The following is a conversation I had with an employee at the same national chain advertising on the radio that they're the place "where expertise is free":

I was looking for a lens for my 8x10 view camera, and was checking with all the local stores for both new and used equipment. I stopped in the local chain store on the off chance they might have something - after all, they had only been taken over by the chain recently, and still had a good range of stocks available remaining from before the takeover. I stopped in and went over to the sales counter. After waiting a few moments (it was busy), a salesman came over and asked if he could help.

"Yes, I'm looking for an 8x10 lens," I said.

Blank stare. "An 8x10 lens?" asked the salesman.

"Yes, a lens that will cover 8x10," I responded.

A confused look appeared on the salesman's face. "A lens that will make a good 8x10?" he said, and then turned to look at the point and shoot cameras, obviously thinking I might be looking for a point and shoot with a good lens.

Realizing he wasn't comprehending, I added "A lens that will cover an 8x10 negative."

A look of complete confusion now painted itself on the poor salesman.

"A view camera lens that will cover 8x10," I offered.

Finally, it dawned on the salesman what I wanted. "Oh, no. We don't have anything like that here."

What's the moral of the story? An 8x10 lens, while a rare item, is something that anyone with good basic photographic knowledge will know. In fact, at every non-chain store I went to asking for an 8x10 lens, I was immediately greeted with a "hold on a sec and I'll check", a "no, we don't deal with those", or a "jeez... that's an odd item. What do you need it for?". Any competant salesperson should have known what I was looking for without being confused into thinking I was looking for a point and shoot which will make a good 8x10 print. Thus, the chain store fails the most basic of tests - they don't even train their salesman as to what types of photo equipment are out there and how to recognize what people are really asking for.

Still not convinced that chain stores offer lousy service? Here's another example provided to me by a chain store retail manager who was complaining about my views on digital photography.

"While you have made it sound like all salesman are out to sell high end digital and make the money, I would like to share a story that I saw one of my 3 month employees do. This was a 17 year old high school student which has been with me for 3 months. She talked with the customer and found out that they wanted and she was holding a Canon Elph digital camera for them. (2.1MP,8MB CF, $599) The customer was going to be in Europe for about 3 weeks. She went over storage how much they wanted and how many shots they were going to take. She found out they would be limited to about 11 shots a day at the resolution they wanted to use and with the additional storage cards(2-64MB). She then suggested an Elph2 APS camera and having our company transfer the images from the negatives to CD's. this would give them the hard copy they wanted at about $13 per roll and a CD at about $6.50 a roll."

First, a look at the technical side of things. I agree that the customer wasn't correct in choosing digital - the limited storage capacity for full resolution images and the expense of additional storage cards (which cost $40-100 each) just makes it impractical for what the customer wanted. So the salesman's suggestion to go to a film camera was good. But that's where the good news ends...

The customer wanted digital images at high resolution, hence the limitation of 11 shots per day (at lower resolutions, you can often get 100 shots or more per storage card, and the customer wouldn't have been limited to so few shots per day - so it's clear the customer wanted high resolution images, hence the limited number of pictures). But the salesman's suggestion to go with APS and a CD at the time of developing is just, well, bad. That $6.50 CD is NOT a high resolution scan of the negatives - it's Kodak Picture CD quality, which means relatively low-resolution JPEG scans, not the high res digital files the customer originally wanted from the digital camera. To get the digital quality the customer wanted, you would need to get a Kodak Professional Photo CD made, a $20-30 additional cost at the time of developing.

Next, of all the film formats, APS is the absolute worst to work with digitally. Unless you get the photos put on CD at the time of development, you can't work with them digitally (except by scanning in prints). Why? Because the film is rolled back into the canister. This means you can't get at the negatives to work with them unless you crack open the case or have it sent to a professional lab (so much for doing easy digital work at home!). But most professional scanners (and home negative scanners) are designed to work with 35mm mounted slides or strips of negatives - not an entire uncut roll. Worst of all, APS adaptors for film scanners are not widely available and thus it may be impossible to have the negatives scanned later! So the customer ended up with an APS camera that would NOT meet their digital needs, not to mention that APS cameras, film, and processing is more expensive than 35mm (which easily would have met their needs)!

Finally, ask yourself this question - what is a 17-year old high school student doing as a camera salesman? While I'm sure she's a very nice person, I don't know any 17-year olds with enough photographic experience to be a good camera salesman. And in this situation, her lack of experience meant the customer didn't end up with the correct solution. It's not that she wasn't trying to help the customer, this situation simply shows her inexperience with photographic equipment and another example of the lack of training provided to salesman by the chain stores (and the fact that the manager thought this was an example of "good" work should tell you something about how well the managment is trained!).

In short, your average camera retail sales position is one that should not be filled by a high school student; the best camera salespeople tend to be those with reasonable photographic experience (2-3 years of serious amateur or professional photography, or some formal academic training in photography beyond a simple "Intro to Photography" course). This experience is needed to understand the cameras they sell, what the customer wants, and help the customer find the right camera. Without it, a salesman will make mistakes (as seen here), and the customer will not end up with the best advice or the best camera.

Does this mean your chain store buying experience will be bad? Not necessarily! The chain stores do have some salesmen who are quite experienced in photography, but they also have a large number of well-meaning but ill-trained employees. I don't want to discourage you from buying at chain stores, but you need to understand exactly what you're walking into - the chances of walking out of a chain store with good advice and the best possible purchase for your needs is significantly lower than if you go to a good specialty store with a well trained staff. Chain stores compete based on price, and as such they will hire as cheaply as possible - hence their sales staff can be highly variable in quality, and you will run into salespeople like those described here.

Mail order outfits are even worse - they just hire people to man the phones and take orders; the chances of talking to a knowledgealbe person are extremely slim, and even if you do talk to someone knowledgeable, they probably won't want to talk to you for very long (the more time they talk to you, the more phone calls they miss, the fewer orders they take, and the lower their commissions will be). This leaves only the small specialty stores to give you decent advice and service, but there's a catch - higher prices. Frustrating, isn't it?