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Have consumers wised up to technology retailers' schemes?

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  • 27-09-2013 3:19pm
    #1
    dukedalton
    Registered Users Posts: 404 ✭✭


    I'm not someone who buys new technology regularly and I was surprised recently at how the experience of buying in a large retailer a couple of months ago differed from my first purchase of a laptop ten years ago.

    I recently went to a well known, large, multinational electronics retailer to buy an iPad. To my surprise, all I had to do to complete the purchase was wait for the customer sales rep to fetch it from the storeroom, take a few details from me, and, having paid at the till, I was the owner of Apple's latest and greatest less than ten minutes after entering the store.

    This was in stark contrast to my previous experience of buying my first laptop from the same retailer some ten or so years ago. I wasn't in the store two minutes when I had my first offer of help from a customer sales rep. After about twenty minutes of looking around (and batting away many other offers of "help"), I had decided on what I wanted to buy. After fetching the laptop from the store room, the sales rep then brought me over to a petitioned area where she started taking some of my details. This process continued for a good ten minutes- it felt more like I was trying to close a deal on a multi million pound aircraft order than buying a laptop. She then made the insurance pitch, which I politely declined. A few more details later, she pitched again, but I stood firm. Finally, the third time, I'm embarrassed to say, I submitted, and bought insurance which was about 15% of the cost of the laptop. Part of the reason I submitted was because of the sales pitch, but another part was that I didn't really know a whole lot about laptops or technology generally, and thought the insurance would give me a bit of peace of mind. In the event, I never did use the insurance.

    So, I'm wondering, have the retailers scaled back the insurance sales pitch? Are the public now more au fait with technology than they were, say, ten years ago, and therefore are less inclined to fall for the retailers' insurance sales strategies?


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