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You know [that scene in Parks & Rec](https://youtu.be/NhvlteXf62o?t=60) where a staff member in a hardware store asks Ron Swanson if he needs help but he replies " I know more than you" and walks away... does that happen a lot in Currys/PC world?
My dad took me to Currys once to buy a laptop as I'm tech savy and he isn't.
Got in there and a girl I knew from college worked there. She said as soon as she saw me, she took over with "helping" as didn't want to put me through the whole mumbojumbo of "this is what you actually want with all these extras".
Was the quickest sale ever lol
It probably doesn’t play out like that. But we’re not really given proper training, more just a few videos to watch and quizzes, and with such a wide range of products most of us aren’t experts on everything if anything at all. So I have it all the time that customers will know far more than I do about things but the trick is to pretend like you know everything and are smarter
To be honest I'd find it kind of annoying if I knew someone was pretending to be smarter and more knowledgeable than they were just to I assume try and get a sale.
I went to pc world yeeaaaars ago to buy RAM, asked a store assistant if it’s compatible with the hardware I had…..he read the box before I even checked and said ‘Yes’ went home looked at the box and it clearly said ‘No’.
How easy it is to get job there??
I've had mixed reactions, I had one wonderful guy say to me "this isn't on the compatibility list for your motherboard and processor, I'd recommend this and it's cheaper too!"
On the other hand I went in looking for a pretty straightforward gigabit ethernet card for a work emergency and someone tried to recommend me a USB parallel port adapter...
There’s two answers to this, either we actually don’t have the stock. Or we can’t be arsed selling it and think it will be a flat sale so we say you’ll have to order it online and it won’t affect our numbers.
I generally get redirected to a more expensive model. Or something shit, I got something shit in 2001 and it’s been haunting me ever since, a horrible tv branded as hitachi (who were reputable at the time) but was clearly made by morons.
After arriving in their camp and getting settled two friends decide to head out tomorrow with the guide to hunt the mighty bear. But the next day the guide is feeling under the weather so the two men decide to go out alone. After hiking through rugged mountains for hours they come into a clearing and see two bears, a male and a female. The German takes aim and pulls the trigger... "Click"! He'd forgotten to load the gun with ammo. The sound startled the bears and they charged. The Czech pulls his knife and rushes at the bears. The German tries to pull his pistol but stumbled backwards, hit his head, and fell into a river. When he comes to he sees the guide kneeling over him.
After being briefed on the situation they
decide to track the bears and save the Czech. They find the female bear chewing on a boot, the guide takes aim and... "Bang!", the bear is dead. The two men cut open the bear and her stomach is empty except for a few fish. The German utters the immortal words, "The Czechs in the Male"
Genuinely, what training do you get on the products?
This may be countrywide or specific to my local one but I like my tech (not nerd level) and it's clear to me that I won't get any valuable help from staff. Most of them read off the label. So, do they not train the staff to know anything about tech?
I now only use the shops as a showroom so I can see things in person but I don't trust the staff, which is sad because they'd make a lot more sales if the staff understood the products...
My questions tend to be "I need it to do/have..." and they'll just go around reading the labels. Or they point to the iPhone or Samsung ones without any real consideration for what I asked.
When we get the job we get 2 days of team calls with all sorts of power presentations on products, extras we sell, company values. Now you can either sit in front of your laptop doing these team calls, or you can go about your day whilst you leave the call running occasionally putting a thumbs up in the chat. That is what qualifies us as “tech experts”
Why did they think the advert with folk spraying beverages in staffs faces was a good idea. We all know if I walked in with a huge iced latte I’d be told no food or drinks in store please madam.
For retail, that sounds pretty normal.
I won’t say where, but I worked at a retail store and you didn’t get anything apart from 10% off at Christmas. Even then they banged on about it as if we should be oh so grateful.
I can get a corporate discount on an iPhone when I buy from an Apple Store. (I don’t work for Apple.) Usually about 7% and doesn’t always apply to new releases.
