Slick service at Apple Store!

[sgould]

Today I was looking for a new external hard drive. I went to the Apple Store at Brent Cross, London, UK.

I was asked by a staff member if he could help and I asked about the various drives available. Decided to buy one.

The staff are equipped with a Fujitsu handheld gizmo. This reads the bar code on the box, accepts your credit card. It has buttons for the PIN number and has a touch screen for input. All I had to do was tell him my e-mail and the invoice was sent to my home computer immediately.

I never went anywhere near a till, or had to queue. No paper changed hands.

I've not seen one of those units before. I thought it very slick and was impressed.

 

[simbalala]

Apple: America's best retailer

The most striking thing, though, is what you don't see. No. 1: clutter. Jobs has focused Apple's resources on fewer than 20 products, and those have steadily been shrinking in size. Backroom inventory, then, can shrink in physical volume even as sales volume grows. Also missing, at the newest stores, anyway, is a checkout counter. The system Apple developed, EasyPay, lets salespeople wander the floor with wireless credit-card readers and ask, "Would you like to pay for that?"

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/03/19/8402321/index.htm

 

[powermac]

Yea, they do the same thing at the 5th Ave store in NY. I purchased a iMac right from the sale person, few minutes later some other guy brought it out to me, and off I went. Pretty net. Makes sense in the real busy stores.