[RESOLVED] Are salesmen worse than customers?

[husker1]

I've seen a lot of posts about customers, but what about salesmen that won't take no for an answer?
The particular type of salesmen that bother me are the ones that sell toner cartridges. I receive at least one call a day inquiring if I want to buy the latest and greatest cartridges. They all start out with the same "are you the person in your company qualified to make purchases?" and eventually end up at "...should I send this care of you?" Has anyone ordered any of these cartridges that are made from poly-alumantic-carbide and can print 2.5 times more pages than your old cartridge? Is there anyway to get rid of these people?

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Windrivers.com is my startup page

[Larommi]

I tell these people that I do not have time to talk and give them a hotmail account to send their stuff to. I don't know who JohnSmith@hotmail.com is but I bet he hates me.



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You spend your whole life believing that you're on the right track,
only to discover that you're on the wrong train.

[Sowulo]

I have never done cold calls and I won't talk to someone who does. As soon as I know it's not a customer--click. Now I have recently had some calls who do a pretty good job of pretending to be a customer and then suddenly--the pitch--click!

[MAYHEM]

I talk to them. I talk to them ALL. Why, you ask? Because it gives me a break and if I can string them along for 10-15 min before I tell them we don't sell that crap, well, that's a few other scmucks they didn't get to bother today. It also means that's one salesman who won't bother me evr again.

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Who the hell is General Protection and why is he messing with my comuter?

[RLD]

If they can't be bothered to come in and talk to you in person, why bother?

No discounted sample to try out? No order!

[Prime]

Had some guy calling to sell me promo items...

HIM: "I just had a customer cancel an order so I have 4000 keychains I gotta get rid of, I'll custom print your company logo and info on them, how many should i put you don for?"

ME: "Ummm..."

HIM: *CLICK*

He would always hang up on me, I searched everywhere for his company name he gave me and found nothing. Then some GIRL called from the same place, I pretended to be interested and asked for a phone number where I could call back shortly to place my order, she replied "I don't know the phone number here, sorry." I asked if she could find it out and she said no.

Obviously this company is a sham. I'll be damned if I'll buy something from a company that I can't contact... YEAH SURE, HERE's MY VISA #!!!!

Then, there's those guys who come in about once a month with an incredible new cleaner that will clean anything. I was with a customer and I told him I don't have time to talk to him, so the jerk demonstrated on my monitor on the front counter... now the friggin thing has a big clean circle on it because he only cleaned a little spot. heh.

[TheLow1]

Go Rain Man on them, Start babbling about random, non-computer (what ever they are selling) topics. Usually scares them off

[klenard]

I absolutely hate talking to our sales guys, even though i have to. With out fail, i get a call once a week from a particular sales guy and he always.........always asks me questions that he could easily find in the manual of the product he is trying to sell.

"How much RAM will this board hold?"
"How fast of a CPU will this Mobo run?
"Is it AT or ATX?"
"How many expansion slots does it have?"
"How many bays does this case have?"
"Will this floppy fit into this case?"


I really, really hate talking to him.

[DonJ]

Getting back to toner cartidges, just tell him that your customers have had nothing but problems using recycled or third-party cartridges and that you strongly recommend using only OEM materials...that'll usually shut 'em up.

[WickedTech]

To get sales/telemarketing types to stop calling you (at least in the US), tell them you're not interested and that you wish to be removed from their calling list. If they call you back w/in a year or so; then they are breaking the law and can be sued.

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You did what? I'm sorry but that's not supported.

[cyberhh]

To put in my two cents about salesmen. To those of you who work retail - is there anything worse then salesmen? If you take all the biggest Pain in the A**, morons, sociopaths and psycotic retired nimrods and compile them, distill the good parts out and throw them away, shape the gelatinious mass into something faintly resembling human, give it a name and place it at the employment office it would gravitate to sales and become a retail computer salesman.
I have had computer salesmen tell me that they don't need to know anything about computers - that's what I am here for. I have watched salesmen flat out lie about a peice of equipment, then tell me that it was the truth "a 386 is faster than a Pentium" or "Office 97 runs under Windows 3.1 fine" you can always hang up on cold calls, but the salesman you work with is a much larger demon.
Thanks for letting me vent

[SavagePenguin]

Them: "Hi. May I please speak to the person who does purchasng?"

