This was my worst phone shopping experience, ever.
My boyfriend, who is far more tolerant than I, waited 5 steps after getting out of the store before saying 'well he was forceful." Upon entering I was optimistic. We were greeted by 2 seated employees who made a joke about the weather, and I like jokes. From that point forward, however, it was all disappointment.
They remained seated for a long while as I browsed the dummy phones. I asked about features and explained my main goal was longer battery life, and a better phone without upgrading to one of the new nearly-tablet sized devices. Not only was I told that the new size wasn't that much bigger (it is to me), but was told that all phones have the same battery life. It depends on useage, etc. Well, I know it depends on usage, but if you drive a car with better gas mileage or a larger tank at the same speed as a lesser car, you are still going to get further between refills. While they may boil down to 2-6 hours at most, there is still a difference, and I want to know about it.
Now this is not like a proper verizon store - most of the phones have no functionality - you can look at the size, shape and color of the phones, and get no feel for how they work. Not to worry, I was told, they have 4 phones on the other wall, one of each make, and they all work exactly the same. He, infact, claimed that the motorola I was using had the same home screen and function style as the new one. Wrong again. Completely different style. But of course he still claimed it was really close. What about processor speed, what about differences in the size of the typing screen that comes up during text messages and internet browsing, which in some cases can obscure the whole screen and eliminates what you are trying to read or the box you are trying to fill in? My concerns were of no interest - he had demo phones that were just like their sister models.
Finally, I asked about differences between the Samsung Galaxy 4 and the Samsung Galaxy 4 mini... He said there were no differences. Same phone, just smaller. Well, a few seconds of reviewing online had let me to understand that the mini had an 8 MP camera compared with the 4's 13 MP camera... That sounds like a difference. So I said 'what about the cameras' - 'oh' he says 'the mini has an 8mp camera, and the 4 has 13mp, but you can't tell the difference. MP just refer to the zoom level.' 'Unless you wanted to print something with reasonable definition' I said. 'well, yeah, if you were printing, but there really is no difference otherwise.'
This was probably the 4th time I felt my skin crawl and tried to make a 'thank you' exit - but was accosted and challenged with questions of 'well what research are you going to do? what sites will you browse? You can't trust most reviews because people only write them to complain." Basically, my skills of making sense of the internet were challenged in the face of his wonderful service skills and advice.
I finally just kept walking to the door despite his unwillingness to let us leave without further abuse.
Apparently he was the store manager. The other agent seemed nice enough, but was overshadowed by his forceful, arrogant, unhelpful manager. I can't believe anyone with that lack of common sense and intellect rose to a management position.
We went to the nearby proper verizon store to actually test phone features, and I couldn't even put my name in for service - I was in shell shock and didn't want to interact with anyone - I just wanted to look at the phones in peace! read more