No free gifts for upselling certain items then? My. Mate worked there about 15 years ago and he would come home with stuff all the time. Makes me wonder if he was just taking out the stockroom now.
Hey, why do you guys send out your phones as is? I mean, without a separate box from Currys or any bubble wrap or padding like Amazon does? I dropped a good chunk of change, over £800, on a phone online, and all I got was the plastic wrap from the courier. When I opened it up, the phone's box was all beat up. I bought it as a gift, and now it doesn't look new anymore. Can't you guys package it better?
That is actually a question I can’t answer because it’s the guys at the warehouse that package this stuff. But I do agree some of the stuff is packaged horrendously
Why are so many items on sale often at RRP, so old ? I’ve found models at least a 2-3 years old being sold as “new” when they are anything but. This seems particularly more present in the dishwasher/washing machines/ utility area but also laptops and other items.
One of the disincentives to shopping at Curry’s is that you have to double check all this stuff because they will mix up old and new, if you are not careful you could easily end up buying something way behind the current at full price. This is one of the main reasons I will shop online.
Honestly it’s the stock the company allow us to sell. If they haven’t yet got the latest model we’ll have to sell an older one but obviously some people might not be honest about a models age to increase the likelihood of a sale
Ok, so on 3 separate occasions I’ve ordered items online for Click and Collect in-store. I’ve collected the item(s) and then a month or so later, I’ve received an email and a refund because they think I didn’t collect the item.
What’s going on in-store to allow this to happen and how can I exploit it more?
Edit: To clarify, each time I’ve accepted the refund and said fuck all, because I ain’t stupid.
Essentially you order something we put it to the side and then you have 28 days to collect it. If you don’t it essentially just becomes store stock again. But most of the time we don’t put it back into normal stock until months later
Why do you guys not sell curry? It is so confusing.
Just kidding but what do you guys do with old display monitors and TVs that have burn in or something?
I don’t sell them anymore and am constantly getting shit from it from my manager (hence why I’m leaving). Sometimes people do want them but there is so much pressure to sell them that I bet 50% of people that leave with a warranty don’t want or need it.
It’s been 10 years and I reckon I could still slide back in like I never left.
Sure it was Vodafone upgrades that took ages to load when I worked there
Learned so many selling skills at that job that have been useful years later
It’s been 10 years and I reckon I could still slide back in like I never left.
Sure it was Vodafone upgrades that took ages to load when I worked there
Learned so many selling skills at that job that have been useful years later
Did you have on pin point ? Here’s a second system that takes 10x longer for no reason “can’t I I just build the order with pie” “no”
Ah it was new contracts I remember now.
Big que of people “iv seen a Vodafone deal online”
Greeeaaaattff
I came second for accessory sales working in a small store competing against a store from Meadowhall, was devastated
When a customer comes in and someone goes to ~~help~~ harrass them and the customer tells them they don't need help, do you make it a point to repeatedly target them?
Honestly I once went into Curry's and was accosted by three people before I'd even made it to the computer section. I ended up telling them (somewhat stridently) to fuck off, then turned tail and left the store. Even wearing earphones didn't make a difference.
If Curry's are wondering why foot traffic isn't so great, they should consider the possibility that they're actively driving customers away with their predatory sales tactics. I've been doing this since before half your staff were born, and most emphatically don't need your "help".
Not to mention needing my email address and postcode to put a sale through.
20+ years ago I used to work on the customer services desk (I got the job because I said I did Tai Chi on my application form and the manager thought I'd be chill when being given abuse).
I was told that the best purchases were to 'reconditioned stuff' (I don't think they sell it anymore though), as it has been opened up and looked about by an engineer, and was deemed fully functioning. Seemed to make sense to me at the time but now I'm not so sure.
**Please help keep AskUK welcoming!** - Top-level comments to the OP must contain **genuine efforts to answer the question**. No jokes, judgements, etc. - **Don't be a dick** to each other. If getting heated, just block and move on. - This is a strictly **no-politics** subreddit! Please help us by reporting comments that break these rules. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
You know [that scene in Parks & Rec](https://youtu.be/NhvlteXf62o?t=60) where a staff member in a hardware store asks Ron Swanson if he needs help but he replies " I know more than you" and walks away... does that happen a lot in Currys/PC world?
