(I am sharing this now as I thought I already published it. Turns out all I did was email it to the FSF. So, finally, here it is)
I was at a Toronto Future Shop
outlet looking for a netbook that was on sale, in the lower price
range. The salesman who was helping me said that a tablet might be
cheaper then the netbook, if I was after the lowest cost computer.
I told him that I wasn't sure if I could get Linux
onto the tablet, so I would hold off for now. All of a sudden, the
salesman went cold and told me that he wouldn't talk with me anymore if
that was what I was going to do.
Stunned, I asked him why he would say that and risk losing a
sale, he fudged around a bit, then offered a story where another
salesman had sold a laptop, the user failed to install Linux on it and then was angry because the store wouldn't accept the return with an erased windows partition.
So I'm thinking, that's a BS answer, all he has to do is tell
me that it voids the warranty and make a sale, but that he would
threaten to stop talking with me because of my personal OS choice, well
that's extremely rude! And he'd lose a sale to Future Shop just because of I said the word "Linux" with him?
Now I'm rather upset, I demanded to speak with the store
manager, and the three of us had a discussion about this on the sales
floor. The manager confirmed
that it would be rude and not per Future Shop's policy to outright refuse to talk to a
customer because they prefer Linux. I offered a better way to handle Linux inquiries. As long as Future Shop salespeople tell the Linux
users that it voids the warranty and complicates the returns process if
the user wipes out Windows, that properly informs the customer and is
probably already in the fine print somewhere. Salespersons at Future Shop aren't liable for what a customer does with their computer to void the warranty.
There is NO reason to just stop talking with a customer, and basically walk away from a sale! Linux users are just as valuable customers as anybody else, and the way that salesman acted completely devalued me as a customer.
Finally after the chat with the manager, I went to get
the netbook off the shelf. As I was on my way to the cashier, the salesperson in question finally told me the truth: he
used to work as an Apple technician at an Apple store. His rude behavior came from
Apple's fascist policy about user's rights and he was making Future Shop look bad by carrying forward that terrible attitude.
Hopefully he realized he doesn't have to treat Linux-wielding customers like crap at Future Shop.
