Ludicrous things salesmen say

Had a couple real good ones thrown at me today and thought it might be a fun thread to see what salesmen have tried to pass off to make the sale.

 

Boot shopping today.  Though honestly I’m not that near the mountains but this was a "ski shop"

 

Salesman: What can I help you with?

Me: I’m looking for some new boots, I need a boot in about a mondo 28 with a wide forefoot, narrow heel and ankle and a fairly stiff flex.

Salesman: Well I don’t really see that any boot would be shaped much different from any other

(I had to try really really hard not to laugh at that one)

 

Same sales person later in the conversation

 

Salesman:  What kind of ski are you looking to use these with?

Me:  Normally an atomic twin tip “tweak” but I have more than one pair

Salesman: Well, twin tips are really soft so it really doesn’t matter what flex you have in your boot.  Even with a really stiff boot a twin tip ski still isn’t going to react any differently.

Nice ones!

I can see how boots would all be shaped the same... after all, the soles are standardized, aren't they? 

Read in an Italian ski forum
Client : "hello, I'm looking for ski boots"  (the guy was in a big "k-mart style store" looking for the place where the ski boots were displayed)
Salesperson: "What? Ski boots? Those stiff plastic things that you lock into skis?"

Perhaps the appropriate response would be:
Go back to selling basketballs.  I'll find the boots myself.

This was a couple of weeks ago at a local mountain that was hosting a big sale; mainly last years stuff.

Friend and I were looking for boots for her son and talking to the salesman (kid - mid 20's).  We were concerned about the flex because he's a 110# 12 y/o with an adult size foot (9 US) and were looking at adult men's boots:

Me "What's the flex on those boots?"
Salesman "I don't know.  I'm not familiar with these boots."
Me "Well there's a '70' in the model name so that's probably the flex"
Salesman "I doubt it.  They don't usually do that.  There isn't anything marked on the boots saying what the flex is."
Me "Let me see (looking at the tag).  The tag says the flex is 70."
Saleman "Well you probably know more about them than I do.  I'm just the boot fitter."

And people wonder why folks are leery of trusting there $800. boots to "boot fitters".  There really should be a law.  Like saying you're a Doctor when you haven't been to Med School.

After that incident he tried telling me the flex was adjustable and was pointing to the forward lean adjustment (that was marked as 'canting').

SM "Well you can adjust the flex here".
Me "No. I think that's for the forward lean."
SM "No its for the flex.  See you turn this."
Me  "Which will adjust the forward lean.  See how it leans more forward?  And it is marked 'Canting' not 'flex'".
SM  "Like I said.  I'm just the bootfitter".

The only thing this guy was good for was to dig through the pile and get the size we needed.  Wasn't a bod guy; just not properly trained.

Ken

 You should hear some of the stuff that comes out of customers mouths...

I couldn't even imagine.  That would be a stellar thread too.  lol

Wow!  "I'm just the boot fitter" - I like that.  Throw in a little sarcasm to hide his true knowledge.

Like guys trying to impress their girlfriend(s) with how smart they are?

I recall one of our Bears at a ski shop in BigSky giving the sales guy a hard time about the manufacturer of a ski. 
Turns out the Bear was right, but that's not really a surprise is it

The store probably does just fine selling boots. Face it, most people who stroll in there looking for boots go skiing a few times a year and they are experienced novices. They are just a little better,skill-wise, than the people who are satisfied with the rental crap. You guys represent the upper 5% of the market-the gear hounds-who already know the gear they want and are just looking for the best price-or to try on the stuff they saw online. I'm big into reviewing stuff before I select so, in most cases, my conversation with the 'help" consists of queries about size availability. And I always know my sizes in US/European/Mondo sizing before I go in. Have I educated salesmen? Sure...in 99.99% of the time, they are minimum wages employees that have worked in the store just a few months.
The stuff they hear from customers is just priceless-my fav came by way of my mom who overhead someone ask "Where do you store the snow in the summer?"

So you were boot shopping at a ski swap.

Whiteroom,

"So you were boot shopping at a ski swap."

