Monday, November 12, 2007

Have You Been to a Barnes & Noble, Lately?

Thanks to Blogs Like a Girl for the subject of this post. Details on her blog at bottom of post.
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Do you find the at-the-cash-register upsell as annoying as I do? Next to the at-dinner telemarketing call it ranks high in the common-annoyance meter.

Not long ago, I was at the Best Buy near the Northeast Mall buying batteries. About $4 worth. At the checkout I was first asked my zipcode, no problem, they to like track sales, then I was asked if I would like to sign up for a credit card. I said no. Just the batteries. Finally -- and at this point with others in line behind me and me only buying $4 worth of product -- I'm upset, I was asked if I wanted a free trial subscription to Sports Illustrated, to which, I replied, I wanted the batteries and to talk to a manager. The cashier is doing what he is told to do and often, reluctantly. Most of them don't want the sales job, that's why they are cashiers. He called his manager and I politely registered my complaint and asked him to pass it on. Best Buy is a selling machine and they could care less what I think, but in my view the upsell is short term gain and long term loss and I wanted them to know my view, whether they care or not.

Now, Barnes and Noble is taking it a step further with the donation upsell, guilt included. That's after the, "do you have, want, and yes, you need a Barnes and Noble card."

Which leads me to the Blog Like a Girl post, written by Fort Worth Star Telegram sports writer, Jennifer Floyd Engel. That is her post for the day, the BN holiday upsell. It's well done. Some of the ST reporters have weblogs and they are good, well written -- and people read them.


http://startelegram.typepad.com/blogs_like_a_girl/2007/11/not-sports-so-i.html?cid=89610084#comments

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