HD Study: Outlets Offer Bad Tech Info
By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 2/18/2008
A secret-shopper study conducted by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) concluded that retailers it visited were putting out misleading information about the digital-TV transition.
The study of 132 electronics retailers found that the vast majority of sales staffs didn't provide the correct information about converter boxes (81%) or the DTV-to-analog converter-box program (78%), while many others didn't have the right transition date (42%) or tried to upsell customers to more expensive equipment (20%).
Marc Pearl, executive director of the Consumer Electronics Retailers Coalition, took issue with the findings last week, claiming the methodology of the study was faulty and the questions the "shoppers" asked salespeople were badly worded and vague.
