Recent Spadina/College retail experience

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, Jan 03, 2007 at 03:22:17PM -0500, Teddy David Mills wrote:
> Shopping at College/Spadina is the shopping equivalent of using Linux.
> 
> 1. You should know what you want and why. (otherwise you'll be dependant 
> on others; google is your friend!)
> 2. technical support on college/spadina can actually be helpful and useful.
> 3. separate the useful from the useless.ie.be wary of any enterprise 
> level advice you get on college&spadina.
> 5. As for support, the only support I expect is warranty replacement. 
> (which is black and white 99.99% of the time)
> 6. try to patron 3 stores or less for the expensive items. This way they 
> should remember you.
> 7. i dont know if its a look or an attitude, but salesreps can spot 
> sheep and marks.

I have no idea other than I never have a problem shopping at the places
that look like a computer warehouse got hit by a tornado. :)

> 8. i dont have the idea that it is a confrontational or zero sum game. 
> It is a social/shop talk time. therefore you dont have religious flame 
> wars. its a collaboration of ideas.

I do shopping by figuring out what I want, who has it at the best price,
going there and asking for it.  I may occationally ask if they have any
experience with a certain part if I am deciding between a couple of
choices, and occationally if they have any experience with the
compatibility of a certain part with a certain other part.  Mostly I
know what I want though.  I don't expect them to spend time to give me
support, I don't believe they have time or enough margins for that.  If
people don't know what they want or need, they need to go to a place
that caters to that rather than high volume sales at low margins.  They
are not likely to get much patience from any of the DIY stores.  I
personally like being able to drive to canada computers, walk in, find
the thing I want, pick it up, go to the cash, pay for it, and leave all
in about 2 to 5 minutes.  Sometimes I may have to ask someone to get the
thing for me if it is one of the majority of things that are locked up
in a cabinet or out in the back storage.  I probably wouldn't recommend
to most people to do computer shopping that way (although I probably
wouldn't recommend computer shopping of any kind to most of the same
people, since they are even more likely to be ripped off by a clueless
sales drone at futureshop or MDG).

> 9. and my last tibit of advice? Keep walking right past Computer Systems 
> Center.

Never seen that one. :)

> i dont know where im going with this, but you get the idea....

--
Len Sorensen
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