King Kong Matt
Contributor
Scuba once bubbled...
Unless you walk in for the first time, and without buying anything, your LDS gives you free stuff or provides a free service in the hopes of enticing you back, (It is the duty of the business to attract and keep customers) whatever freebies you get are probably bought and paid for - bundling.
Agree...and I think the reason people feel differently about this ultimately comes down to a difference in personalities.
It would appear that some people in this thread walk in to a store wth a massive chip on their shoulder just looking for a reason to walk out angry and hurt.
Every relationship is give and take and every relationship involves compromise. With my LDS, I trusted the guys I was talking to...they had come with good recommendations from my buddies. I browsed the store a number of time without buying while they answered all my questions without ever getting pressure to buy.
Now, after having spent some money there, we have an implicit understanding between responsible business and loyal customer. I buy a drysuit and say "you guys will throw in the drysuit cert. into this price won't you?" and they say "of course...whaddidya think?"
Did I have to make the first move? Yes. Is that the way it should be...I don't know. Obviously, in the minds of some of the people who have posted to this thread, I, and customers like me are part of the problem in perpetuating poor LDS service. So be it. I try to be a good customer and a good business parter and if that means that I have to be the one to take the first step partially on the basis of good faith and little more...again, so be it.
This is just my personality. I don't yell at the people at the airline ticketing desk about the flight being late when there is nothing they can do about the weather. But, I know people who do and I don't doubt for a second that some people who have posted to this thread would accuse the airlines of terrible service in such circumstances.
Life is too short for me to get involved in that kind of silliness. I'd rather go dive.