The Glade 4.0

Should it be me for not knowing my power supply specs, or the sales person for not asking for said specs before selling me a video card that is not supported. Hell, I even told him what card I used to have that crapped out.

Was looking forward to plunking it into my system, but my power supply just doesn't have the juice for it.

Now I have to take a trip back to Microcenter and try again...This time armed with the specifics of my power supply.

So I guess the answer is that the sales person is the one in need of a swift kick to the ***.

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

Sorry, dude. Salesman is just doing what salesmen do. You can hate the game, but shouldn't blame the player for playing the game the way the game is played. I did exactly the same thing a little over a year ago - not the salesman's fault I didn't know my power supply rating. This kick's for you.

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Go back to zero, take a pill, and get well ~ Lemmy Kilmister

Beef up the power supply.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Eh, the way it's described, this isn't the salesperson's fault. It would be if you presented him the specs of your system and he lied to you, saying that they were sufficient for the needs of your new card.

Doncha hate it when people talk sense, when you just want to get mad and blame irrationally and get it outta your system?

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Dream as if you'll live forever...
...Live as if you'll die tomorrow

Vivere Senza Rimpianti

Talking sense is a bad habit I have, Kirra.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

So a salesman, who in the interest of getting a commission from a sale and no ding against him for having a return (retail does keep track of this), should not do his best to ensure that the product that he is suggesting will fit the needs of the consumer, thus insuring that the item will not be returned?

I gave him the specs of the card that I had in the machine and he offered something that he said was comparable, likely better. I even asked if it was an upgrade from the previous card. He never flinched or even thought for one moment of finding out if it was going to work in my system.

Thats not a very good computer hardware salesperson, IMHO.

I'll take some of the blame, but not every customer who comes in to that store is necessarily going to know what they are talking about. It is the salesperson's job to know the product. Making a customer have to make a second trip because of lack of knowledge is doesn't make good customer service. Trust me, I worked in retail for long enough to know that what this sales person caused was enough to make managers give in to customers who came back and complained.

I'm not going to ***** about it to the store, I just want to make sure I get something that will work.

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

The specs of the card don't say anything about whether the power supply in your computer can handle it.

Now had you given him the specs of your overall computer, including the power supply and he still pointed you at something that won't work, you have an argument.

Up to you to know what you have, not the salesperson. If you were getting anything other than a direct exact replacement, you should have written down all your information to present it before purchasing a new card.

Sorry, kick yourself this time.

So just to make sure I understand the majority sentiment...

The salesperson should in no way ply the customer for information regarding their purchase (especially in the case of computer upgrades), they should merely hand said customer a product and assume that it will be compatible.

That is what a salesperson should do? Really?

So, a salesperson for a company that sells sprinkler systems should in no way make sure of what the customer is intending to protect with said sprinkler system before selling it to them. So he can sell a water based sprinkler system to a company that wants to protect their server room, because, hey...the customer should know exactly what they want and need.

To reiterate...

A salesperson should, IN NO WAY, make sure that the product they are selling will fit the needs of the customer?

Please, I am dying to know if that is really what those who have responded here think.

When I sold board games and someone picked up "Seafarers of Catan", even though it has a label on it saying "This is not a standalone game. You need to own 'Settlers of Catan' to play this", I was in no way as a salesperson/representative of the store, needed to forewarn them of the fact that they need something else to play the expansion?

That is a salesperson's job. That is what they do. They SELL things and make sure they do not come back for a return or a customer satisfaction issue because they didn't do what they should have done at the customer's first visit to their establishment.

I'll admit that the customer should have some knowledge of what they are buying. A smart consumer is an informed consumer. But in the absence of that knowledge, it would serve the salesperson and by extension, the retailer, well to make sure their customer gets what they need the first time.

Come on, I am sure I am not the only person who has worked retail here and knows this.

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

Yes, the box did say that. I just didn't think of it\know to check it until I was home.

