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The Almighty Buck

Undercover Sales Consultants? 26

Posted by Cliff from the underhanded-corporate-tricks-or-shrewd-sales-move dept.
An Anonymous Coward asks: "I was speaking to a friend of mine who recently got a job for a major computer printer company. I asked him was his job was and was very suprised with his answer. The main function of his job was to work at one of the major US computer/electronic stores in the printer aisle. His company pays this retail chain to let him do this. He dresses in the same outfit the regular employees do, and spends all his time trying to convince people to buy printers made by his company. My question is, how common is this? Has this been going on for a while now, or is this something new? And am I the only one who thinks this is sleazy?" The only sleazy part is the fact that they are undercover. I would be really impressed with the company that would actually put some of their own people in sales chains and had them identified as such. Thoughts?
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Undercover Sales Consultants? More

Undercover Sales Consultants?

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  • Sleazy! (Score:3)

    by theDigitizer ( 239913 ) on Monday February 26, 2001 @12:54AM (#403225) Homepage Journal
    This is a very sleazy practice on the part of the Printer company. I wouldn't have a problem with having true non-undercover Canon or HP representatives in the printer aisle at Best Buy. I would love to ask them questions, because unlike most employees in those stores, they either don't know the answers to your questions, or are way to busy for you to find them and ask anything.

    Being able to ask a true live printer sales rep wouldn't be half-bad.

    On the other hand, having these undercover sales reps is totally wrong. If I'm asking an employee of one of these chains a question about this printer or this printer by another company, etc. I would expect unbiased opinions and facts. (as much as you could expect to be unbiased)

    However, with these undercover sales reps, it's biased, and you the consumer has no idea that it is. The undercover guy is pushing his product and you don't know that he is, and of course the main reason that this is wrong, is that the product he pushing you towards may not be the best and/or suit your needs properly as some other companies'.

    I guess all we can say is Cavet Emptor.

  • I misspelled the last part it should say: "Caveat Emptor" :)
  • Haven't you ever gone to a supermarket, and they're selling samples of this-and-that near the produce section?

    Guess what, those people don't usually work for the supermarket, but for the product being sold. Same idea, different venue.

    I found this out when I accidentally asked one of them where I could find a product, and she sheepishly explained she didn't work at the store itself, and didn't have a clue.

    This instance at the computer store is a very sleezy, but understandable extension of that very same practice.

  • The same kind of thing Happened at OfficeMax.
    They used to sell alot of different kinds of computers, and now there a minie-Gateway Country.
    Kind of makes me mad, as I know from personal experience, Gateway sucks.
    I'm using one right now, and I swear the Next computer, I'm building from scratch.
  • I've seen quite often big manufacturers of anything from office supplies to lipstick assign salespeople to distributor. The distributor gets one extra salesdrone to push the warez to the consumer and the manufacturer gets a preferred status in exchange. The impact on the consumer is not that much different from the biais of a salesman that pushes products that generate higher margins.

  • Sounds unfair for the retail chain. (Score:3)

    by billcopc ( 196330 ) <vrillco@yahoo.com> on Monday February 26, 2001 @04:04AM (#403230) Homepage
    I don't understand why a retail establishment would allow this sort of practice, although I don't know a thing about marketing. Assuming this did improve sales of Product-X, and I believe it does work, then it would have the inverse impact on Products Y and Z. The store wouldn't sell more products (maybe just a little), it would just keep selling the same stuff and eventually be stuck with obsolete hardware from the other brand names.

    As an example, picture this : Say your local pizza shack gets a Coca-Cola consultant "donated" to their business, who then takes orders on the phone. That guy will naturally sell much more Coke than Pepsi (or other Pepsi-brand drinks). The result is that for those who actually tell the Coke guy to fsck off and get their Pepsi, it will be a very flat Pepsi since it's been on the shelves for much longer than the other drinks. Still, the pizza shack doesn't sell many more drinks in total. Sure, Coca-Cola would be bribing them, but that probably doesn't make much of a difference.
  • I worked at a CompUSA location, and was hardly 'undercover'; I wore a Canon golf shirt.

    We mainly spent our day bullshitting with salespeople so that they would hock Canon printers (with ink) to their customers (netting me incentives) in turn I would help them hock extended warranties.

    There were other vendor reps, (HP, Epson, Wordperfect, Microsoft) none of whom were dressed in CompUSA uniforms. Most vendor reps wore company golf shirts, a minority wore shirts & ties with big 'Epson' or 'HP' nametags. No CompUSA manager would allow a vendor rep to borrow a redshirt, employees had to pay $25 for their red polo & nametag!

    Believe it or not, store management did not like us!! Although we moved product out of the store at $0 cost to them, we were not in the store to push warranties and phoney 'service', and were routinely harrased by the management.

  • Hmm. When did you last see a pizza shack that sold both Coke _and_ Pepsi? All the large chains have exclusive contracts with one or the other...
  • This isnt the same thing. OfficeMax only carries Gateway computers. And there are Gateway employees, dressed in Gateway uniforms, selling thier computers.
  • Raise your hand if you go into these "stores" expecting expert advice from the salespeople. Not many, I expect. At Best Buy or CompUSA these people are easy to spot, since they approach you and ask if you need help. Dead giveaway right there, as the average Best Buy floor walker takes more than a minute to figure out what that ringing noise is when next to the phone.

