The Nightmare of IT in Retail

Originally Written: May 13, 2008 (In case of obsolete content)

Playing around with computers all day was supposed to be fun. It was a blast during my high school days. Working on computers in a retail environment has been very stressful in comparison. I run into a lot of problems with these consumers. A lot of stuff I have to deal with at my workplace is handling exchanges and returns for stupid customers. Once these people enter the building their IQ drops and their brain stops working. Here is why I think IT is a Nightmare in retail.

1) People can’t read:
Customers at my store always fail to carefully read signs, price tags, rebates forms, etc. They will argue often with a cashier about a price they saw on the shelf which was for a different product. If they had actually bothered to read it they might discover a sale is actually over, or that the product they are looking at is in the wrong spot. These customers also fail to read closed signs or store return policies. They just assume they can get into the store because they see people inside.

Once I had a customer wait outside after we closed for 45 minutes to discuss doing a return with the Manager who just told him to shut his cake hole and go away. We are closed for returns an hour before the store itself closes.

2) Return Policies & Customers who hate them:
Customers seem to think that Futureshop and Best Buy store policies are the law. They fail to realize that just because those stores have massive profit doesn’t mean every other store can afford to give full refunds on opened products. On the small business side of the computer business it’s a hyper price competition. A lot of these computer stores have really small margins and have to charge restocking fees to balance out the discount they will have to give the next customer just to sell the open box product.

When a customer doesn’t like the store policy they usually do the following:

- Threaten to have the store published in the newspaper (usually the Brampton Guardian) as if anyone actually cares.
- Threaten to and actually report the store to the Better Business Bureau for stuff that’s not even a violation.
- Tell us they should have brought a gun and/or leave soon before they get violent. (I am not exaggerating, this happened!)

3) Frugal Behavior:
Customer’s try to get away with anything, even to save fifty fucking cents! I’ve actually received calls from people who call my store and ask if they could return opened packages of DVD recordable media because they saw it cheaper somewhere else. I’ve had people ask for power supplies that they very well know could burn down their homes. No logic at all, they are just chosen because they are cheaper. The stores are also cheap. Insufficient tools, bad store policies, and being understaffed. This leaves the Technicians aruging with customers about restocking fees instead of working on systems. These types of places make technicians do computer building/fixing and doing all of the customer service returns.

4) Brainlessness:
I recently had to give a customer his money back on a hard drive he purchased for his notebook. He tried to tell me the drive was defective, I tried it out on my computer and it worked fine. I suggested that he contact IBM to find out the capacity that was supported by his notebook. He insisted his notebook worked with “every capacity hard drive”. He had an IBM Thinkpad, which stopped being made by IBM a few years ago. A 250gb SATA Notebook drive isn’t going to work with it without at least a BIOS update. I tried to explain this to the customer but he was too slow and didn’t respond well to suggestions.

I’ve also had other stupid customer problems and they are as follows:

- Not realizing that 24-pin power supplies can be adapted to fit older 20 pin motherboards, usually by unclipping plastic.
- Buying a network switch and wondering why it won’t split off their Rogers or Bell internet (Hint: It’s called a ROUTER).
- Installing their motherboard without risers, cauing shorts and usually frying their motherboard and voiding their warranty.
- Customers who think that their motherboards “parts and labour” warranty covers the labour I charge for replacing a motherboard.
- People think that I have nothing to do and beg me to fix/test or install hardware into their computer while they wait.
- Some customers forget to plug in their 12v connector to their motherboard and freak out about their new stuff being defective.
- Customers who buy things automatically assuming they work with Windows fucking Vista.
- They forget to bring the paperwork for computers they have in service. I tell every single person if they lose their paperwork they lose their computer.

5) The Labelers:
These people need a category of their own. The ones who think they are smart about organizing their shit. They write down instructions on paper for doing simply tasks on their computer. I’ve seen these people write on their optical drives so they could remember which drive letter it was in windows. I always laugh when I reinstall XP on these people and those letters change around. I could fix it, but it’s not as funny when I do that. They are almost as bad as the people who put Apple Computer stickers on their PC wishing they had a Mac.