Box said 450W supply needed and I only have a 300.

Simple question for a salesperson to ask since I obviously missed it. Had he pointed it out and I said I don't know and bought the card anyway, then it's on me.

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

Yes, unless specifically asked.


Yes, unless specifically asked.


Yes, that is exactly what the salesperson should do...unless specifically asked.


Unless specifically asked by the customer to ensure that the customer's lack of knowledge is not a stumbling block, yes.


Nope.


If I go in and purchase a case for my iPhone 4, the salesperson should not have to ensure that I do in fact have an iPhone 4 (and not a 3GS, or 3G, or god forbid a 1st gen). However, if a person comes in and says "I'm an idiot, I have no knowledge of the technical workings of what I need, please help me solve my problem," then yes, the salesperson should have both the knowledge and the people skills to handle that from beginning to end. But baby-sitting the client and double-checking each and every little thing? If a salesperson wants to do so, fine. But I see no responsibility or need for the salesperson to interfere with the client when not invited to do so.

Farsky:

Have you ever worked in retail? Your answers above seem to point to the fact that you have not, because you couldn't be any more wrong about what makes a good sales person.

I ask this, then. Why, in the survey that I found from Microcenter in my email, was one of the sections dedicated to the Sales Associate?

One of the items to rate was: "My sales associate was knowledgable and informative"
Also, "Responsive and attentive to my needs"

Do you think that a large retail store would have such questions for the rating of their sales associates if they didn't care that they were selling the right product the first time?



Bad example. An iPhone is not "required" to use that case. It can be for whatever you want to put in it. Seafarers of Catan CAN NOT be played without Settlers. A water based system WILL destroy electronic equipment. A card requiring a 450W power supply WILL NOT work with any lesser of a supply.

Good salespeople know their product and do their best to ensure it does not get returned. If they don't do this, it makes them a bad sales person.

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

Based on what you've written about your experience, I would rate the sales associate as both knowledge and informative, and responsive and attentive to your needs.

You're leaving out the part that he answered what you asked. And did so well. His lack of intimate knowledge of the system you have cannot be held against him. If you thought it relevant, you should have brought it up. If you didn't, then why should he?

Again, if you prefaced your conversation with "I really don't know what I'm doing, so I'm just going to lay out all the info I have, and let you put the pieces together," and he didn't do so satisfactorily, then that is his fault. But if you went in and said "this is what I have, I want something similar," and he delivered exactly that...what else are you thinking he's supposed to do? It's rather like that idiotic answer bad teachers give when a student gets an answer wrong on a test and asks about it: "Well, if you didn't understand, you should have asked questions." Well, yes, that's appropriate...if the student had realized at the time that he didn't understand. Otherwise, he's doing the best he can and, according to the knowledge available, is doing so in an accurate manner.

The bottom line is that you didn't present him with the information he needed to make the absolute most informed suggestion, and, bereft of that, he made the most informed suggestion he could with the knowledge he was presented. That's not his fault.

Whether or not I know what I am talking about and regardless of what system I have at home the one simple fact of the matter is that a product that he is selling has a specific requirement. The onus is on the salesperson now to find out if the customer has a setup that will accommodate the hardware.

What if I didn't mention PCI-E and he handed me an old AGP card. If I don't look at the card and take note of the expansion slot, doesn't it behoove him to say "Now, this card has a specific requirement of an AGP slot on your motherboard."

He handed me a product with a requirement that he knew about and I did not. Simple salesperson mistake.

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

I'm not arguing that any of the prodding questions you're suggesting are inappropriate (though if a salesperson bugged me about them, I would quickly get annoyed), but rather, that it is not in any way, shape, form or fashion the responsibility of the salesperson to ensure that the knowledge is not lacking if asked a very specific question.

