Back in the late 90's, when I was in grad school, I spent several holiday seasons working for apple as a rep in Best Buy. It was a lonely job before apple had their own retail stores, but it demonstrated to me why they needed them. I helped a lot of people out during the 1st iMac push that otherwise would have been led to other computers.
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Incredibly Bad Shopping Experience...
- Thread starter eRondeau
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The people at Apple retail stores have also gone drastically downhill over the years, but in my experience, not as ignorant as that yet. But I have had multiple encounters where I knew more about the products, features, and services than they do. In recent years, they also have more of a tendency to talk about simple and old features to me over-excitedly as if they are some new technological breakthroughs. Maybe most customers know much less than I assumed, so this still works.
so you are mad he didn't know about the apple device they have no stock of, he isn't in charge of the logistics, that's on apple.
And workers with that attitude about their own work will stay minimum wage workers.
If you believe that attitude towards work has anything to do with wages then you have a lot to learn about the world
@jib2 why you mad?
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Just a few thoughts:
It's not only a computer store problem. Any shop, in any category, will save money by hiring young cheap labor without much experience, and not care much about the effect on sales - because everybody does it. So, you get lousy food served at restaurants because they don't have proper cooks, the waiter doesn't know a thing about food and expects me to speak english to them (here in Norway) and so on.
Something I feel is contributing to the bad consumer experience, I feel, is the 'attitude' you might experience with young people offering services today. In the old times you would expect a service person to put their personal feelings aside and just do their job, even if you were behaving like a jerk. Nowadays people seem to be unable to do that, so they get into arguments with customers. I think this comes from the "me" culture. "Your opinions matter", "you matter", "you should never let people put you down", this makes you less of a good service person, I believe.
Added; Also, there is the fact that in rich countries like mine, we older people don't need to work these low-paid jobs, and even the younger generation want to avoid it. So we get migrant workers for more and more jobs, and stuff like this happens.
It's not only a computer store problem. Any shop, in any category, will save money by hiring young cheap labor without much experience, and not care much about the effect on sales - because everybody does it. So, you get lousy food served at restaurants because they don't have proper cooks, the waiter doesn't know a thing about food and expects me to speak english to them (here in Norway) and so on.
Something I feel is contributing to the bad consumer experience, I feel, is the 'attitude' you might experience with young people offering services today. In the old times you would expect a service person to put their personal feelings aside and just do their job, even if you were behaving like a jerk. Nowadays people seem to be unable to do that, so they get into arguments with customers. I think this comes from the "me" culture. "Your opinions matter", "you matter", "you should never let people put you down", this makes you less of a good service person, I believe.
Added; Also, there is the fact that in rich countries like mine, we older people don't need to work these low-paid jobs, and even the younger generation want to avoid it. So we get migrant workers for more and more jobs, and stuff like this happens.
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Perhaps keep in my that while you are interested in these products, the people who you are talking to in many cases could not possibly afford said products
For them it’s just a low wage job dealing with tons of entitled *******s all day
Look it isn’t like I was an *****hole to the dude, I kindly showed him where it was, and he was nice about it.
I mean, we have all been there. For me it was long enough ago that I was a video store clerk, but we have all been there.
No biggie. Just funny. It doesn’t have to be that serious.
I mean, we have all been there. For me it was long enough ago that I was a video store clerk, but we have all been there.
No biggie. Just funny. It doesn’t have to be that serious.
However, it's reasonable to expect a chef to be better at cooking than I am, an accountant better at accounting, a programmer better at coding, or any professional better at their job than I am.
If they are not good at their jobs, then they are the entitled ones, since they are getting paid something, while their underserved customers must pay top dollars.
If you are eager to defend the "little guys" no matter what, then blame Apple for not training them properly, instead of blaming people for expecting what they are legally and morally entitled to as paying customers.
Should we not expect them to know more when they deal with these products for hours upon hours every day, just because they are less interested or cannot afford them? One might think this perspective is virtuous toward them, but I find it condescending, as if it's saying they are stupid and poor, and we should not expect more from them.
Just because some of them cannot afford these products, they can't even understand them beyond a non-expert power user like me? Nah, I can't go along with that. I can't look down on them that much. They're still human beings with regular intelligence. If they will become less entitled, and if Apple will train them better, then I am confident they can perform.
