Clueless.

[xequence]

I took back my Sony MP3 player to futureshop today. The audio department people were clueless!

Them: You should use windows media player to convert all your music to WMA and then to transfer your music to your MP3 player
Me: My music is already in MP3, chaging it to another lossy format is called transcoding and it gives you bad quality
Them: No it wont
Me: Anyway, it would take days to re encode 600 songs
Them: No, it does it automatically
Me: Manually or automatically, it still takes time. On average 4 minutes per song to encode them, ive tried it before. Plus there is no advantage of WMA anyway
Them: It is half the file size, but the same bitrate
Me: The bitrate basically determines the file size

I HATE FUTURESHOP.

[YourSurrogateGod]

/me puts futureshop on the "do not visit" list...

[xequence]

/me puts futureshop on the "do not visit" list...

Hopefully that will save you some headaches down the road :P

Seriously, I had 3 audio department dudes telling me this stuff. They were just so annoying, especially one that was acting like I was the clueless one.

[nebyah]

Hopefully that will save you some headaches down the road :P

Seriously, I had 3 audio department dudes telling me this stuff. They were just so annoying, especially one that was acting like I was the clueless one.
No offence intended but I think maybe you are the clueless one. Consider the following:
1. Microsoft are the bestest.
2. Bill Gatest is God.
3. WMA is from Microsoft.

Therefore, QED, WMA can compress to almost nothing while maintaining any damn bitrate level you like, and it is not lossy at all, because of point three. If the facts seem to support your position then refer to point two. Also...

Aw hell I can't go on with this. WMA is the work of the devil, and those three audio department persons are just his evil minions trying to lure you to the dark side. I should know - I've slain plenty of evil minions in my time.

[cdhotfire]

I took back my Sony MP3 player to futureshop today. The audio department people were clueless!

Them: You should use windows media player to convert all your music to WMA and then to transfer your music to your MP3 player
Me: My music is already in MP3, chaging it to another lossy format is called transcoding and it gives you bad quality
Them: No it wont
Me: Anyway, it would take days to re encode 600 songs
Them: No, it does it automatically
Me: Manually or automatically, it still takes time. On average 4 minutes per song to encode them, ive tried it before. Plus there is no advantage of WMA anyway
Them: It is half the file size, but the same bitrate
Me: The bitrate basically determines the file size

I HATE FUTURESHOP.

That was a good laugh.:p

[public_void]

You get that sort of thing at any electrical/PC shop. I worked at a electrical shop for some time, and the things that customers got told was the twisted truth, or a lie, and mainly sales driven.

But it unsettling to know those salespeople are not along link (http://rinkworks.com/stupid/cs_stupsales.shtml).

[nebyah]

I did some years in retail (photographic, PC) and I wouldn't exactly call it lying. Some sales people I worked with didn't like to admit to not knowing, so they' just kind of make it up. Also, sales people listen to each other, then tend to repeat anything that worked for the other sales guy. Then things that are totally crap end up becoming common knowledge about that store. And it all begins in ignorance, and an inability to admit it.

The cure for this is "I don't know, but I'll find out for you" repeated often, possibly tattooed to their foreheads so whenver they look at each other they get to read it.

[xmastree]

I took back my Sony MP3 player to futureshop today.Just out of interest, why were you returning it in the first place?

[BWF89]

Sorry Xequence but I've delt with people even more clueless. This happened sometime last week before Thanksgiving vacation.

So I'm sitting there in my Intro to Computers class surfing the web when this freshmen whos sitting next to me says:

Freshmen: You can play Halo on these things!
Me: Where, you don't have the disc?
Freshmen: I tried downloading it, but I didn't want to get in trouble so I cancelled the download.
Me: These are Macintosh computers, Halo was only ported to Xbox and the PC.
Freshmen: This is a PC

So at this point I thought he was just joking around because no one in their right mind could get Macintosh and the PC confused right?

Me: No, this is Macintsoh.
Freshmen: No, I'm pretty sure this is a PC.
Me: Do you see that little apple symbol under the monitor?
Freshmen: Yes
Me: That means that it's Macintosh
Freshmen: I didnt know that

[poptones]

Sorry, but this seems a little... misguided. It's like complaining about radio shack salesman or even wal-mart employees.

Would you work in one of these stores for what they pay? Of course, if you have real knowledge and skill you're going to find a better job than these places offer. The people working in these stores are more likely to be students who have other things to worry about. So, what do you expect?

[egon spengler]

Sorry, but this seems a little... misguided. It's like complaining about radio shack salesman or even wal-mart employees.

Would you work in one of these stores for what they pay? Of course, if you have real knowledge and skill you're going to find a better job than these places offer. The people working in these stores are more likely to be students who have other things to worry about. So, what do you expect?

