Saturday 30 August 2008

Pathetic sales people

We watched WALL-E yesterday. What a great movie. Simply amazing experience. This was my first PIXAR movie in the cinema hall ;)

That apart, we ( Naveen and I ) wanted to buy some ear phones after the movie. Particularly the ones with the ear plugs like stethoscope that block the ambient sounds completely. They're really nice. Good bass and the max volume doesn't produce any external sound. We went to City Centre Mall first. We roamed around and did not find any.

Then on our way to Ashoka Metropolitan, we went to a few other stores.
- UniverCell: A mobile phone store that sells authentic products. I bought my S500i here. Back then, in this shop, I saw the ear phones I mentioned about. So, I asked them that I want ear phones. Here's the conversation

me: Hi, I want to buy ear phones.
Salesman (S ): Sorry sir, this is a mobile store. We don't have ear phones here.
me: Do you have mobile phone accessories ?
S: Yes we do.
me: OK fine. I would like to see sony ear phones for my mobile.
S: Sorry sir, we don't sell earphones here. We have mobile accessories.

What the -. How else am I supposed to tell him ?
LESSON LEARNT: Ear phones for mobile pieces do not count as accessories.

Then we went to the next store.
- Planet - M ... Mobile, Music, Movies and Masti: We went in and there was a guy who did not even bother to ask what we wanted but he was just staring at us. I went to him and asked

Me: Hi, I need some ear phones, do you sell them ?
S: For your iPod/MP3 Player ?
Me: No. For my phone/pc
* He takes me over to a place and shows me some headphones *
Me: Don't you have those ear plugs ?
S: Do you want them for your iPod ?
Me: I want them for my PC/Phone.
S: We don't have them.
Me: You said you have them, didn't you ?
S: Do you want 2.5mm jack or 3.5 mm jack
( At this stage, I gave up the quest for ear phones for my mobile )
Me: 3.5 mm , the ones which I could use with a PC.
* He goes and brings someone else. This new person had a decent build and a dark complexion. He was not very tall but looked like a typical Hyderabadi guy *
New Salesman: [ with a Why-do-people-buy-things-here look on his face ] Kya Honã ?
* Oh! What the hell !? *

We were very tired after about 2 hrs of walking in city centre and banjara hills for mobile stores. We decided to go to Ashoka Metropolitan. This was our last Hope. I was very glad to see a store "X-CITE" dedicated completely to electronic/mobile equipment. Phones, cameras, TVs etc.
I was really amazed with the warm welcome we received there. Two people came to us even before we put in our second step and greeted us. It's not until they start speaking you'll know what kind of trouble you are into.

*Naveen and I walk in and two people ( Say S1 and S2 ) came to us*
S1: A very good afternoon sir. My name is ****. How may I assist you ?
* I've heard this dialouge before *
Me: We want to look at some earphones.
S2: Please come with me sir
* Naveen went with him as I was staring at the shelf with lots of earphones to my 10 O'clock *
S3: A very good afternoon sir. My name is ****. How may I assist you ?
( Then I remembered. This is how they greet when you call the customer care. What sort of people do they bring in here! Uphh! )
* I repeated to him what I wanted. And surprisingly he leaves *
S3: Please wait a moment sir, let me check.
...
* He comes back and tells me *
S3: These are the ear phones we have
* Pointing at the ones that I am looking at *
( Wow! Is it ? I thought these were 29" plasma TVs you freak )
Me: I want them either for my phone ( I show him my phone ) or to use them with my PC
S3: Sir, you can use them with your iPod.
Me: I don't have an mp3 player.
S3: No sir, they are for iPod
Me: Ok, are these with 2.5mm jack or 3.5mm ?
* Thinks for a while and brings another person S4 *
S4: You shouldn't use them with your PC sir. They won't last more than 2 months.
Me: What!? Why ?
S4: Because, PCs produce huge output and these phones can't handle so much of output and they will quickly stop working. You should be using these instead [ pointing at a very large headset ]
* :O As I was shocked by the pure awsomeness of his enlightening lesson, Naveen came and asked if I had any luck ? A sales lady was coming along with naveen talking something *
Naveen: No, I don't want those regular earphones. I want the ones that go INTO the ear. The "plugs"/"buds"
SL: Oh! Those ? Yeah. we do have them. Please come with me sir.
* We went with her but she again showed us the normal earphones *
Me: No, we didn't mean these. We want those that go INTO the ear.
SL: These WILL go into the ear sir.
* Oh! Really ? Those might as well go right into your C or up your colleague's A. Did you try ? You perhaps should *

We gave up our hope and had a good coffee at Barista. Seriously, what is wrong with the people in these shops? They don't have basic technical knowledge about the things they sell. I had a similar experience when I went to Abids to buy my mobile. I ask for tech specs and they say FM Radio, 2MP camera, expandable upto 2GB memory . Just the three. Once I asked for more detailed specs and the sales person said: "Sab phonã mai is se jyada kya hoga ?"

Right. "Is se jyada kya hoga?" Screw the iPhone,HTC, etc. All you need in a phone is a 2 MP camera, FM Radio and memory expandable upto 2GB.

PS: What is the Portuguese character 'ã' that I used in a couple of places?

3 comments:

pkj said...

I haven't had much success either while browsing mobile phones. But e-zone at City Center once had a salesman who knew what each feature meant in a mobile phone and could short list and show phones based on my list of features.

I'm surprised that a salesperson knew what is the difference between 2.5 and 3.5 jacks ;)

Sleeper said...

i still cant figure out how the portugese 'A' is pronounced.
if only you could include a wav file it would be helpful.

harith said...

@der hacker, der nie war I could explain clearly if I know what languages you could speak