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Last week at my local Apple Store I asked why two external hard drives with the same capacity had such a different price (over 200 dollar difference). He said because one came with an orange rubber bumper that made it durable. 🙄
It was of course that one was an ssd and the other a mechanical spinning drive (something I admittedly at the time assumed weren’t sold anymore). The reason it surprised me was there really aren’t a million options of peripherals in an Apple Store. You’d think they would know them in and out, although I try not to judge others at their job as who knows how much they have going on.
It was of course that one was an ssd and the other a mechanical spinning drive (something I admittedly at the time assumed weren’t sold anymore). The reason it surprised me was there really aren’t a million options of peripherals in an Apple Store. You’d think they would know them in and out, although I try not to judge others at their job as who knows how much they have going on.
Chefs, accountants and coders are professional trades people
if you go to a restaurant and order a plate for less than, say, $30 and expect any chefs to be working there you may be quite surprised
Retail employee is not as professional trade, it’s a low wage job
I don't know what country you are in, but I don't know of any countries where you are legally entitled to any particular level of customer service
nope, I wouldn't
it's not that they can't, but rather, what's their incentive to do so?
not sure how they are being entiltled
it's likely more to do with wages than training
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For me the problem is more about the lack of order moreso than them grabbing the stock.
There is a happy medium. Apple store employees are not going to know every technical detail of the product, but enough to help a customer make a good choice. As with any product, some are more knowledgable about one area than another. The Apple store near me has a rep that is a wiz at graphics another at music, etc. The key is to let your needs be known and have them find the right rep to talk to.
The flip side, I’ve heard customers be very condescending to them. Well, if you’re that smart, why not just order online and save them from having to put up with you?
And apparently... they don't.
Last time I was inside that place, the salesperson literally followed me to the checkout, assuring me I would never find happiness if I didn't get their in-house extended warranty. Didn't look back and haven't been back.
Last time(s) I shopped at BB was when the WD Externals went on (an extreme) Sale . . . I purchased six, and de-oystered 'em for my Synology build.
As for main-line AAPL Stuff . . . in-store, only.
That reminds me of a recent store visit I had to the Apple Store. I was picking up my iPad mini, and whilst I waited for them to get it out from the back, a woman opposite was purchasing a 10th Gen iPad.
She wanted to know if it would work with her Apple Pencil that she currently uses on her old iPad. She specified it was the one with the 'screw off cap on top' - e.g. the 1st gen. It took two store employees to find the answer and when they did, it was incorrect - they said she'd need to buy the new USB-C Apple Pencil (which has even less features than the 1st gen. Apple Pencil at least as far as pressure sensitivity is concerned).
I don't blame the store employees at all, I blame Apple for their overly convoluted iPad accessory line, though I accept they're likely to fix that when they phase out the 1st and 2nd gen Pencil's, and stick to the regular usb-c version and the pro.
I bet the store employees will rejoice when that happens!
I walked into an Apple Store a couple of years ago to buy my wife a replacement iPhone case. I told the AS employee what I wanted and he said they didn’t carry that one anymore. I said yes you do and showed it to him on the display. I told him I needed it in green and he said oh we don’t have that color though. I told him yes they do and he responded he meant they didn’t have any in stock. I pointed out that the Apple website said it’s in stock at the store and he finally decides to go in the back and actually look. Surprise, they had 5 of them.
The line level workforce has just become wildly lazy, it’s not just a BB thing.
The line level workforce has just become wildly lazy, it’s not just a BB thing.
It's pretty useful if you want to preview a TV in person... before ordering it elsewhere 🤣
I bought my first Apple Watch some months back, and had some questions for the guy. He... just looked stuff up on Apple's website and read it out loud to me. Not a great experience!
The issue is not about the ignorance of a young minimum wage employee. It about an employee (independent of their age or experience) claiming to be expert when their not (“yep, I’m the Apple guy”) and the arguing to support a false statement (“there is no such thing as an Apple mini”).
All he had to say was, “I don’t know but I will find out.” It does not take age, experience or a high salary to say that!
All he had to say was, “I don’t know but I will find out.” It does not take age, experience or a high salary to say that!
Does anyone know if Apple Stores have access to an in-house Apple-curated app or online database that their store staff can refer to quickly when customers ask for comparisons and other data about Apple products that a salesperson doesn’t yet know about, or are they reduced to slowly navigating the Apple website to look up specs and other information like everyone else?