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Comment by DiabloD3 | Hacker News Reader

I wasn't even aware they HAD a contract.

My local Home Depot has zero mention of any product Tesla makes.

I was approached by a Tesla contractor in Home Depot on a few days ago. It was honestly not a good experience.

For one, I was approached cold. I too had no idea that they had this agreement, so I was looking at something when someone came up and asked me something like "what type of project are you working on?" So I naturally just described what I was doing and before realizing this was not a HD employee.

He asks me if I thought about solar and whatever, but it wasn't relevant to my situation (roof slope orients E/W at the 45th latitude, so not great for solar). He goes on his way.

It was just a weird experience. I wasn't in a department related to electricity or solar, and they had no displays indicating a partnership with Tesla or that you may be cold-approached by a Tesla employee.

I still can't believe retail establishments think it's a good idea to degrade the customer experience by letting third-party salespeople rove their stores. I know Home Depot et al are making money from it, but I can't imagine there are many customers coming away with positive feelings from these come-ons.

Even first-party roving salespeople can be a big turn-off.

I've found that my local Walmart is often cheaper than Amazon, but I've been shopping at Amazon more frequently ever since I was repeatedly ambushed by people trying to get me to sign up for a Walmart Mastercard while I was wandering around the store shopping.

Is this a regional thing? I've never seen any 3rd-party sales staff in a Home Depot here in Chicago, or anything like this in any other big box store I frequent.

Perhaps it's a sun thing?

I’ve seen it here in Ohio. Sams Club and also Menards. Usually some guy at a aisle or back of the store trying to sell satellite tv. It is annoying...

Just shopping for whatever you needed and some random guy asks what you have for television.

Also seen a woman trying to sell perfume and wanted to spray some on people at another store, kinda pushy near where the cash registers are. Aren’t some people allergic to that stuff? I think it would be better to have samples next to the actual perfume for when someone is actually shopping for that.

>Just shopping for whatever you needed and some random guy asks what you have for television.

I've had that in Costco, trying to sell me cable TV service. Then they act completely flabbergasted when I say I don't watch TV and don't care about cable.

Haha, I had the same response from a door-to-door cable pusher.

Costco has been doing this with Direct TV recently. Its a very bad experience imo.

You walk in the door and sometimes there's someone saying: "I can save you money on your TV service"

Comcast does this in Walmart. The people Comcast hires are ultra-aggressive, obnoxious, crude individuals that actually follow you while shopping asking what you spend on service, what service you have, etc.

I flat out no longer shop in my local Walmart for this reason alone. Otherwise, I don't mind Walmart.

It seems to be a largely Home Depot thing, they seem to regularly have someone trying to sell me satellite television service in the stores here in Indy while Lowes has never had any such thing that I've seen.

Huh, my Dad was complaining about random salespeople at Home Depot to explain his driving out to OSH. I had assumed another customer just pissed him off.

Yeah, I had this experience a couple of years ago with someone trying to sell kitchen cabinet re-facing.

I had a similar experience, although in my case the Tesla guy could at least tell me where the screws I was looking for were.

The contract was for 800 Home Depot locations out of ~2,000 total locations. Our location has People watching the entrance of the store as well as combing the aisles to pitch customers.

Valuable products don't need a hard sell.

> combing the aisles to pitch customers

That's really obnoxious. What an awesome way to drive me to other retailers.

>Valuable products don't need a hard sell

Is your claim that Tesla products are doing such good business at Home Depot that they no longer need salespeople?

Is anything ever bad news for this company? They are bleeding red ink, haven't ever made production goals, claim to be growing exponentially, and yet are laying off employees because business is so good?

I'm with the poster down thread: the Fandom is hard to comprehend.

I think that you misread your parent, who was, to my reading, saying that the fact that powerwalls apparently needed a hard sell was proof that they were not good products.

But, but . . . Elon Musk! Sports Cars and Electricity and Space and stuff! What's there not to like?!!

Valuable products may need people to convince others that they're valuable. That is, in effect, the sell.

Mine has a powerwall disaply. I remembering seeing it and thinking "I bet this is not effective". Guess I was right!

Mine (not even in a very large city) has a Powerwall display right inside the front door.

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