Futureshop lied to a customer

[jhunt]

I went to my local Futureshop store I overheard a customer talking to one of the sales reps about buying Blueray or HD-DVD. THe customer was looking at the movies that they had & said where are the Walt Disney HD-DVD the sales reps said there all sold out right know but will get more in very soon. I told the person that Walt Disney only makes movies for Blue Ray DVD. I told the other customer to go online & research it a little more. That made the sales rep's very mad. I been told by other people that Futureshop sales reps are to boost about HD-DVD & say negative things about Blue-Ray.

I don't have a Blue Ray player right now but I will be buying one later in the year or early next year.

[cajmoyper]

Isn't Futureshop Canada's Best Buy? If so, that is too be expected and he was only mad because he doesn't know anything about it.

[ESUNintel]

Originally Posted by jhunt

I went to my local Futureshop store I overheard a customer talking to one of the sales reps about buying Blueray or HD-DVD. THe customer was looking at the movies that they had & said where are the Walt Disney HD-DVD the sales reps said there all sold out right know but will get more in very soon. I told the person that Walt Disney only makes movies for Blue Ray DVD. I told they other customer to go online & research it a little more. That made the sales rep's very mad. I been told by other people that Futureshop sales reps are to boost about HD-DVD & say negative things about Blue-Ray.

I don't have a Blue Ray player right now but I will be buying one latter in the year or early next year.

That's bad, but I think the situation I witnessed was a little worse (and somewhat sad, yet funny); although it ended well. I work at a retail store, and one of the new guys was helping a customer with the DVD players, who had just purchased an XBR2 about a week before. From what I heard from the customer when he came back to return the item, the new guy told him all the wonders about HD-DVD, told him every studio made HD-DVD movies, and other stuff like that. Then he ended up selling the customer (of all things), a Sony up-conversion DVD player. Maybe the customer is to blame a bit too, since he apparently did no research, but than again, people depend on sales people.

...so guess what? The guy is all happy he got an HD-DVD player for $90, and the thing couldn't read HD-DVD's. He came back, wasn't angry but didn't want to deal with the other guy anymore. It all ended well though cause he ended up buying the Sony S300 Blu-ray player instead (I took $100 off cause of the inconvenience). He called me like 4 days later and I thought I was in trouble or something, it was just to thank me cause he loved the way movies looked.

[chan1490]

Good job ESUNintel!

FYI, Futureshop and Bestbuy both exist in Canada and are owned by the same company.
It turns out the Futureshop employee was simply an idiot.

I was in a Futureshop looking at HDTV's with my dad. And he was wondering why one Samsung LCD was more expensive than the other. He noticed that the contrast ratio for the more expensive was higher than the other. He asked the sales rep what the contrast ratio was and he said it was the number of lines of resolution.

'Nuf said. Do your research.

[Robmx]

Was at Futureshop today in St.catharines, Ontario and seen a family purchase a standalone Sony blu-ray player.... I gave the father a thumbs up as he looked over and he came up to me and asked some questions.... As we were looking at BD's he bought "Planet Earth" and I told him welcome to the best side..... I couldn't find one single HD DVD player there.....

[dobyblue]

Originally Posted by Robmx

Was at Futureshop today in St.catharines, Ontario and seen a family purchase a standalone Sony blu-ray player.... I gave the father a thumbs up as he looked over and he came up to me and asked some questions.... As we were looking at BD's he bought "Planet Earth" and I told him welcome to the best side..... I couldn't find one single HD DVD player there.....

Very cool.
I know most of the staff there have 360 add-ons, but at some point they will need to come around too.
One staff member I spoke to said they think that store (FS-St. Catharines) sells more HD DVD discs but probably because the staff buy a lot of them. He did say that he thinks Blu-ray has the best chance of winning though.

[Blu-dock Saint]

Its interesting reading how different store clerks react to the format war, it sounds like its starting to even out finally with a few bad eggs here and there.

Lying will only piss off the customer in the end anyway when he figures out the truth, so why do it?

Welcome to the forums btw, and cheers.

[dialog_gvf]

Originally Posted by cajmoyper

Isn't Futureshop Canada's Best Buy? If so, that is too be expected and he was only mad because he doesn't know anything about it.

Best Buy owns Future Shop (they bought the chain when they came into Canada). But, there are both BB and FS stores here (sometimes very close to each other).

The big difference: Future Shop salespeople are paid commission.

Gary

[reiella]

Originally Posted by dialog_gvf

Best Buy owns Future Shop (they bought the chain when they came into Canada). But, there are both BB and FS stores here (sometimes very close to each other).

The big difference: Future Shop salespeople are paid commission.

Gary

And that difference is enough for me never to step foot inside a Future Shop.

Not that I plan on going to Canada anytime soon [who knows, next time we're up in the UP we may get lost :P].

[JadedRaverLA]

Originally Posted by reiella

And that difference is enough for me never to step foot inside a Future Shop.

Not that I plan on going to Canada anytime soon [who knows, next time we're up in the UP we may get lost :P].

Why is having commission salespeople a bad thing? The worst thing about Best Buy (and stores like them) is that the salespeople aren't commission-based, and thus, have no incentive to know anything about the products they are selling.