I was not.  I try to help members of our ski club with purchases, especially for their kids.  Many of the parents don't ski and have no idea what to get.  I usually just translate for the parents so they know whether the sales person is full of poo poo or not.  Granted, I kknow just enough to be dangerous but I usually know more than the seasonal help.  What the parents do know is they aren't going to spend a lot of money on boots for a kid that won't fit in them next year.  This was the case with this kid.  He's growing like a weed and since his mother bought him a season pass, doesn't want to spend crazy money on rentals - again!  The plan was to find something decent at a reasonable price that would get him through this year.

To go to a 'real' bootfitter is at least a 2 hour drive from where we are.  No way are any of the parents going to put in that much effort for kids that are occasional skiers that don't race.  Plenty folks hang out shingles in this area saying they are bootfitters but at most they can only make the boots stop hurting.  More than likely, they were assigned to fitting boots without any training.  That was the point of my posting.  This kid was claiming the title of boot fitter but wasn't a 'real' boot fitter.  More of a boot sizer.  He was a good kid and was trying to be helpful.

Sorry to hijack but wanted to make sure everyone knows I'm not dissing (real) boot fitters.  I'm a believer.

Originally Posted by Philpug 

 You should hear some of the stuff that comes out of customers mouths...

Guilty as charged.  I've said:

"Can't I just wear two pair of socks with this pair?  The price is more in my budget."

"I had them waxed at the end of last year so they should be fine this year."

"But these (boots) match my skis."

This site has changed all that.  It only took a few months for me to drink the purple juice but I actually feel bad now when I think of some of the things I put ski shops through.

csavage,

You nailed it.

Ski swaps are not the best place to get any serious advice on ski gear. They are staffed mainly with part-time resort employees and they are there to deal with the mass of shoppers. I know, because I used to work at one years back. Their goal is to get rid of the gear. The customer should do some research ahead of time so they know what they are buying from the swap. Boots are something you definately need to know what you are doing if you buy from a swap. You won't get any good advice from the folks staffing the floor.  

The only crazy thing I ever heard in a ski shop was from a salesmen who told a lady, "You want them a little big. You dont want your feet falling asleep in the cold", when she was saying the boots felt a little loose.

Most of the shops are staffed by seasonal workers who know little about the stuff they are selling. It's not really their fault, it's the owners fault for not caring enough or knowing about the stuff he is getting people to sell. IMO, the manager  should impart some basic knowledge to the sales folks so they can provide at least minimal advice to customers.  Obviously, not all shops can have serious bootfitters but they should at least know the basics of fit and be able to direct customers to serious fitters if they can't address issues that are obvious. Unfortunately, many ski shops know as much about their gear as many customers. The skilled shop owners and fitters  here on Epic are the exception rather than the rule.

A couple years ago I heard a salesman explaining to a customer, that when Rossignol bought Look, they eliminated the Look brand, and so now there are only Rossignol bindings.

"They carve just like a GS ski"

"You don't need footbeds because the insoles are so good these days"

If you take your skiing and personal safety seriously (and who doesn't?), you cannot trust your ski equipment purchase decisions to shop employees, or anyone else.  With the availability of the net there is no reason not to be a very informed consumer.

It always scares me when I look in the back room and see teenagers with power tools and hammers working on thousands of dollars worth of skis and bindings.  Your local "experts" are only such if you assume they know more than you do, which is usually not the case if you do your homework.

One year, when I found a new pair of skis next to the Christmas tree .. one binding was mounted ball of foot and the other was mounted midsole.. so one was like 3" different than the other ski.  I went to high school with  the kid that mounted them, it was was the shop owners son.  He admitted to me that he had just returned from a safety meeting.  I said "dude, didn't you have to know they'd come back"?  He said, ya, but hoped they wouldn't.

This summer out gawking at a shop.  They had an undrilled pair of Volant Spatulas, and I was soarly tempted till the ski tech told me, "they don't make bindings that will work on these anymore, they are too wide".  I had to leave. 

Should have just cruched the card and walked out with the skis, but hate to reward stupidity.

The way you learn if your shop is full of professionals or part timers is to ask them what the keep in their inkegerator. If they say 'whaaaa!?' then you know they are part timers. If they say 'Tuckermans' or 'My latest batch of IPA. Want a glass?', then you know they're pros.

There are shops with people that know what they are doing. A good use of the internet is to find out the questions to ask that will help you identify the pros from the shmoes.

