The salesman said what?

[fixthecopier]

After reading bits that have been said in other threads and feeling that the sales people are better targets of our rath than IT people, I felt that a thread on this topic would get some hits. Plus I could not believe this call I got.

While doing a full pm on a bizhub 600 in the middle of a very busy day, my shop calls to tell me that Doug {head salesman and the owners brother} needs my help. It seems he is at a customers location where he has sold a bizhub 200 and does not know how to set the fax settings. He needs me to stop what I am doing and drop by and show them how to do it. The girl calling me was the owners daughter, and Dougs niece, so I bit my tounge in half trying to keep my job. In my mind I said "Are you fucking joking ? Has he lost his goddamn mind. If I have to go over there I will bitch slap him when I get there". What I really said after I took a deep breath was "Tell doug to open the drawer at the bottom of the machine. In that drawer he will find a plastic bag. In that bag he will find a set of magic books. These all powerful books contain all of the information a human being or a salesman could need to know about a bizhub 200. You may also tell him to focus on the book of user operations for the fax, he does not need to read the whole stack. " She laughed and I kept my job another day.

[mrwho]

Typical scenario:

Customer interested in buying a machine wants to know if it will print on a dodgy type of paper. Salesperson solution? Bring a couple of sheets to our showroom and we'll see.

So the customer brings a couple of paper sheets,they're tried and amazingly the print quality is good enough so the customer buys the machine.

Later on, it's up to the technical department do the explaining why, after 100 prints, the machine started jamming/started printing out with lousy quality/etc.

[Raymondd]

One of our sales ladies (I use that term lightly) showed me some copies last night that were skewed real bad. This is on a out of the box KM 5050. So I send a tech out first thing this AM to rectify the problem. He just called and said the customer's original looked just like the copies she had.

[unisys12]

Our sales person just sold a Savin 2406 wide format printer/copier. When we delivered it, she looked at me and asked, "Aren't you going to show them how to use it?" I was thinking to myself, "What?" But I didn't I went through the whole bit with a smile. A few days later she comes in and tells me that I needed to go back out there are do more training with the customer on printing from AutoCAD. I told her that I would try to fit it into my schedule, which has been full as heck the past few weeks!

After I visited the customer site and got everything worked out, I went into her office and told not to ever sell anything again if she didn't know anything about the product. The customer is ok, but they really needed a dual roll tray and not a single. Plus, this customer was a prime canidate for scanning and she never brought it up. Granted, the customer did bring up scanning to me and I had to tell him that was a seperate option that he did not purchuse.

The color machines aren't really a problem, but the older color stuff... oh don't get me started! Every customer I had, all I heard was, "Well the sales person told me it would do everything I could ever want." AARRGHH!!!

[Guest]

After reading bits that have been said in other threads and feeling that the sales people are better targets of our rath than IT people, I felt that a thread on this topic would get some hits. Plus I could not believe this call I got.

While doing a full pm on a bizhub 600 in the middle of a very busy day, my shop calls to tell me that Doug {head salesman and the owners brother} needs my help. It seems he is at a customers location where he has sold a bizhub 200 and does not know how to set the fax settings. He needs me to stop what I am doing and drop by and show them how to do it. The girl calling me was the owners daughter, and Dougs niece, so I bit my tounge in half trying to keep my job. In my mind I said "Are you fucking joking ? Has he lost his goddamn mind. If I have to go over there I will bitch slap him when I get there". What I really said after I took a deep breath was "Tell doug to open the drawer at the bottom of the machine. In that drawer he will find a plastic bag. In that bag he will find a set of magic books. These all powerful books contain all of the information a human being or a salesman could need to know about a bizhub 200. You may also tell him to focus on the book of user operations for the fax, he does not need to read the whole stack. " She laughed and I kept my job another day.

Now that takes balls! I'm talking about Doug, of course...

[Dark Helmet]

If I have to go over there I will bitch slap him when I get there".

You guys don't????

[blackcat4866]

I showed up to a service call on a Canon NP-4050 a few years ago. The customer tells me they had just bought this new machine and it is jamming constantly.

I went into my standard speech. "With refurbished machines it will sometimes take a few visits to get everything tuned up and running perfectly..."
customer: Refurbished!
self (with a sinking feeling): This machine hasn't been sold as new in at least 4 years, and it has the painted covers of a refurb.
customer: Refurbished!

