

While there are some BB employees that permanently work in each area there are some who rotate through areas IIRC... your friend either got an idiot or a rotater.

I say idiot. If he didn't know, he should have said: "I'm not sure, let me check for you". Instead he says with total conviction : "It's just a stand!" This is because he actually looked at the box and there were no details written on it (in Apple's minimal is good approach) Now, you think the guy would question why a "just a stand" would retail for $69.99 ?

 

[Grifter]

I find that lots of BB employees don't give a fuck about really helping.

 

[worldrunover]

This is a true story.

So a friend of mine recently told me he went into Best Buy and asked a salesperson about the Ipod mini-dock. My friend didn't know too much about the dock, so he asked the salesperson if it had a line-out. The salesperson says : "Nope. It's just a stand". My friend says: "It is? I thought it was a syncing cradle too". The salesperson responds again: "Nope. It's just a stand for the Ipod"

Now, I can forgive my friend for not knowing much about the dock cause he's just a simpleton and didn't do any research into it. What the hell was the salesperson's problem? He works in the bloody store shouldn't he actually KNOW the products he's selling?

I used to work at Best Buy, so I can tell you they don't exactly hire the most qualified people for the job. And offer VERY little product training. I used to have to educate my supervisor on how each game system and accessories worked. Yeah.

 

[Macam]

Having worked at Best Buy for a year in the past, I can safely say that product knowledge is limited to whatever department you're positioned in, if that. Additionally, employees will frequently have to cover other departments temporarily at times, or just get bombarded with questions not pertaining to their department. Hell, half the time I didn't even know what I was pitching for the most part, and it wasn't until I started pressuring my supervisors for more product knowledge training to help make selling more comfortable and effective on my part that I got all of....40 minutes of it. At least, until that was interrupted by a lady looking for a "good" digitial camera for $100 or less.

Believe me, it's not Apple's fault for minimalist packaging. This happens all the time on all packaging, no matter how detailed it may be. You'd be surprised how hard it is to determine what kind of batteries certain devices take, whether they're included, and so on, when you have to resort to reading manufacturers' crappy packaging. It's not in your training and, as I found out, it's not really ever on the box, at least nowhere obvious.

Besides, this is hardly new. The quick fix around this is simple: expect incompetence and you won't be surprised.