    These people are easy to spot, and easy to ditch. I just tell them EXACTLY what I am looking for, then they have to go and call the company for whatever product their flogging to get definitions and instructions. Gives me time to leave the store without making a purchase.

    Sleazy, stupid, underhanded and annoying. That sort of behavior does make me walk out of the store, and go next door to Circuit City, who, although involved with the Divx crap, has never whored themselves to me like this.

    --
  • So come one, post the name of the store as anonymous coward.
  • Even if the sales consultants are employed by the store, this is no guarantee that you get impartial advice. Companies run promotions for salespeople as well as consumers: and for retail electronics they can involve substantial gifts, or cash bonuses. For example, if a salesperon gets a $100 bonus this week if they sell 10 SuperGizmos, but not if they sell 10 HyperWhatevers, which do you think they will encourage you to buy! Next week it might be different, and HyperWhatevers will be the favorite.
  • Surprisingly most pizza shacks up here (Quebec/Ontario Canada) usually carry most drinks from Coke, Pepsi and Wet Planet, which means you can order your pepperoni cheese slice with a pepsi while your hyperactive buddy washes down his meatlover slice with a swig of Powerade. I guess the only semi-credible explanation for this is that Canadians are more religious about their drinks :) I personally don't care, my personal opinion is that pepsi is more syrupy while coke is more acidic.. either one goes fine with pizza though :)

  • They do! (Score:2)

    by Wog ( 58146 )
    "I would be really impressed with the company that would actually put some of their own people in sales chains and had them identified as such."

    Back in my days as a lowly CompUSA employee, we usually had an HP rep on the sales floor, in an HP shirt, selling the HP products. Nice folks, and not sleezy idiots like my other co-workers.

  • I don't understand why a retail establishment would allow this sort of practice

    That's an easy one... the printer company offers the store a higher margin in exchange for the dude talking up the printers. There is no down side for the store.

    The store gets a free employee who actually knows something about the product he is attempting to sell. The store might get 10% of the selling price instead of 7%. The printer company doesn't have to worry that the store's poorly trained sales staff is costing them customer. By selling more units, the increased margin and FTE is more than worth the cost.

    As another noted, this has been going on in stores (from food to automotive to hardware) for decades if not longer. All told, I don't have a problem with the practice. I'll take a sharp comporate shill over a brain dead computer stock boy any day of the week.

    InitZero

  • True, but dressing in the uniform of the store you're at indicates you work for the store, and not a vendor, thereby the salesperson should only be biased by his past experience and/or training. Instead, the 'store' salesperson is on a particular vendors payroll, and will therefore push nothing but that vendor's warez. That is deceptive, and I don't like that part of this scheme.
  • A few months ago I was at the Fry's [yahoo.com] in Anaheim and I saw a rep from Handspring in the PDA isle.
  • Where did you get that info?
  • And you knew he was a Handspring rep because he indicated as much. That is different than pretending to be a regular employee of the store.

    My company would never let us mis-represent ourselves. It is completely unethical. It is also unfair business practices.
  • Our name around here for Gateway's are cowputers.

    Seems strangley fitting for some reason...

    If you don't get it you obviously haven't seen the boxes their computers come in....

  • Hell, Pizza Hut is *owned* by Pepsi.
  • I'd like to see someone sue the store chain for illegally boycotting the competitors' products :)
  • ...because ... most employees in those stores, ... either don't know the answers to your questions, or are way to busy for you to find them and ask anything.

    Which is why I've given up trying to get help from the vast majority of store employees. Go to any mega store, and what do you find? Low prices. that's it. Working in these places isn't a career, it's something to do while getting your career started. Forget about getting useful information. There's a hardware store in my town, the kind with squeaky wooden floors, and a real old guy who knows exactly how many #2 washers they've got on hand, and probably remembers when they were invented. That's the kind of store I shop in.

    So what's so new about $PrinterCompany putting people on-site to push their product? I remember a friend of mine telling me (15 years ago) that $PrinterCompany2 was paying money direct to the sales people in his store for each $PrinterCompany2 printer they sold. The only difference now, is that $PrinterCompany recognizes that $SuperStore's sales staff are pitifully trained, and that if they want to move product, it has to be through properly trained sales people. It's a logical extension of what's been going on for years.

  • My father ran into one of these guys and he nearly took him to the cleaners ... He was looking over printer supplies for black ink, and the plainclothes cannon rep told him he needed this 60$ thing (an entire new printer head that also came with an ink tank) when he just needed the 12$ in k cartridge ... long story short, another employee stopped him and said "that dude gets a commision off all cannon products, you just need this ink tank here."

    However, this is the level of service I'm used to recieved at frys (bastards!).

  • Hell, Pizza Hut is *owned* by Pepsi.

    Nope - Pepsi sold off KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut a couple years ago because they figured it was hurting their ability to get into competing restaurants.

  • Whack! Reality strikes again. I had no idea. You're right, though, they're now owned by "Tricon Global Restaurants, Inc."

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