This is normal in all PC World stores. Any salesperson not concentrating on the high margin items is an idiot. The sales persons commission is now, and has been for a number of years, based on the margin the personally make. The Chavy text speak is simply inexcusable.

Oh my god !! What is happening ?
You write “ProBlog” and you shop in PC World?
When did DixonsGroup ever sell anything
worthwhile buying??
If even people the likes of you are shopping there,
what chance do we have of ridding ourselves of
this kind of budget/factory reject/rubbish sales outlet??
Si

Thanks for the comment, Simone. Unfortunately, I went into several shops looking for BD-R discs and couldn’t find them anywhere. I needed them right there and then, so PC World was my only hope!

So that’s why they want affiliates to sell the IQ500! Still, I can’t see anything particularly damning here except their embarrassing slip up. Can you go back and get the sales figures – perhaps ask for a “sales brochure”?

“Blatant profiteering” is a gross exaggeration. A company abusing a monopoly (which PC World most certainly doesn’t have) would be guilty of that charge. Making a healthy margin on a new product is what subsidises the smaller profit (and often losses) on older stock. Why do they have stock? So that customers can go in and prod, touch, feel, experience the product at first hand – after which they will often walk out of the store and buy it online for less money.

Personally, I wouldn’t run a retail business for all the tea in the Co-op, and if you think there’s money to be made, try it sometime. Oh, and you might ask DSG International’s (the parent company) shareholders about “profiteering,” too. They have seen the value of their shares drop from 154p to a third of that in one year, with a 52-week low of just 34.75p.

You may dislike these vast retail sheds, but the cause isn’t furthered by inaccurate and snide remarks in response to a human error. I see nothing whatsoever reprehensible in circulating sales staff with bumph that encourages them to be enthusiastic and keen while at the same time helping to save their own jobs. You live in a capitalist country – that’s how it works, dear chap.

This reminds me of a recent TV program (Dispatches I think) that I saw on mobile phone stores. It was ranting on about how sales staff are pressured to bump people onto contracts rather than PAYG and to sell particular phones by putting much higher commission on them etc etc etc… Their main point was that ‘poor innocent victims’ were being upsold to products they didn’t need. Personally I think anybody who just walks into a national retailer, asks which product is best and then accepts the given price (and then buys the 5 year extended warranty that probably costs as much as the product did in the first place) deserves everything they get. I wasn’t surprised by that program and I’m not surprised here, although it’s always interesting to see some of the details.

John says

My own experience is that the shopfloor staff exhibit only superficial knowledge of the products on offer and lack real insight into current developments in information technology. I have found that they have attempted to tempt me with products that have unattractive features – whether components that are disappearing as later versions have been launched or the lack of features that have become commonplace. I understand now from your article that they must be sourcing these products at a considerable discount which is not passed on to the customer but retained to enhance the profitability of the store.

The ratings given in your tests must influence many people in their purchase decisions and cause the accummulation of surplus stocks of poorly rated items. I wonder where these items that receive poor ratings in your tests end up?

http://www.stockpicktime.info/microsoft-ever-a-penny-stock.html...

stock market vocabulary…