I am sick and tired of being asked if I want to buy an extended warranty, on every single individual item I wish to purchase at a tech store.

Today I was at Radio shack. I needed to pick up a few cheap interconnection devices to allow me to record and playback phone calls. In all I need to buy four components, totaling about $50.

The checkout girl rang up the first item and said “would you like to buy an extended warranty on this cable, it only costs $2.99 and will cover you from loss or damage for an additional year”.

I responded “no thank you I don’t wish to purchase any extended warranties on any of these items”

Then you rang up the next item, a $15 telephone. She then said “would you like to buy an extended warranty on this phone, it only costs $2.99 and will cover you from loss or damage for an additional year”.

I responded “ look I don’t want to buy any extended warranties, and if you ask me just once more I will walk out and not buy anything”

Looking flustered she rang up the third item and proceeded to say “would you like to buy an extended warranty on this cable, it only costs $2.99 and will cover you from loss or damage for an additional year”.

I walked out of the store.

Whatever happened to listening to the customer? I don’t want extended warranties, I don’t wont them for cheap items, and I absolutely don’t want to be insulted by a corporation that expects me to listen to the same message multiple times, even though I’ve already made my position clear.

What is the point of going to a store, when basically your getting the same service as a website.

I feel very sorry for the poor woman who is mandated by her faceless corporate bosses to repeat statements that clearly are not wanted by the customer. I know these people (at least generically), they have a chart that shows the profit margins of all the items in the store, and realize that the profit margin on extended warranties is close to 100%, so given a choice they would stop selling products and just sell the extended warranties.

Obviously even these finely tuned sales gurus, realize that you actually have to sell a product to be able to sell the warranty, so they reluctantly place products on shelves, but in the firm knowledge they are only they to sell extended warranties.

These bastions of idiocy are missing the entire point of why they are in business. The have no understanding of why customers buy their products, the products themselves or the way in which customers wish to interact with their company.

I can guarantee that these executives who are making these decisions at companies like radio shack did not start their career in that business, and do not plan to end their career in that business.

When you see a company that is lead by founders, or at least people who deeply understand the business they are in the experience is amazingly different.

Financial products may seem like a great way of maximizing profit, but below them must be a product or service, which the customer wants and/or needs.

Financial manipulation in the stock market, mortgage market, car loans or even extended warranties are never going to grow civilization. While they can make a small number of people very rich in the short term they actually hurt a country in the long term.

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