I don't think that it is that unreasonable to hope that if a sales person gives you technical advice about making a purchase, quite possibly an expensive purchase, that they should have at least a vague inkling of what the hell they are talking about.

If they presented themselves honestly as not being experts then I'm sure there would be less complaints (though of course some will always complain regardless), the issue is that people don't like being misled into buying shabby equipment

[pete]

It is definitely unreasonable to expect a given salesperson to have expert knowledge of every item the store carries, but I don't think that's the issue here. The problem is clueless salepeople who act as though they are experts, and treat the customer like a jerk for asking stupid questions.

I'm reminded of pretty much every time I have (against my better judgement) decided to set foot in a Radio Shack...

Me: I'm looking for a 4-pin s-video cable.
Salesperson: There's no such thing.
Me: There is such a thing. I've seen it, I've researched it, and I have several pieces of equipment that have 4-pin s-video jacks on them.
Salesperson: I don't know what you saw, but it sure wasn't an s-video cable.
Me: [goes up the road to Best Buy and gets a 4-pin s-video cable]

At least they don't try to get my phone number anymore.

[Mr_J_]

Normally large stores hire non technical folk to do those jobs.
All you probably have to say is "I know about computers." and your in there if you look good.
When I actually meet someone who even has a bad clue, but is willing to learn it's some sort of miracle.

Funnier would be it if you demand they help you in linux.
Most people in large stores are Windows drones or evil Gates minions.

If I try to get help even in stores that are suposed to know what I'm talking about it still is no help asking them. They still don't have a clue.

The other day I was trying to get prices on motherboards for P4 775 with 955 chip.
I just ask a sales clerk if they have motherboards with that chip and he has no idea of what I'm talking about. How hard is it? It's on most motherboards box cover. They want people to know that it's there.

It's always like if it's a grocery store and your buying sugar or something.

[xequence]

Funnier would be it if you demand they help you in linux.

Yea, I wasnt even going to think of what they'd say if I said I didnt have windows media player :P


No offence intended but I think maybe you are the clueless one. Consider the following:
1. Microsoft are the bestest.
2. Bill Gatest is God.
3. WMA is from Microsoft.

Therefore, QED, WMA can compress to almost nothing while maintaining any damn bitrate level you like, and it is not lossy at all, because of point three. If the facts seem to support your position then refer to point two. Also...

Aw hell I can't go on with this. WMA is the work of the devil, and those three audio department persons are just his evil minions trying to lure you to the dark side. I should know - I've slain plenty of evil minions in my time.

I should have known better ;)


Sorry Xequence but I've delt with people even more clueless. This happened sometime last week before Thanksgiving vacation.

So I'm sitting there in my Intro to Computers class surfing the web when this freshmen whos sitting next to me says:

Freshmen: You can play Halo on these things!
Me: Where, you don't have the disc?
Freshmen: I tried downloading it, but I didn't want to get in trouble so I cancelled the download.
Me: These are Macintosh computers, Halo was only ported to Xbox and the PC.
Freshmen: This is a PC

So at this point I thought he was just joking around because no one in their right mind could get Macintosh and the PC confused right?

Me: No, this is Macintsoh.
Freshmen: No, I'm pretty sure this is a PC.
Me: Do you see that little apple symbol under the monitor?
Freshmen: Yes
Me: That means that it's Macintosh
Freshmen: I didnt know that

I really hope the futureshop people could tell a Mac from a PC ;)


Just out of interest, why were you returning it in the first place?

It has two flash drives, each of 512 MB. I couldent change the music in the first drive, and I could only change the music in the second drive sometimes. The little annoying program sony makes me use to put music on it was really messed up, I wish they would just let me drag and drop files to it with a file manager. They showed up and mounted as external drives on my computer, but that annoying program said "Device has been disconnected". Odd, since I was running the program from the drive that was apparently disconnected.


I did some years in retail (photographic, PC) and I wouldn't exactly call it lying. Some sales people I worked with didn't like to admit to not knowing, so they' just kind of make it up. Also, sales people listen to each other, then tend to repeat anything that worked for the other sales guy. Then things that are totally crap end up becoming common knowledge about that store. And it all begins in ignorance, and an inability to admit it.

The cure for this is "I don't know, but I'll find out for you" repeated often, possibly tattooed to their foreheads so whenver they look at each other they get to read it.

I wouldent be mad at them if they just told me they didnt know what I was talking about. Id be a little suprised, but not mad. If only they knew that though ;)

[pompeyjohn]

I thought I'd just add to this. The same topic came up on our LUG recently. This comment can be attributed to a member of the call centre staff at British Telecom:

"Certainly sir, now is that Linux 95 or XP"