How not to sell me a white noise machine or a bottle of hair volumizer
First stop – Brookstone:
Tacy and I enter the store and are approached by a sales associate.
SA: Can I help you?
Me: Yes, we’re looking for a white noise machine. Our old one – also from Brookstone – has crapped out.
SA (leads us to display): Here they are.
Me (to SA): Thank you.
Me (to Tacy): Let’s look at them.
The model he pointed to is a newer one and has a dozen different sounds – including white noise. It costs $99. We look at the other side of the display and find a model that looks exactly like our old one, except that it’s white and has only six sounds – including white noise. It costs $60.
Me (to Tacy, as I pick up one of the lower-priced models): We’re getting this one.
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Second stop – Beauty Brands:
Tacy and I enter the store and are ignored.
T: May I look at the bubble bath?
Me: Yes. Just stay where I can see you.
I look all around the store for the Aveda display. Despite my obvious cluelessness, I am still ignored, so I approach a sales associate.
Me: Where are your Aveda products?
SA (jerks head in opposite direction): On that side.
I return to the other side of the store and check the displays again. No Aveda. I return to the same associate to ask for more specific directions.
Me: I cannot find the Aveda display on that side.
SA: Maybe it’s over here.
Me: I’ve looked over here too.
SA: Maybe we don’t carry it. What’s the name again?
Me: Aveda.
SA: Oh. I’ve never heard of it.
Me: But you said it was over there.
SA: I might have been thinking of Alterna. Sounds the same.
Tacy and I leave without purchasing anything.
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In the car:
Me: That girl was not helpful at all.
T: Why not?
Me: She didn’t pay attention to what I asked for. She was lazy and didn’t know the products. And if she works in a beauty supply store, it’s her job to know the products.
T: The man who sold us the white noise machine was helpful.
Me: He was better than she was, but he still wasn’t very good.
T: Why not?
Me: Well, he either didn’t know that the store carried more than one kind of white noise machine – OR he did know and was trying to sell us the more expensive one without explaining why it was better. It’s his job to know what products the store has and to offer us a choice. Since he didn’t, we had to look around ourselves.
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Moral of the story: Don’t bother with Beauty Brands or Ulta (where I’ve also been ignored) – spend the extra money at an actual salon or an Aveda store. And don’t immediately buy exactly what the sales associate hands you unless you’re sure that it’s exactly what you want – they may not know their products as well as they should (or as well as you do).
August 11th, 2007 at 11:22 am
I love me some aveda products….
love it!
August 11th, 2007 at 11:49 am
Yes, Aveda products are awesome. (I’ve got a similar post about crappy customer service in the works…)Hope your day got better from there.
August 11th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
Heh. Seems like just about anywhere I go, I know more about the product I am seeking than the sales associate. I do homework before I go.
Once, in Ulta, I saw a sales associate instructing a customer in how to apply Bare Minerals foundation. He was doing it ALL wrong (I’ve worn it for around five years now) and she looked horrible. She declared that she wasn’t buying any of that crap.
I butted in, politely, and told her I’d been wearing it for five years, was in fact, wearing that very moment, and asked if she would be willing to let me try. She was. And I sold her like $200 worth of BE.
She told the SA that I should get his commission on that sale. LOL!
August 11th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
Plus at the Aveda store they will give you the yummiest hot tea in the world and let you take your time not making up your mind. So worth every extra penny I might spend there.
August 11th, 2007 at 5:47 pm
I have to agree with you on Beauty Brands. I’m not the most fashionable girl, and I think they always judge me when I go in there. I spend more on beauty products than any other girl in my circle of friends, but get ignored in their stores anyway. But their liter sale is hard to resist!
August 11th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
Hair products: I buy whatever my hairdresser uses, off his shelf.
Those beauty stores? Intimidate me with choices. I get a makeover and then buy whatever the girl suggests for about 5 years, when it suddenly doesn’t look so good on me anymore. Then I update.
Do we see a trend here, LOL?
I have to say sales people like that are my pet peeve (well one of them, I should say peeves).
Good moral of the story.
Julie
http://theartfulflower.blogspot.com
August 11th, 2007 at 7:23 pm
Oh, man, I love Aveda. And I’ve never had to search for help in that place. They’re fantastic.
I worked in a beauty supply store in college & damn, I never realized what a fantastic sales associate I was until I became more of a consumer. So many stores would do so much better if they just trained their people a bit….
August 11th, 2007 at 9:17 pm
I LOVE when object lessons like this present themselves though. I mean, if anything, you got it going on with the educational aspect.
And? Wow! That firs white noise machine is amazing.
August 13th, 2007 at 10:40 pm
I didn’t know you actually *could* get Aveda outside an actual Aveda shop.
August 14th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
I really love that you explained to Tacy exactly what the sales associates did wrong and what they should have done to be better. Like OMSH said, a great object lesson, one that will likely help your daughter be a better consumer and sales associate (if she wants to be one) in the future. Nicely done!
August 15th, 2007 at 5:41 am
Ah yes: service. A lost art.