Now you can argue that spiff's and the like cause salespeople to recommend products they wouldn't otherwise... but in my past experience (as a commission salesperson), those of us in the store I worked knew FAR, FAR more than those at stores like Best Buy. We also made $45-65k a year compared to like $6-9/hr. for the non-commissioned salespeople in other stores. Also, if products we sold get returned, they took back our commission. So, we had a huge motivation to make sure we helped people find the best product for THEM -- and to follow up with help and advice to keep them happy and coming back to us in the future.

[evo_dadi]

sometimes commisioned people just looks for the quick kill.they hardly answer questions for you and are just plain rude at times.

[reiella]

Originally Posted by JadedRaverLA

Why is having commission salespeople a bad thing? The worst thing about Best Buy (and stores like them) is that the salespeople aren't commission-based, and thus, have no incentive to know anything about the products they are selling.

Now you can argue that spiff's and the like cause salespeople to recommend products they wouldn't otherwise... but in my past experience (as a commission salesperson), those of us in the store I worked knew FAR, FAR more than those at stores like Best Buy. We also made $45-65k a year compared to like $6-9/hr. for the non-commissioned salespeople in other stores. Also, if products we sold get returned, they took back our commission. So, we had a huge motivation to make sure we helped people find the best product for THEM -- and to follow up with help and advice to keep them happy and coming back to us in the future.

Because I don't like being hard sold. That's all.

[jctash]

I had something similar happen to me at a bb in South Florida. Someone had an HD-DVD player under his arm and was looking at the blurays. I told him the best movies were in BR and he didn't know the differnece. He put back the HD-DVD player and bought the PS3 instead and was very happy, he thought I worked for the store. I might as well I sold the thing>>>>>>>>>>>

[JadedRaverLA]

Originally Posted by reiella

Because I don't like being hard sold. That's all.

Fair enough. That's not really a problem inherent in commission salespeople, however. It's a problem of either underpaid or poor quality commission salespeople. It's usually a sign of a failing store or misguided corporate values.

When I was in commission sales, we would be reprimanded for being aggressive with a customer or 'hanging on them' if they stated they were just looking, and if our return rate was high it would be assumed that you were either unknowledgeable or were pressuring people. Again, you would be coached, reprimanded, and possibly fired. But, the corporate environment there was quite possibly different than at some other stores.

A 'hard sell' is typically ill-advised in sales as it leads to high return rates, unhappy customers, and poor long-term sales performance of a store. While it MAY work short-term to boost sales, long-term all you'll do is drive away business.

Just my $.02.

[reiella]

Originally Posted by JadedRaverLA

Fair enough. That's not really a problem inherent in commission salespeople, however. It's a problem of either underpaid or poor quality commission salespeople. It's usually a sign of a failing store or misguided corporate values.

When I was in commission sales, we would be reprimanded for being aggressive with a customer or 'hanging on them' if they stated they were just looking, and if our return rate was high it would be assumed that you were either unknowledgeable or were pressuring people. Again, you would be coached, reprimanded, and possibly fired. But, the corporate environment there was quite possibly different than at some other stores.

A 'hard sell' is typically ill-advised in sales as it leads to high return rates, unhappy customers, and poor long-term sales performance of a store. While it MAY work short-term to boost sales, long-term all you'll do is drive away business.

Just my $.02.

Out of curiosity, when you worked commission sales, did you have financing options to deal with?

[JadedRaverLA]

Originally Posted by reiella

Out of curiosity, when you worked commission sales, did you have financing options to deal with?

Kind of. The store I worked for definitely had financing available, but it wasn't something I dealt with. We sold product, and then people would either check out with cashiers when they left, or go to the financing desk if they wanted to apply for credit and any long term 0% interest offers going on at the time. So we had them, and could use them as a selling tool, but didn't have to really deal with it -- if that makes any sense. Also, our finance department was in-house, rather than through an outside company like other companies use, so the finance people would go out of their way to get people approved, or to work out a 'partial approval' and have the customer make up the difference on another credit card or something similar. It was a very good system, and brought in a lot of business when we ran really long term promotions.

Why do you ask?

[lch]

Originally Posted by JadedRaverLA

Why is having commission salespeople a bad thing?

bcos they will pursuade you to buy the product that will let them have the highest commission and usually they are worst product in the whole shop.

[JadedRaverLA]

Originally Posted by lch

bcos they will pursuade you to buy the product that will let them have the highest commission and usually they are worst product in the whole shop.

Where I worked, commission rate was the same throughout the department... specifically for that reason. I do know some stores where it varies from product to product, and I agree with you that that is a terrible system as it helps the store push higher margin goods at the expense of the customer. Again, though, it's not a flaw of commission sales -- just a flaw of some stores implementation. Again, done right, commission sales should be helping to make sure customers get the best product for their needs, as it will be the least likely to get returned (and, thus, the salesperson lose their commission).

[jermwhl]

Originally Posted by JadedRaverLA

Where I worked, commission rate was the same throughout the department... specifically for that reason. I do know some stores where it varies from product to product, and I agree with you that that is a terrible system as it helps the store push higher margin goods at the expense of the customer. Again, though, it's not a flaw of commission sales -- just a flaw of some stores implementation. Again, done right, commission sales should be helping to make sure customers get the best product for their needs, as it will be the least likely to get returned (and, thus, the salesperson lose their commission).

If all stores and salespeoples' commission values were the same as yours I would definately be all for stores like Best buy going commission based, however I know Best Buy would be a nightmare if they were commissioned!
Good on ya for some decent values!!!