Rant: Console store employees!

[Silent_Buddha]

Yes, and that's the other side of the free market. Gamestop can offer you a crappy price, and you are free to reject it and try to find another buyer.

Back on topic...I don't go to Gamestop because 90% of the time, I end up feeling like I need to help some poor, confused customer that the idiots behind the counter can't help. The last time I was there, there was someone who needed better cables, and the Gamestop mouth-breather literally had no idea what the differences between composite, S-video, component, and HDMI were. I don't remember what the person ended up needing (I think he ended up with component cables), but explaining the basics of video cables to an employee was infuriating. I wasn't so much angry at the 17-year-old girl who didn't know anything as I was at Gamestop for being completely disinterested in training their employees on the basics of the products they sell.

I'm not expecting them to know how the USA in the Xbox allows for slightly fancier shaders than the PS3. I do expect them to know what a goddamned component cable is.

But at the end of the day, this is basically all the consumers fault.

Consumer's generally want the lowest prices. Hence stores must keep labor as low as possible.

You'll notice a trend (at least if you lived through the 70's and 80's as a consumer) from high service/high prices to the low service/low prices mentality as time passed. And hell the 70's and 80's were already a sign of lower service and hence lower prices than the decades preceding them.

Local stores eventually gave way to Large Chains/Franchies which in turn are giving way to Internet e-tailers.

So using computing for an example here. Way back in the day. You had Local shops who had generally knowledgeable people. People who were also generally paid above minimum wage and/or on commission. Then you had the large chain stores willing to dip down to minimum wage and leave the consumer on their own to figure out what was best for them if the store didn't luck out on a knowledgeable high school student willing to work for minimum.

So what did many computer people do? Go to the Local Shop for advice. Don't buy anything there. Then head to the large chain store to buy product for cheaper. Not everyone did this, but enough that the local shops start to close.

Now we're transitioning from large chains to the internet. People still go to the large chains in order to see a product in action and compare them with other product and even attempt to ask questions about product. Then they go to the internet and order it for cheaper.

Each step along the way you're going to lose knowledge and advice. Those things cost money. Retail locations allowing you to compare product A to product B cost money. Hence you go from local shops with high cost of business to large retain chains which can make a profit with lower margins but still have a relatively high cost of doing businessness, to the internet where you have both low cost of doing business and the ability to make a profit with even lower margins.

So we end up moving to a situation where eventually you'll have no ability to compare products on your own, will have to figure out what is good on your own, all in order to get the product for the lowest price possible.

Just like in the US we have almost no full service gas stations except in states that do not allow self service gas stations. The retail landscape is slowly moving that way. From full service (Local shops) to self service (internet shops).

Just imagine how much less information most consumers will have when buying consoles and games when there is no longer any local game shops. When most parents or grandparents don't want to spend more than 15-20 minutes to pick up a game or console for their kid. And hence won't spend much time looking up and researching these things because they have better things to do with their life.

Regards,
SB

 

[Lucid_Dreamer]

Yes they are idiots. The Point on GT5 was also foolish. He could have went on about the lack of track detail or the online component, but to say the "car goes slower at 1080p" just proves the point they are idiots (for the most part).

True, and even those points are on shaky ground. Plus, there would be the opportunity for an avalanche of comebacks from the other side.

I've run into a lot more of the experiences Nesh was talking about all over the country than the other way around. I try comparing information first. If they start to get out of hand, I laugh and walk away. For either side of the coin, the store manager should probably be alerted to the lack of correct information they sling, though.