salespeople, the weak link in HD!

[SKRUhddvd]

i see best buy did a phone survey of over 1000 people and found they generally were ignorant about the HD format in general. i think they need to extend that survey to their employees. after reading numerous threads here about the misinformation given by the B&M retailers i decided yesterday to play the dumb consumer and have them explain both blu ray and hddvd. i entered a local best buy with a magnolia inside to give them the best chance of helping me make the decision. they had identical displays for both blu ray and hddvd. both with monitors playing demo discs. the first thing i noticed was that neither monitor was set up properly thus neither looked very good. at this point a bb employee asks if i need help. he explains to me that their is not much difference between the two other then some movies were not available in both formats, but those were older movies and all new movies are available on both. i left him and went to magnolia where it only got worse. it took 20 minutes for them to find their "home theater expert". this guy had never heard of pcm or dolby true hd or dts master audio. as i left he thanked me for "the information". note to BDA and retailers in general. educate the people in sales. you can spend all the money you want bribing movie studios and developing all this great new technology. but all that investment will be lost at the point of sale.

[w_tanoto]

I often played as dumb customer, wanting to be explained about HD. Yes, in Indonesia, all the sales person who I fooled all answer BLU-RAY is BETTER.... Well, that was Asia, where Blu-ray rule supreme.

[oldmike]

as there be so little adds on TV and most of the workers are clueless
it dose not shock me at all

[supersix4]

yep.. most people who work at bestbuys exc. arent looking to get knowledgeable on the things there selling and are just looking to get a paycheck, I cant stand teh people at bestbuy who are trying to push tv's dvd players

[Branden]

true, floor staff at places like BB need to be educated in what they're selling. but who's gonna do it? their managers/supervisors? yeah right, they're probably even more clueless.

Sony/BDA themselves need to spend some money educating retailers. even something as simple and cheap as throwing informative brochures into BD shipments for the staff to flip thru at the store could make a difference. or include some information on all those carboard displays promoting BD.
people are too lazy to spend 5 minutes and google "BD vs HD-DVD", but maybe they'll learn something if it's put into their hands or right in front of their face.

[oldmike]

i have a idea take a page from the fast food biz
in fast food they send out shopers who test store on pormos and stuff
if you pass aka you know about them you win $20+
do that for best buy types i know most of them whoud read
a page of crap if it can get them cash

[JadedRaverLA]

Originally Posted by oldmike

i have a idea take a page from the fast food biz
in fast food they send out shopers who test store on pormos and stuff
if you pass aka you know about them you win $20+
do that for best buy types i know most of them whoud read
a page of crap if it can get them cash

Retail stores use secret shoppers all the time. And usually employees get a bonus if they get a good score. The problem is you have a noncommissioned sales staff that could care less about selling anything... except the extended warranties for which they're paid an extra $0.50 or whatever.

Also, the secret shoppers aren't HDM experts at all... so as long as the employee SOUNDS knowledgeable they will get the points for actually BEING knowledgeable.

[pscoop]

We used to get secret shoppers at a car dealership I worked at. Those people were usually idiots who didn't have a clue. They were usually housewifes just trying to make $50.

[doctorD]

I think a good idea would be to do something similar to what disney is doing for a period of time (this coming holiday season) with the Disney Blu ray Tour, but to pay a store(s) (like Best Buy, Circuit City, Fry's, B&M, etc.) to allow a blu ray representative, from one of the supporting manufacturers, to be on hand near a display to help inform customers or potential customers of the fantastic technology that Blu ray is. This would greatly solve the problem that I've noticed at places like Best Buy with employees not really being informed (high turnover probably the cause) or giving their own person opinion, especially if it is not honorable as I have read in some posts (telling customers something like Disney movies will be on HD DVD or others).

Hopefully this is something that Sony has planned with potential announcement that is coming soon! Anyways, that's my $.02!

[oldmike]

or have the BDA to the shoping to see if there telling FUD or what not