To correct your flawed example, if you told him all about your old AGP card and how you wanted it replaced with something similar, the next step up perhaps, and he gave you a PCI-E card, that's his fault. But you gave him all of the pertinent information about the card...you neglected to mention your low power supply as a mitigating factor.

What you're asking for is babysitting the customer. I don't agree that that is the responsibility of the salesperson, nor do I personally think it's an admirable trait in one.

Foamy, if it makes you feel better I think you should go kick the sales person in the groin.

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Farsky:

Have you worked in retail or in any type of customer service position?

Lets look at this differently. Assume if you will that the customer is not me, rather my mother-in-law who knows next to nothing about computers. Maybe my brother-in-law says, "Hey Mom, I need you to go pick up a new video card for me at Microcenter." She goes and talks to a sales person and he hands her a video card. Should he or should he not inquire (whether or not he thinks she will know the answer) as to if her computer meets the requirements for the product he just handed her?

I think you are looking at this from the standpoint where the consumer is a knowledgeable computer person and therefore the salesperson needs to ask nothing because I know all I need to know about my purchase.

Good salespeople don't do that. You mistake a salesperson's questions as unnecessary and annoying because you don't need to be asked. There are plenty of people who don't know what they are talking about and the very nature of the job that a salesperson does is to find and meet their needs so as to match them to a product on the first try, thus creating a satisfied customer and not a customer service issue that the manager has to resolve.

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

HAH, thanks. No, I am just amazed at the misunderstanding here of what should be expected of a salesperson.

The opinion here is that a salesperson can and should hand just any old thing to a customer and hope for the best.

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

Stop blaming other people for information you didn't give them. The salesman is not supposed to care more about the specifics of your rig than you do. He is not supposed to divine answers to your unasked questions out of nothingness. Nor did he make enough commissions on your small purchase for it to even be an afterthought in his sales approach.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

So I guess the first thing we need to look at is the consumer population of Microcenter. Are they mostly sufficiently tech savvy, or are they chumps? If they are mostly sufficiently tech savvy, it is in Microcenter's best interests to staff their stores with people who don't annoy the customer base with dumb questions.

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Rynar:

If you were sold a piece of kitchen equipment that carries a certain power requirement or perhaps a type of ventilation system that your establishment doesn't have and you were not aware of these requirements because you just aren't 100% knowledeable of the product, is that your fault?

I don't care about blame at this point. I find people's expectations of what they think a salesperson should do as ridiculous.

I can't be any clearer about product requirement and the necessity of the person selling that product to see that it can be used by the person buying it.

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

1. Yes, I have. I was miserable, but I was also the second-highest seller in the place (the highest, when considered on a month-by-month basis and not in aggregate; the highest had been there three times as long as I had). But that's irrelevant. What's more important is that I've purchased things.

2. Another flawed example. Did the brother-in-law tell his mother exactly which card to get? Or did he say "I need a new video card, go buy me one, Mom-Who-Knows-Nothing-About-Computers?" In the former case, the MWKNAC goes in, picks up exactly what was specified, pays and walks out. There is no gray area here. The customer (who is, in this case, not the MWKNAC) knows what he wants. In the latter case, the mother would be clueless (which, way to go sending her for your tech parts, BIL, you deserve whatever you get), and would wander into the store and ask many, many questions that the salesperson should answer.

Your case is much more like the former than the latter, by the way.

Farsky may take umbrage to a salesperson informing him "This card has a power supply requirement of 450W. Do you have this in your system." as he has stated.

Myself, on the other hand, would greatly appreciate that same nugget of information to be pointed out to me as I, obviously missed it.

A salesperson doing his job and finding/meeting the customer's needs is entirely different from a salesperson who annoys and bugs the customer.

They know the product, they are selling it. If there is a requirement, it should be pointed out.

I also doubt that Microcenter tells their staff "OK, everyone who comes in here is a super computer geek and doen't like to be asked anything because they know it all, so just assume they know what they are talking about."

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

It is your job to be an informed consumer. End of story.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20