To be so tired of 'upselling'

[scaryclown]

It's just bloody relentless! I took a bike into a nice independent bike shop today. It's a £45 fix, yet all the conversation was about 'time to buy a new bike', every day I say 'single espresso' to be met with 'double?'
I swear I'm going to punch someone!.

Throwing away a perfectly good bike to meet some oily dickhead sales target!?

Jesus

Surely I can't be the only one who is automatically saying "no" before I have even heard what the offer is? I hand back all the annoying bits of paper they insist on giving you in WH Smiths without ever looking at them. I try to avoid WH Smiths as much as possible because of the till experience. I also throw away all leaflets from magazines without even glancing at them (Sainsburys has a bin in the magazine section for this purpose, otherwise I just shake them out and put them back on the shelf). I'm sometimes wonder if I'm missing out on things, but not often.

In a similar vein I'm fed up of being asked for an email address for just buying an item in a shop.

Especially when you email them and get fuck all response ....

It's like when you call an organisation for help ... the helpdesk has a 30 minute wait, but the " retention " desk ....

Normally I say no to the constant upselling bollocks but it is bloody wearing and turns what should be a painless transaction into a tiresome slightly draining encounter. There are shops I avoid because I know they will ask me about loyalty cards and other crap - Paperchase, Body Shop... I know it is ridiculous and it shouldn't affect me at all, but it does.

The post office annoys me for this: constantly asking if something is urgent or valuable.

I have just sold it on Ebay for 99p. It is of extremely low value and I am happy for it to get there at a slow pace.

A man in front of me went in to complain that an item had been lost and the general impression given by the sales assistant was that it was the sender's fault for not buying a special service.

The post office pisses me off too. If I wanted it guaranteed to arrive tomorrow at an extortionate price I'd ask for it!

We've just bought a new car. Salesman offered us Gap insurance, wheel insurance, upholstery insurance, paint insurance. If we'd taken the lot it would have cost us an additional 1200 quid, we didn't take any of it. We had to sign a form saying we'd been offered it.

We did buy Gap insurance elsewhere from a top rated company for 200 quid cheaper with better cover.

I asked a plumber to fix an air lock in a tap. He told me I needed new taps. The taps are about five years old.

I decided I need a new plumber instead.

His and hers toilets?!

I thought it was a joke, but then I googled....

I dread getting new glasses after prescription changes because of all the upselling, and I feel bad for the people who have to do it. The last time I came home with a pair I got the most detailed questionnaire a few days later (via email) that was blatantly just to check if the employees had offered x, y and z over and over again at exact times. Pages long. Feel sorry if anyone that got a bollocking because someone ticked that they weren't offered something off their endless list.

That said, I think I'll buy mine online from now on because I hate the disappointment I got when I just bought a single cheap pair without any of the special lenses or anything like that. It's not nice to be made to feel like you've done something wrong just because you don't want extras.

Do you need stamps or top up?
Wtaf? I've not had a top up phone since 2000

I work in a certain fast food place and if I don't upsell (would you like it large?) I will be told off. Its part of the job that we have to do. I've been shouted at by customers saying ''If I wanted it I would have asked!'' I want to tell them its not my fault and I'm made to upsell!

Yes it IS annoying. I don't think I know anyone who doesn't get annoyed by it. Including the poor staff who have to do it, to meet targets for the store, so the fat cat manager can get his or her bonus at the end of the year.

As someone mentioned earlier, WH Smith are one of the worst. I go in to buy a newspaper, and I get a nearly-out-of-date Terrys Chocolate Orange shoved in my face, on 'offer' for £2.

It happens in many other stores too of course, and I have lost count of the amount of times I get offered a storecard. 'Oh but it gives you 5% off this transaction.' Wow big deal 50 pence off my ten pound top! Errr, no thanks.

A year or so ago, DH went to buy a £300 laptop from Currys/PC world, and the assistant said I will just take you to someone from our 'PC care and advice department.' We were both puzzled as he took us to the back of the store.

We waited for 5 minutes and got agitated as we just wanted to by the laptop. The assistant in question said 'he will be with you soon.'

Upshot was, this 'help and advice session' was about blinding you with bullshit, baffling you with bollocks, assuming because you're 'middle aged or older,' that you know fuck-all about computers, (we invented them you wet-behind-the-ear little shit!) getting fifty quid out of you to 'set up the laptop,' and bullying you into an extra guarantee that costs half the price of the laptop.

