Hacker News Reader

Comment by angrycoder | Hacker News Reader

All the money Apple puts into engineering and marketing counts for squat if someone goes into an Apple Store and has to deal with salesperson who is unhelpful or not knowledgeable. Best case you end up with an unhappy customer, worst case you loose a sale or a customer for life.

The Apple Store isn't Walmart, the people that work there aren't just cashiers. Hang out in the Apple store for 10 minutes and listen to the people there talking to customers, now do the same thing at Best Buy.

View on HN

I've come to realise this is a New York thing, but every experience I've had an Apple Stores has been filled with smiley, doltish people who are terrible at honouring appointments on time. I go to the Apple Store when I'm willing to trade sanity for immediacy; otherwise I far prefer ordering online.

The Cupertino and Phoenix Apple Stores I've been to were different, but comparing apples to apples (no pun intended) I've had great retail experiences in other New York stores.

> I go to the Apple Store when I'm willing to trade sanity for immediacy; otherwise I far prefer ordering online.

I've learned that the Apple Store is not where I want to go for immediacy, either. Unless you are going when it's not filled with people, buying something is a pain. I cannot fathom the need to wait for a "sales" person to buy something specific.

If I want to buy an Apple product, I go someplace else. Apple stores have never been a prompt or efficient shopping experience for me.

I've had a lot of problems with the bay area Apple Stores, albeit not the Cupertino one.

Apple store employees are no different than BestBuy employees when it comes to knowledge level. The help they provide is the same as well, they get the stuff from the back.

If they were knowledgeable, they wouldn't be working at an Apple store.

/Mac user, won't waste my time walking into another Apple Store.

Not to mention that an apple store employee has to have significantly less knowledge than a best buy employee to be just as helpful. In the average best buy employee's department, there are probably a couple hundred products that they might receive questions about, plus a couple thousand more products that don't really require knowledge, like cables or cases. An apple store employee has to know apple's entire lineup, which by my count looks like less than 20 products (not counting variations or configurations).

Part of this goes back to Apple Store employees being trained to be helpful and knowledgeable, while Best Buy's employees are trained to upsell and prevent shrink.

I have. In both cases I had to leave quickly before while I could still suppress the urge to commit violence.

The only difference was a greater amount of smug condescension in the apple store, and a greater amount of brofest bra' salesmanship in Best Buy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com