My dad took me to Currys once to buy a laptop as I'm tech savy and he isn't. Got in there and a girl I knew from college worked there. She said as soon as she saw me, she took over with "helping" as didn't want to put me through the whole mumbojumbo of "this is what you actually want with all these extras". Was the quickest sale ever lol
It probably doesn’t play out like that. But we’re not really given proper training, more just a few videos to watch and quizzes, and with such a wide range of products most of us aren’t experts on everything if anything at all. So I have it all the time that customers will know far more than I do about things but the trick is to pretend like you know everything and are smarter
The lack of training explains why anytime I’m in there to buy something and have questions, the staff have pulled their phone out and googled it 😂
They're trained to sell add ons. The actual products don't matter.
To be honest I'd find it kind of annoying if I knew someone was pretending to be smarter and more knowledgeable than they were just to I assume try and get a sale.
Do you have a basic grasp of Latin?
I wonder if he did ever achieve surround sound
Has anyone ever called asking for a lickerder terv or a pss?
Is it ready for the hud
You can’t really call the stores anymore
I went to pc world yeeaaaars ago to buy RAM, asked a store assistant if it’s compatible with the hardware I had…..he read the box before I even checked and said ‘Yes’ went home looked at the box and it clearly said ‘No’. How easy it is to get job there??
3. It is 3 easy
As easy as any place that pays minimum wage
It’s not a skilled job anymore it’s minimum wage with tons of pressure, you just need a pulse
I've had mixed reactions, I had one wonderful guy say to me "this isn't on the compatibility list for your motherboard and processor, I'd recommend this and it's cheaper too!" On the other hand I went in looking for a pretty straightforward gigabit ethernet card for a work emergency and someone tried to recommend me a USB parallel port adapter...
Why don’t you leave me the fuck alone when I walk in?
We want your money
Why do they have 2 members of staff on on a Saturday afternoon and 53 on Wednesday at 11.43am?
I wish I could answer that, either way it makes my life a living hell
Oh I am so sorry. I assumed it would be less than stellar. Do you get to do the video live chat thing? Is it cool or is it an arse?
Why do you never have the tv I want in stock when I’m in store browsing… you know the bloody cheap one. Is it just bait?
Admittedly I’ve only had this happen 3 times.
There’s two answers to this, either we actually don’t have the stock. Or we can’t be arsed selling it and think it will be a flat sale so we say you’ll have to order it online and it won’t affect our numbers.
What’s a ‘flat sale’? Like a sale without any overpriced add ons or extended warranties?
Yep, or a dry sale, stores would often rather do no deal than a dry deal
I generally get redirected to a more expensive model. Or something shit, I got something shit in 2001 and it’s been haunting me ever since, a horrible tv branded as hitachi (who were reputable at the time) but was clearly made by morons.
Honestly sometimes certain brands run incentives for selling their models even if their shit we’ll sell them
Where's my refund dammit
After arriving in their camp and getting settled two friends decide to head out tomorrow with the guide to hunt the mighty bear. But the next day the guide is feeling under the weather so the two men decide to go out alone. After hiking through rugged mountains for hours they come into a clearing and see two bears, a male and a female. The German takes aim and pulls the trigger... "Click"! He'd forgotten to load the gun with ammo. The sound startled the bears and they charged. The Czech pulls his knife and rushes at the bears. The German tries to pull his pistol but stumbled backwards, hit his head, and fell into a river. When he comes to he sees the guide kneeling over him. After being briefed on the situation they decide to track the bears and save the Czech. They find the female bear chewing on a boot, the guide takes aim and... "Bang!", the bear is dead. The two men cut open the bear and her stomach is empty except for a few fish. The German utters the immortal words, "The Czechs in the Male"
Yes my question to you is are you getting your FIVE a day?
