I can feel ya, my store opened early because of this iphone shit.
just a few minutes ago I had someone walk in..
Customer- "you guys have the iPhone? dont try to change my mind I know the iphone is the only phone that can go online"
Me- "we do not have the iPhone in stock, but we do have a wide selection of droid and blackberry devices that can surf the web just as good, if not better."
Customer- "no they cant the apple store people told me iPhone is the only one, and since my mac doesn't get viruses they must know more than you"
they then walk out of the store all pissy.
Dude . . . . Everyone in retail has had those experiences. And more than one or two, too. Buck up, good customers with open minds will come your way.
I use to get folks wanting the best possible picture quality from a 35mm camera. So they come in, naturally, looking for a Nikon. The iPhone of my generation. Zealots and users that ONLY want the best which ONLY means Nikon. People that know next to nothing about photography and do not understand that the great images they see in National Geographic or the Nikon ads required more than a great camera.
And there are great cameras aplenty that are not spelled Nikon.
I tell them if they want the best, here is our selection of Leicas. They walk out because in their mind, only Nikon is worth a damn, because some wonk at another camera shop In a mall, probably) that did carry Nikon, told them Nikon is the best. Because we did not sell the brand, naturally, we would say that Nikons aren't good cameras.
Just like your customer did.
Actually, they walk out because a body was (at the time) more than a grand or two and the three basic lenses they wanted would run them more than four or five or six or perhaps eight grand. Clueless window shoppers that do not want to learn they might be wrong about this or that.
Sometimes, we had the chance to take them out of "Nikon Mode" and show them a nice Contax RTS and a few lenses. Again, they are unimpressed, because they have never read about some person named Carl Zeiss or his factory in Germany. A place where crappy optics must come from; after all, if they were good, Nikon would use them. Nikon, Nikon, Nikon, only Nikon will do because they reign supreme.
Much like some iPhone users and believers of today that can't accept that there might be a better product out there buried somewhere in the hype and exaggeration and proclamations of others.
We use to show people a set of amazing 8x10 color prints. The image was so frigging tack sharp, it would leave your eyes bleeding. Color was amazingly rich and saturated; the blacks had amazing shadow detail, the highlights were readable with lots of detail, and depth of field was perfect; tack sharp from foreground to background.
Other images that were taken on automatic, at night, of the Christmas lights at Temple Square, with slow film and long exposures were perfect. There was amazing shadow detail, there was detail in the individual lights, and the Nativity Scenes were detailed and not burned out. Tack sharp.
The prints did not look like images from a 35mm camera.
All were taken by a $125.00 Yashica Electro 35, on a tripod, using Kodachrome, 25 (a very slow color slide film) which seemed to bother a few of the clueless that left confused about what camera he/she really needed for top quality images.
You perhaps should have pulled out your Droid and shown him the web on a non-Apple phone. You would be like a God because you apparently did the impossible: you accessed the web on a non-iPhone. You could have served us Android users well by proving that what your lost customer was told was wrong and Apple is not the last word in cell phones. Other devices do connect to the web.
Buck up, your experience is an old one and it will come again.
Bob Maxey
