Dress Barn and the hard sell
Who likes a hard sell? No, really, who likes a hard sell? Robyn, a relatively affluent person (and all around readable writer), blogs about her experience with the hard sell she got from the Dress Barn employee who was only supposed to be activating her charge card. The language is not for the timid, but Robyn does get her point across - and it’s a point that many companies desperately need to understand.
She asked me a few questions, then started in on this fucking sales spiel wherein I could register all my credit cards with some program, and if a card was ever stolen, all I’d have to do is call them, and they’d take care of it! (Or some shit like that.) I listened politely for a few minutes, and then said “I’m not interested.”
Which to ME means “I’m not interested,” but to the operator apparently was code for “I might be interested. Try harder!”
So the operator took a deep breath and said “Ma’am, are you aware that there are 25,000 instances of identity theft every day?”
To my current chagrin, instead of responding with “Are you aware that 80% of all statistics are made up and have no numbers to back them up whatsoever, so what I suspect is that you pulled that number out of your ass”, I said “I. Am. Not. Interested.”
AND SHE CONTINUED TRYING TO SELL ME ON THE FUCKING PROGRAM. As if Dress Barn wouldn’t be making enough money off of me with their ridiculously high interest rate.
I managed to finally convey to her that I was completely, totally uninterested, could not be LESS interested, NO THANK YOU, and she told me she’d “activate” my card, and I was able to get off the phone, but I wish in retrospect that I’d just told her to cancel the fucking account. I know it’s not her fault, she was just doing her job, but it really PISSES ME OFF when a company who is going to be making money off you anyway proceeds to try to get every last fucking penny out of you that they possibly can. And I KNOW people fall for it, and THAT just pisses me off even more.
I think I’m going to cancel the fucking card, because I don’t even need the damn thing ANYWAY, and I’m going to include a letter detailing exactly why I’m cancelling it.
Fuckers.