Me: "She's in [pick random out-of-state city] for a trade show. She'll be in Tuesday of next week."

Them: "Thank you. I'll call again later."

They never call back.

[pga]

about 5 years ago i was in computer city (before they went belly up) to pick up some odd ball ram for a customer who couldn't wait 24 hours for me to have it shipped.

Two things i saw/overheard:

One customer asked the sales person where the hard drives, cases, mobo's, and cpu's were because he was going to build a computer. The sales person said they don't sell computer parts, just computers and software. (Behind the salesman and for that matter the whole left hard side of the barn sized store were nothing but computer components!)

Another customer was looking for a replacement signal cable for his monitor, the sales person told him that he should buy a new monitor becuase if he ran the wrong software through the monitor it may start on fire! (the salesman was friggin serious!!!)

click on this link for a salesman who told a guy that compact flash can only be used once and must be discarded after taking a photo:
http://forums.windrivers.com/cgi-bin/forum/Forum17/HTML/002404.html

Some salespeople may actually be worse than customers!! Either that or they are just bad liars who are commission hungry.

[pga]

We used to use... and i repeat "used to use" SuperXXX (XXX is being used to prevent any slander issues) as one of our suppliers.

Ever call to put in a order and the "salesperson" thinks 1.44MB, 10.2GB, and .26dp are "brand names"?? Just to be funny once..

Just for fun and on a whim I asked one of their salespeople what the clock multiplier and bus speed for a 450MHz PIII was... the answer... "uh....duh... ummm". We don't use them anymore.

If I am spending my money with a supplier, I'd like them to at least be able know that the "computer" is not called a "hard drive" or "modem" and that the "monitor" is not called a "computer".

I almost visualize the guys in charge of hiring employees walking by an alley downtown and saying "hey jim, there's a guy with potential, plus he'll probably work for peanuts!" while pointing a a bum lying in his own puke, pee, and drool.

Aside from not having the terminology down, they never shipped what we ordered but did ship what we didn't order! Then we'd have our money tied up for 30 days because we had to do an RMA on stuff we did not order!

What I didn't realize, until after I saw it on the BBB site and spoke with our attorney is that:

According to US Law, if you are sent something that you did not order, it is a "gift"!! you do not have to pay for it, you do not have to ship it back, and there is nothing the company who shipped it to you can do about it!!!! This is to protect the consumer from being forced to purchase something they did not want.

Wish I'd have know that when I was shipped a dozen CPU's and mobo's I didn't order!! My attorney said I could have cancelled my check and kept the merchandise! When this happens it should be considered a "gift"!!

BBB link, in case this ever happens to you (this focuses on an office supply scam, but it applies to any merchandise): http://216.46.241.4/library/supply.asp




[This message has been edited by pga (edited October 04, 2000).]

[pga]

Salesperson: Hello is (Mispronouced Name) there?

Me:No

Salesperson: Well is there someone there in charge of purchasing?

Me:No... but I am in charge of buying.

Salesperson:You've been selected as one of our lucky... blah blah blah

Me: (holding the phone to my mouth and screaming as loud as I possibly can) I WON! I WON! I FINALLY WON SOMETHING!!! OH MY GOD!!! I CAN'T BELIEVE IT!!! I WON!

Then I hang up.... they never seem to call back....



[This message has been edited by pga (edited October 05, 2000).]

[Sharlet]

I just put them on hold and forget them.

[Jallentino]

I have been to the big stores and had salesmen approcah me to buy a PC like a vulture. Sometimes I brush them off but other times I have a little fun with them and ask some questions that I know they have no answer for, but they ALWAYS seemt to make something up. I asked one guy if they had a foot controlled mouse so I could free up a hand when surfing for porn. He just walked away.....