Today I Wondered

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Re: Today I Wondered

Postby cmsellers » Sat Aug 25, 2018 7:49 pm

Calling around for computer repair, I noticed that some places will not give me even rough estimates unless I bring the computer in. Enterprise's used car sales office was the same way, which resulted in wasting everyone's time when it transpired that they had no cars remotely within my price range. And this is not the first time someone has refused to give me a price over the phone.

I wonder what the logic behind this is. I get that they are trying to use the foot-in-the-door strategy, but normally* when a company tries this I simply scratch them off my list. It seems like the risk of a customer writing you off entirely would outweigh the slight increase in the chance that someone goes with you because they are already there. The fact that most companies do not employ it suggests that the benefits probably do outweigh the costs.

Now, a disproportionate number of the people who do this have Arab accents, so maybe it works better in other cultures? I noticed this was a really common sales tactic in Turkey as well. But even if that is the case, I think the greatest number of people who do this are American-born, at least based on accents.

*Avis willing to go into Enterprise despite my annoyance because I am Thrifty and multiple sources confirmed that rental car companies sell their cars for below market value so you Payless than for a similar car, which meant they had an Advantage that other car sellers don't. Unfortunately the cars are still new enough that they aren't within my Budget.
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Re: Today I Wondered

Postby Absentia » Sun Aug 26, 2018 6:11 am

I can understand repair places not wanting to give estimates in case they open the thing up and find out it's much worse than you described. Particularly with computers, since so many people are so clueless about how they work; I expect computer repair people learn not to trust anything their customers say unless they can confirm it with their own eyes.
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Re: Today I Wondered

Postby Marcuse » Tue Aug 28, 2018 4:39 pm

cmsellers wrote:Calling around for computer repair, I noticed that some places will not give me even rough estimates unless I bring the computer in. Enterprise's used car sales office was the same way, which resulted in wasting everyone's time when it transpired that they had no cars remotely within my price range. And this is not the first time someone has refused to give me a price over the phone.

I wonder what the logic behind this is. I get that they are trying to use the foot-in-the-door strategy, but normally* when a company tries this I simply scratch them off my list. It seems like the risk of a customer writing you off entirely would outweigh the slight increase in the chance that someone goes with you because they are already there. The fact that most companies do not employ it suggests that the benefits probably do outweigh the costs.

Now, a disproportionate number of the people who do this have Arab accents, so maybe it works better in other cultures? I noticed this was a really common sales tactic in Turkey as well. But even if that is the case, I think the greatest number of people who do this are American-born, at least based on accents.

*Avis willing to go into Enterprise despite my annoyance because I am Thrifty and multiple sources confirmed that rental car companies sell their cars for below market value so you Payless than for a similar car, which meant they had an Advantage that other car sellers don't. Unfortunately the cars are still new enough that they aren't within my Budget.


I think it depends on the situation. In some industries it's not possible to quote prices over the phone because the thing you might be paying for is uncertain. I do it when I'm at work, and the basis for that is largely because if I start quoting then when the patient sees the dentist they use my words against them, or vice versa, to their advantage. When it comes to computer repair I could see it be perfectly reasonable to want to see the thing they're supposed to be fixing before they're able to give a price on how to fix it. Of course there's an incentive to then proceed whatever the cost because most people don't care enough to haggle or try another option, but in those cases that's a secondary effect of having to see what work you're doing before you tell what price it'll be.
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Re: Today I Wondered

Postby cmsellers » Tue Aug 28, 2018 5:14 pm

Some people did give me estimates over the phone, though.
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Re: Today I Wondered

Postby Malfeasinator » Sat Sep 01, 2018 1:03 pm

In the years to come, I wonder what will be more difficult - the physical struggle and grind to achieve what I feel I am capable of, or to accept the past as it really is, find peace, and be able to truly move on?
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Re: Today I Wondered

Postby cmsellers » Mon Sep 03, 2018 9:36 pm

If I organized a TEDx conference, deliberately invited people to spout bullshit of the sort which is unacceptable to the sorts of people who watch TED talks (TEDx talks often present bogus vegan health claims and alternative medicine, but that's apparently fine), stuff like creationism, abstinence-only education, and anti-vaxxers, then revealed what I had done, would TED still post the talks on the TEDx YouTube channel?
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Re: Today I Wondered

Postby NathanLoiselle » Mon Sep 03, 2018 11:10 pm

cmsellers wrote:If I organized a TEDx conference, deliberately invited people to spout bullshit of the sort which is unacceptable to the sorts of people who watch TED talks (TEDx talks often present bogus vegan health claims and alternative medicine, but that's apparently fine), stuff like creationism, abstinence-only education, and anti-vaxxers, then revealed what I had done, would TED still post the talks on the TEDx YouTube channel?


Only because Ted Rogers is dead and TED Talks likes to piss all over his grave. Did you know that TED Talks is Canadian? Yeah, didn't know that we could violate our dead too didn't ya?
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Re: Today I Wondered

Postby cmsellers » Fri Sep 27, 2019 6:21 pm

Apparently, Newfoundland is pronounced New-fund-LAND, and Vancouver is pronounced VAN-coo-ver.

Is it a thing for Canadian place names to have weird syllable stresses? Shibboleths to distinguish Canadians from American imposters, maybe?
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Re: Today I Wondered

Postby NathanLoiselle » Fri Sep 27, 2019 7:29 pm

If the graphics go on my computer I'm fucked. I'm sure the computer repair man would just put in a graphics card like I would but the power source is custom and won't support a graphics card. It only puts out 180 watts and can't be replaced. Well, HP might be able to but I doubt they can even do it.

Anyways, for those who are like. "Well why didn't you build your own you numbnut?" I answer "Because the computer cost me only $558 with additional 8gb RAM and building my own would cost $900 with the OS."

So getting an estimate would be a bad idea with my computer because it'd end up having to be a new buy. Just an example of why estimates can't always be done.
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