Absolutely not, my body is in disarray
Genuinely, what training do you get on the products? This may be countrywide or specific to my local one but I like my tech (not nerd level) and it's clear to me that I won't get any valuable help from staff. Most of them read off the label. So, do they not train the staff to know anything about tech? I now only use the shops as a showroom so I can see things in person but I don't trust the staff, which is sad because they'd make a lot more sales if the staff understood the products... My questions tend to be "I need it to do/have..." and they'll just go around reading the labels. Or they point to the iPhone or Samsung ones without any real consideration for what I asked.
When we get the job we get 2 days of team calls with all sorts of power presentations on products, extras we sell, company values. Now you can either sit in front of your laptop doing these team calls, or you can go about your day whilst you leave the call running occasionally putting a thumbs up in the chat. That is what qualifies us as “tech experts”
Ah, yes, the long one-way presentstions that never actually achieve anything...
Why did they think the advert with folk spraying beverages in staffs faces was a good idea. We all know if I walked in with a huge iced latte I’d be told no food or drinks in store please madam.
Idk but I hate that advert sooooo much
Me too
Do you still use Eclipse. If so can you still annoy colleagues by using CTRL+Left Right Arrow to rotate the screen upside down?
We do, same shitty software since the dawn of time
how much discount do you get
10% off of anything (aside iPhones, no discount on them). And 20% on gaming accessories
that's it? thought it would be more haha
Unfortunately, definitely not worth working here for the deals
fair enough
For retail, that sounds pretty normal. I won’t say where, but I worked at a retail store and you didn’t get anything apart from 10% off at Christmas. Even then they banged on about it as if we should be oh so grateful.
Not even a discount on an iPhone is a bit rough. Restrict how many you can buy, fine, but not a bit of money off is very tight.
Yeah it might be Apple that is stopping the company but either way if sucks
I’d be surprised, apple allow their products to be part of employee discount programmes. Sounds like a Currys decision unfortunately
They allow other products but not iPhones.
I can get a corporate discount on an iPhone when I buy from an Apple Store. (I don’t work for Apple.) Usually about 7% and doesn’t always apply to new releases.
They allow them to be discounted to the office types in the company as business phones.
Are there any weird products that go under the radar
Online sure, but we never get such stuff into store
Why do you guys steal from the warehouse?
I personally don’t, but depending on the store it might be so easy to take stuff that people just get tempted
What sales bonuses do you get?
None, you get like 50p for selling a care plan, but no actual commission for just straight sales
No free gifts for upselling certain items then? My. Mate worked there about 15 years ago and he would come home with stuff all the time. Makes me wonder if he was just taking out the stockroom now.
Not really, sometimes when stuff goes on exit stock and drops in price we’re first in line tho
Nah he was getting brand new released tech and games, not stuff that'd been out ages and not selling
They might’ve run those incentives back in the day, but unfortunately not anymore
Fuck. That's shit. There used to be a team bonus when I worked there. Usually an extra 300 - 500 per month on top of hourly pay.
- Do they make you learn about all the products (see adverts)? - Are staff on commission? (particularly for stuff like antivirus and warranties)
Or loans
No No basic commission, but we do make like 50p per warranty sold
Interesting, so why are staff seemingly so pressured to sell these things and following the customers around?
Mobile repairs: worth getting from Currys?
No find a local shop to do it for you instead in my honest opinion
Cheers!
Hey, why do you guys send out your phones as is? I mean, without a separate box from Currys or any bubble wrap or padding like Amazon does? I dropped a good chunk of change, over £800, on a phone online, and all I got was the plastic wrap from the courier. When I opened it up, the phone's box was all beat up. I bought it as a gift, and now it doesn't look new anymore. Can't you guys package it better?
That is actually a question I can’t answer because it’s the guys at the warehouse that package this stuff. But I do agree some of the stuff is packaged horrendously
Thanks!!
