Twenty-Six Questions to Ask at (and About) the Computer Store
The very worst computer stores are like amusement-park arcades. Expect to be clipped. Just aim for the bull’s-eye and keep your losses low. Better still, go to the good stores.
Reading my list of twenty-six before-you-buy questions, please remember that the quality of computer stores can vary tremendously. The proportion of lemons to good ones is higher than in the case of ordinary retailers. That’s because of the complexity of the product. In fact, there’s an old joke about the difference between a car salesman and a computer one: the former knows when he’s lying.[[99]]
One of the main tricks of the crooked computer hustlers is nothing more than the retail-store version of leaving town ahead of the sheriff.
“The average computer salesman has a half-life of two months,” said my friend the systems analyst. “Then he loses his credibility with his supposed ‘clients’ and goes back to selling shoes or automobiles. If you’re relying on any salesman for expert knowledge, you might be in for a rude awakening. That’s why users groups formed. People got ticked off with this world of hucksterism and created their own little world.”
One of the problems is that many good, honest sales reps will soon leave for more lucrative work as consultants or for manufacturers or others.
Of course, the customer himself may be as impossible as some of the sales reps. He might expect a quick, accurate, lucid answer to his question from a rep working for little more than a department-store clerk’s earnings. Computer stores can be full of ignorance on both sides of the counter. Moreover, even if the sales rep knows his subject forward and backward, many computer problems just defy easy answers. Imagine the frustration of a sales rep working on commission. He can ill afford time to educate complete novices. So do your homework or at least make an appointment when the sales rep isn’t going to be jammed up with lunchtime traffic. That’s the nature of the Silicon Jungle, not simply a series of ripoffs. Cherish the good sales reps.
Perhaps the ultimate bad customer is a middle-aged Missouri man accused of the first-degree murder of a computer-store owner with whom he disputed a $180 bill.
Neither men nor machines “interfaced” well here. Although the customer had bought a printer elsewhere, he was under the impression that no one would charge him for making it compatible with a computer purchased from the store. The owner wouldn’t yield. Allegedly—I didn’t know the verdict at the time of this writing—the man then fired two .38-caliber slugs.[[100]]
Short of killing the store owner, how do you protect yourself?