Did you ever know that you were putting your foot in it, and there was nothing to do but keep right on going? The salesman had attempted to pass off a Mexican refurb as a new machine. It's the only time it's ever happened to my knowledge, and the salesman got a serious spanking. His numbers were consistently high though, so it was forgotten pretty quickly (not by me).

These refurbs were problematic. The parts were spotlessly clean, and covers powder-coated, but only the most basic maintenance parts were replaced. To deliver a fairly well functioning machine it was best to run it in the office for at least a week. =^..^=

[Koosie]

I showed up to a service call on a Canon NP-4050 a few years ago. The customer tells me they had just bought this new machine and it is jamming constantly.

I went into my standard speech. "With refurbished machines it will sometimes take a few visits to get everything tuned up and running perfectly..."
customer: Refurbished!
self (with a sinking feeling): This machine hasn't been sold as new in at least 4 years, and it has the painted covers of a refurb.
customer: Refurbished!

Did you ever know that you were putting your foot in it, and there was nothing to do but keep right on going? The salesman had attempted to pass off a Mexican refurb as a new machine. It's the only time it's ever happened to my knowledge, and the salesman got a serious spanking. His numbers were consistently high though, so it was forgotten pretty quickly (not by me).

These refurbs were problematic. The parts were spotlessly clean, and covers powder-coated, but only the most basic maintenance parts were replaced. To deliver a fairly well functioning machine it was best to run it in the office for at least a week. =^..^=

That happened to me to. A Ricoh 4622, with the meter turned to zero and resprayed covers, But the clutches in the back were all covered in toner. Customer: What do you mean by "Refurbished"?
Salesman:
Me after customer yelled to salesman:

[TheOwl]

The salesman said .... "Why are you cleaning those black rollers for"?
Me: "Well you wanted the machine refurbed and these rollers need to be cleaned along with the rest of them if not replaced."
Salesman: "You don't need to do that. You just need to Mr. Sheen the paper path and that will stop jamming well and truely".

[20YRSEXP]

Salesman "lets run some copies on your brand new machine".
Customer "what's that squeel"?
Salesman "let me call the sevice technician".

I arrive.
"Hello".
Customer "Hello, the salesman said the feeder was squeeling because the rollers were too tight and you would adjust them".
Me "?????"(blank look on my face)
Does anyone in here know how to adjust the tightness of the pick-up rollers? I'm still trying to get him to tell me how I do that.

[schooltech]

----Does anyone in here know how to adjust the tightness of the pick-up rollers? I'm still trying to get him to tell me how I do that. ----

I would just put a little bit of syrup on the torque limiter to tighten it up a bit.


I'm still never figured out the "I'll have MY technician come out and tighten up a screw" statement referring to a document feeder which would not stay up (due to worn out springs) as said by a salesperson years ago to a customer. Not only did the salesperson NOT tell me about it, but the customer did and wanted me to tighten up 'that' screw. Hmmm........

[mrwho]

"Oh, there are a couple of loose screws, alright, but not on your copier, don't worry!"

[Shadow1]

I wish I could find a copy of my favorite cartoon on this subject - you'll have to settle for a description:

Picture your typical your typical suit and tie, slicked back DA haricut, more teeth than a possum grin salesperson talking to your typical pot gut, pocket protector, bald head, and birth control glasses engineer. In the balloon the salesguy is saying "...now if you guys in engineering can just come up with something even close to what we've already sold customers we'll be in fat city"

[fixthecopier]

"I thought the salesman said it would do color."
"The salesman must of meant two colors sir, black and white."

"The salesman said you could make this used machine as good as a new one."
"I can sir, by selling you a new one."

"The salesman said this machine was 99% jam free, is that true?"
"Yes sir, it is. But that is based on a 100,000,000 print life on the machine, so 1% means that I can safely say you should not get any more than 1,000,000 jams."

[Guest]

Here's something one of our top salesmen would say to customers when he really wanted to sell the service department. One of us techs, the customer and this salesguy would all be talking and he would say this to the customer:

"(Name of whichever tech was standing there) has forgotten more about copiers and IT than you and I will ever know".

I always kind of suspected it was a back-handed compliment, but what do I know?...