MR

Do you know why ski tuners drink beer out of cans?

It is much easier to crush the cans and hide how much you have actually drank while tuning.

I remember a few years ago I got into a stink with a shop guy about Marker plates and stack height on certain skis. The guy was a "race tech". I walked into the shop asking if they had any 06-07 Marker plates (the 14mm ones) and the guy told me that they don't sell them anymore because they aren't stack legal. We argued for a good 5 minutes about stack height with a Volkl GS ski and a 14mm plate. I finally walked out to my car, grabbed my skis, and walked back in. He measured them at the heel, and they were 50mm on the spot. Funny stuff.

I also remember going to a shop up North that had quite an impressive selection for skis (they even carried Volant and Stoeckli). I was browsing the Stoecklis, and gazing at the Laser SC when a salesman approached me asking if I was interested in the skis. I told him that the skis were beautiful, but appeared to be too soft for me. He told me that they were some of the stiffer skis that they carried. I LOL'd pretty hard. He asked why I was laughing and I responded with an "O.K.". He left shortly after.

Damn, where do you live in New England? From the last time I checked, Skinners is a straight shot up North and is only like an hour away. Two certified MFU certified fitters, and a handful of people who have been doing it for dozens of years are up there.

In that case, you should have given him $25 so you could hang them over your fireplace... 

"Damn, where do you live in New England? From the last time I checked, Skinners is a straight shot up North and is only like an hour away. Two certified MFU certified fitters, and a handful of people who have been doing it for dozens of years are up there."

Maybe if I lived closer to the highway or any highway.  Either way, non skiing parents won't pay for custom footbeds and I would bet even Skinners will say "We don't do a lot with kids unless they are racing."  

How many non skiing parents will drive even an hour each way to sit in a ski shop for 2-3 hours while there kid gets fitted for boots?

Sunapee is an an hour and 45 minutes from me if I don't get stuck behind the logging truck.  I rounded up. 

I have heard good things about Skinners.

These shops are probably the ones that complain the internet is taking away their business.

Great point!

Boots, above all else, need to be not merely fitted but also adjusted to your body (I use the term "balanced" to describe that process). A boot may fit onto your foot in the liner, but be completely wrong for you for many reasons. The poor service that's being described in this thread makes visiting a ski shop worse than worthless: the bad advice means that skiers end up with worse experiences than if they used sites like EpicSki and then on-line retailers... and then an expert in boot balancing (like EpicSki's own boot experts).

This is a very big deal to me, since poor-fitting boots plagued me for decades until I went to one of those guys (Jeff Bergeron; you can find my review of the experience on these forums). Even tho I had bought my immediately previous boots from the guy who was touted as the best in Boulder, they fit so poorly that within about 15 days, my feet were slopping around inside them. Jeff showed me why and where they were too big, and I dropped TWO sizes and into a last that seemed about half the width. My experience on skis was forever altered as a result.

While the comments here that many will not do this kind of thing is true, it's one of the first things I encourage: get boots balanced to you by an expert. It's worth the extra money to get boots that really are fit to YOU, not just your feet.

Regarding ski swaps, I think it would be good for Bears to realize they are not normal.  Most skiers do not want to spend the money or time to get tuned and tweaked equipment.  Others could not afford to ski, if they had to have each family members boots "properly" fitted.  i definitely fall into the latter case.

That being said, I worked at our patrol swap this weekend.  I was helping people pick out boots.  The first three people I helped, I did a shell fit, explained how boots should fit and tried to match the boot to the skiers ability and experience.  All three went with a boot that was comfy, but too big.  After that, I did not waste my time, trying to get them the right boot, unless someone was truly interested.

And so then the guys who know what they are doing have to overcome the bad "rep" that gets created. I have a guy in the shop right now, who thinks he knows everything (he is trying to impress his girl), but he clearly looks at us with a little distrust. After all his skiing buddies don't use custom foot beds and they ski better than I and the other guy who works here (who happens to be a LIII, former Pro Freestyle Tour guy nad tried out for the D Team). These guys really piss me off, but they do spout off some funny things.

Sad, but true. However, once you've skied in "properly fitted" boots, you'll find a way to get them on your family members, even if it's only one a year for a few years or some other way...