So we got up and walked towards the door. The assistant panicked and long story short, he just sent us to the tills to pay for laptop.

FFS, we can buy a pack of blank CDs or a camera without all the faff, why do they think we need this 'PC advice and help?' We have been using them since the 1980's. Fuck off.

sparechange I don't mind Golden Arches upsell. It's kind of part of the experience.

It is very wearing.

But to cheer you up, the French for upselling is 'la vente suggestif', which I always think sounds a bit lewd and makes me chuckle every time someone tries to upsell to me.

(I learned that when I worked in a fast food restaurant in Paris and always got told off for not doing enough of it)

I work in my local small supermarket

We hate having to upsell things too!

Unfortunately we can be disciplined if we don't, and our boss watches us either in person or on the cameras to make sure we do it, we get threatened with all sorts if we don't, and we get the results of the previous week's upsell every Monday. God help us if we're not top every single time.

Some customers are so unpleasant about it though, instead of saying No Thankyou politely I've told "Kiss My Arse" "Fuck Off Bitch" "Go Fuck Yourself"

There is absolutely no need for that, and it is utterly soul destroying

Hard stares and frowns arent going to stop me asking if you want a copy of your receipt emailed to you

A no or a no thank you (if you really want to push the boat out) will be sufficent

An email to head office to complain would be helpful, but to be honest a fair few customers would like a copy of their receipt so I doubt it will change

I dont give my email out

I was once asked by a young man trying to sell me extended warranty on a fridge freezer, what I would do if it broke down after two years. I said I would tell everyone I knew what had happened and recommend that they didn't buy that make because they were shit and break down after two years, and also never buy anything by that manufacturer again myself. Which is what I do. Surely this works better than extended warranty anyway - if companies get a bad reputation for selling shit goods that don't last then people won't buy their stuff.

OMG receipts being emailed to you. Don't do it!!!

I did that with New Look and they started sending me emails 3 or 4 times a DAY some days, with 'special offers' and shit!

I had to block them in the end.

"do you want to personalise your coffee?" With what, bodily fluids, DNA?!

I had a Saturday job at Comets and we'd get hauled over the coals by management if we didn't push those rubbish extended warranties onto customers. It's difficult trying to sell those things. Basically you have to tell the customer what they're buying is so inferior that it'll break down as soon as the year's out.

We have side by side outside toilets in our old summer house. One room two toilets, I've no idea why, I can only assume with large families or sometimes several families in one house you were more concerned with going than having privacy.

Don't think I'd fancy it now, although saying that I have used them alongside the toddlers which is kind of handy I suppose.

Emailing receipts is just a totally transparent way to harvest your data for marketing. Hobbs are bad for this. I rarely shop there but when I last did, she started asking me for my postcode. You don't need to know my postcode to sell me a skirt.

rain

Not all shops use them for marketing

Ours doesn't

I always ask for paper receipts if I'm offered an e-mail version.

Pushing insurance policies for everything seems to be a thing now too. When I bought a new phone a few months they spend nearly as much time trying to sell me shitty phone insurance as they did selling me the phone. I was once in Dixons and they tried to sell me an insurance policy for the headphones I was buying 'at only £14.99 a year'. The headphones were £9.99.

Many years ago I had a very pushy member of staff from my then bank ring me up and insist that I had to make an appointment for my "annual review" with them.

Not long before, at their insistence, I had invested a small windfall into one of their unit trust products, which had then performed so appallingly badly that I had had to get what was left of my money out before it all went. As you may imagine, on the back of this I wasn't over-keen on being sold any more snake oil.

I wasn't rude or aggressive. I merely said "if this is another attempt to sell me underperforming investment products, then you've just reminded me that I need to progress my mis-selling claim with regard to the last time..."

Pushy member of staff got off the phone sharpish and I wasn't contacted about any more "annual reviews" after that.

If someone sprayed me with perfume they would be getting a bill for dry cleaning.

If someone pesters me in a shop I walk out.

I put my own postage on my parcels and keep a stock of recorded delivery labels so that the Post Office staff don't try it on, in fact they don't even check to see if there is enough postage on them.

But what is really annoying is not being able to view something I want to buy online without a bloody pop up obscuring the screen about 10 seconds in, telling me I need to sign up right away to get the special offer/discount/buy it today before it is gone, or the chat window. Yesterday I replied to one and said I was trying to buy something but as the chat window kept coming up I was going elsewhere.

I actively avoid WH Smith and no longer buy coffee, I make my own in a little Contigo flask because even when I buy one they make it wrong.