Sales People Can Suck a Nut

We’ve all heard tales of pushy and/or less than knowledgeable sales people, without a doubt. I had a few ‘experiences’ this week with these types of sales people that I just have to share.

Shut up! Shut up! Just, shut up!

I’m in the market for a capture device so I can grab video from consoles. I have it narrowed down to a few that I have to order as no local stores carry them. I was in a local independent shop the other day and as I was making my way towards the checkout, I decided to ask if they had any decent capture devices. They normally only carry Allinwonder’s or those cheesy firewire PCI cards. Sure enough, that’s all they had. When I told the guy what I was looking for, he immediately jumped into a pitch for this 9800 Allinwonder. I stopped him in his tracks immediately as I’m not a fan of ATI – had some wicked bad experiences with them in the past which resulted in me taking a picture of my ATI card amongst some rotting food in the garbage and sending it to them with some carefully worded hate mail. But anyway, the guy just would not let it go. He was determined to sell me this 3 year old videocard. As I’m walking away he jumps in front of me with this Pinnacle firewire PCI card. The rest of the conversation went something like this.. oh, and keep in mind, the entire time I’m trying to get around him so I could fuckin’ leave!

Dude: This thing’s great, it has 2 firewire ports so you could capture from 2 sources at once.

Me: What? No you couldn’t. And what console has firewire ports?

Dude: Oh, well you could use this adapter which has every input imaginable.

Me: Does it have component or s-video? Or just composite?

Dude: All of them! And it even has RCA!

That’s when I pushed my way passed him and booked it out the door. I was looking at the thing while he was bullshitting me and it only had composite.

Asshattery at EB Games

There’s an EB Games just up the street and most of the employees are good, honest people. They play games and I can usually get some solid answers out of them. This new guy however… not the quickest bunny in the forest. As I’m walking out the door, literally, I had the door open – I looked back and said jokingly, “You don’t have any 360s do you?”

Dude: We do actually! We have 2 Core units. They’re $100 cheaper and you don’t have to spend $129 on a harddrive.

Me: But the Premium package which is $100 more comes with the $129 harddrive plus a bunch of other stuff.

Dude: Yeah, but you don’t need it anyway. Just the other night I took my memory unit over to my buddy’s place with 3 demos on it.

Me: Really? What demos? Geometry Wars and shit like that?

Dude: No – Fight Night, Quake 4 and Project Gotham Racing 3.

Me: You’re talking about the 64 MB memory unit, right?

Dude: Yeah, it’s only $30 and is better than paying $12…

Me: Dude, there’s no way! I know for a fact the Quake 4 demo is over 300 MB.

Dude: No it’s not.

Me: *long pause + deep breath* Yeah it is. You clearly have no idea what you’re talking about and should probably be flipping burgers instead of spouting bullshit to customers.

I made my exit and as I was getting in my car, looked back to see 2 people that were waiting in line walking out the door empty handed. No doubt, they had been coaxed into buying something that didn’t suit their needs by this red haired asshat.

For my own piece of mind, I asked a friend to look up the sizes of the demos he mentioned and sure enough, that dude had no idea what he was talking about. Fight Night = 486.44 MB, Quake 4 = 600.55 MB (I was a little off!), Project Gotham Racing 3 = 1.25 GB! Hah! You would actually need 36 memory units to hold those 3 demos.

</rant>

I think these experiences may have just turned me into one of those guys who, when asked if they need help, instantly replies with a sharp “No!” Maybe I should just stick to shopping online?