>>>Well, you could get your name in the obits and gory pics on the 6PM news by being the CompUSA SalesCritter who tries to keep pushing "extended service warranties" on the generic eMachine toaster and NIC I wander in to buy, after telling him, "I want this model here, no monitor, no printer, this NIC, an additional 64MB SDRAM stick, and no sales bs about warranty options or extended service. I wanna buy it, I'll put it together, and if it breaks after a year, I'll scavenge it for spares and buy another..." on a morning where I've clearly not had enough coffee.
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>>Hey, these guys have to make a buck somehow. If they aren't pushy with the extended warranty, they don't sell as many. That is the nature of their business. And it is quite probable that they don't care whether you like them or not.
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>They sell a whole lot more if they listen to customers to tell them up front they aren't interested in hearing about it. I've walked into CompUSA locally twice, ready to drop ~$2500 for exactly what I wanted, spec'd before the salesman walked up to me, and gotten told how much more I'd get out of the hardware if they installed/serviced it. The last time, I told the salesman I didn't want to hear about extended warranties, and gave him a list of parts up front. He tried to sell me on the need to have it installed and get some training, and I said "No." When he started pulling the hardware and insisted I needed to reconsider an extended warranty, I walked up to his manager, explained the situation, and walked out, hopped into the car, and drove half a mile to Circuit City, and bought the same stuff, albeit for an extra 8 bucks. The salesman there got the sale because he listened to the customer and didn't push for extra profit items. It was worth the extra 8 bucks not to deal with a
>brain-dead salescritter.
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>If I want to buy a blue pencil and tell you I'm not interested in something else, don't try to sell me a box of crayons...if I make it clear I've got a clue about what I want, and especially when it's clear I've got more of a clue about what he sells than he does, he can at least respect my explicitly-stated wishes.

Ed, you are making assumptions.

You are assuming that the salesperson actually gets a commission for selling the system without some sort or service contract. They might not. There may be no profit in the sale of the system if no service contract is sold.

You are also giving your sale too much wieght. Lets say the commission on the system is $10. With the service contract it is $100. If 2 out of 10 of the "I don't want no service contract!" customers can be swayed to buy the contract, that would be $200 commission as opposed to $100.

The bottom line is simple: You don't know why he did what he did. You are assuming you know everything, but you don't.

When I go to a store to buy something, the salesman never bothers me. I ask the questions and direct the conversation. If something is proposed that I don't want (eg. a service contract), I will say "No thank you." That is that. I then re-direct the conversation to points that I want covered. When the conversation is over, I buy it or I don't. No hard feelings.

Or course, that's me.