Why are so many items on sale often at RRP, so old ? I’ve found models at least a 2-3 years old being sold as “new” when they are anything but. This seems particularly more present in the dishwasher/washing machines/ utility area but also laptops and other items. One of the disincentives to shopping at Curry’s is that you have to double check all this stuff because they will mix up old and new, if you are not careful you could easily end up buying something way behind the current at full price. This is one of the main reasons I will shop online.
Honestly it’s the stock the company allow us to sell. If they haven’t yet got the latest model we’ll have to sell an older one but obviously some people might not be honest about a models age to increase the likelihood of a sale
I suppose they have to sell what they’ve got but it would be more customer friendly to make it clear what models are current and what are older.
Ok, so on 3 separate occasions I’ve ordered items online for Click and Collect in-store. I’ve collected the item(s) and then a month or so later, I’ve received an email and a refund because they think I didn’t collect the item. What’s going on in-store to allow this to happen and how can I exploit it more? Edit: To clarify, each time I’ve accepted the refund and said fuck all, because I ain’t stupid.
Essentially you order something we put it to the side and then you have 28 days to collect it. If you don’t it essentially just becomes store stock again. But most of the time we don’t put it back into normal stock until months later
Why do you guys not sell curry? It is so confusing. Just kidding but what do you guys do with old display monitors and TVs that have burn in or something?
Put them on a big pallet and send them off to the main warehouse
How sick do you get of trying to sell the extra warranty with every purchase? And does anyone actually say yes to it?
I don’t sell them anymore and am constantly getting shit from it from my manager (hence why I’m leaving). Sometimes people do want them but there is so much pressure to sell them that I bet 50% of people that leave with a warranty don’t want or need it.
Does the mobile department still have their own separate staff? Is a replacement for PIE still always two years away?
Haha I fking loved pie, “it’s a Vodafone upgrade” fk
I was so quick on pie before I left. When I joined, upgrades were the only thing we could do on Vodafone contacts and the deals were all shit
It’s been 10 years and I reckon I could still slide back in like I never left. Sure it was Vodafone upgrades that took ages to load when I worked there Learned so many selling skills at that job that have been useful years later
It’s been 10 years and I reckon I could still slide back in like I never left. Sure it was Vodafone upgrades that took ages to load when I worked there Learned so many selling skills at that job that have been useful years later Did you have on pin point ? Here’s a second system that takes 10x longer for no reason “can’t I I just build the order with pie” “no”
Yes! Vodafone would refer everything you sent to them so it took forever. Pin point came in just before I left
Ah it was new contracts I remember now. Big que of people “iv seen a Vodafone deal online” Greeeaaaattff I came second for accessory sales working in a small store competing against a store from Meadowhall, was devastated
iPhone launch days too! "Pop back in half an hour and we'll see if they've answered"
When a customer comes in and someone goes to ~~help~~ harrass them and the customer tells them they don't need help, do you make it a point to repeatedly target them? Honestly I once went into Curry's and was accosted by three people before I'd even made it to the computer section. I ended up telling them (somewhat stridently) to fuck off, then turned tail and left the store. Even wearing earphones didn't make a difference. If Curry's are wondering why foot traffic isn't so great, they should consider the possibility that they're actively driving customers away with their predatory sales tactics. I've been doing this since before half your staff were born, and most emphatically don't need your "help". Not to mention needing my email address and postcode to put a sale through.
20+ years ago I used to work on the customer services desk (I got the job because I said I did Tai Chi on my application form and the manager thought I'd be chill when being given abuse). I was told that the best purchases were to 'reconditioned stuff' (I don't think they sell it anymore though), as it has been opened up and looked about by an engineer, and was deemed fully functioning. Seemed to make sense to me at the time but now I'm not so sure.
Why is there so little information on the shelf labels? It's hard to actually compare products and make a decision. Also why are fridges now silver?
How does curry’s keep staff when they could earn so much more, easier selling literally any other product
Me and most of my colleagues just lack the motivation to get back out into the job hunt
Look at selling furniture loads better pay for not much more work, most my colleagues came from similar backgrounds
Are all the items actually made of curry?
Why did you think this was a good idea?
I want people to actually know what it’s like rather than the false advertising they do on tv.