Shopping Experiences / Recession

[Marmora Man]

Today I visited Bluewater - accompanying my wife to purchase blinds and stuff. Not a favourite outing, but I also wanted to buy two things - a digital camera to replace one that had finally died and a new DVD of Casablanca to replace a lost, stolen or strayed version.

Into Zavvi (formerly Virgin I think). Couldn't find Casablance under the "Classic Films" heading, nor under "General Films" so asked assistant for advice - he checked there were some in stock - computer affirmed 19 present. Then took me on a tour of the shop with no obvious clue as to where to look. No copy found - he then checked the computer again and said he'd check the store room. After 10 minutes he came back and said there were some in stock but that they were in one of a number of boxes and he didn't have time to find one, but that HMV might have a copy. At that stage, having almost lost the will to live, I was about to leave when I decided to talk to the Store Manager. She acknowledged the poor customer service and despatched someone to find me a copy of the film. After spending a total of 25 minutes and ?4.00 in the shop I left. Had I received better service I would, probably, have bought a few more DVDs as I find old films almost as appealing as books.

Next into Sony to but a W series digital camera - met by salesman who showed me several different Sony cameras, demonstrated some of the fancy options and I decided to buy. Over to sales point where he checked and told me that there were none in stock - when I pointed out that I had just been handling one he told me that they couldn't sell display items because "people wouldn't know what we had to sell". He didn't seem to understand that, with this rule and no stock, he had nothing to sell anyway. His store manager, when consulted, also refused to sell the display item for the same reason. I was told they could "pre-sell" the item to me - this would mean me paying now and waiting up to 7 days for them to inform it was available in the shop when I could drive back to Bluewater and collect.

I managed to buy the same camera later in John Lewis for ?20.00 less and in a transaction that took just 5 minutes.

It seems strange that there I was a willing customer, with money to spend, yet two salesmen were perfectly happy to turn away custom and revenue rather than be arsed to make a sale. In a retail recession were the high street is supposedly hurting this is illogical behaviour. How much of the recession is driven by poor service as opposed to lack of spending money?

Of course this may just be that I am turning into a "One foot in the grave" kind of chap having passed my 50th birthday.

[lordship_bod]

i think what you have just described MM is poor customer service from idiot sales people. it is not a reflection on the current state of the economy - if the people who were actually counting the profit realised that poor customer service allowed people with money to walk out their door i think they would fire said idiot sales people (well you would hope so anyway)...

[Brendan]

Mamora Man, all your troubles started when you made the schoolboy error of going to a shopping centre. If you want to live a happy, stress free life such places are to be avoided on pain of death.

[DaveR]

definitely stay away from shopping centres, at all costs

particularly if your wife wants to buy blinds

[Ladygooner]

Buy online - much easier!

[SeanMacGabhann]

Judging by his second sentence I reckon Marmora Man already knows to avoid these places but thought he would make the best of a bad job while he was there

[Ted Max]

Yesterday, as I was walking my dog, I saw someone throw a half eaten apple away - 'Don't you know there's a recession on, I asked him?"

And later, stopping of at my usual greengrocer, I note that the price of apples has trended down a penny per piece, fully 42 retail days before the usual seasonal glut. "Sign of a retail slowdown?" I asked myself? Yet this evidence conflicts with the discarded apple anecdote. Truly, these are confusing times we live in.

And so to my ablutions, wherein I note that our current bottle of shower gel has lasted a day longer than normal before getting down to the "last little bit left in the hook at the bottom" level. "Could it be," I mused, "I am subconciously economising on essential household items? I so, then we could well be heading for a recession." I write a stern note on the matter, unsure whether to publish on the Forum.

Bedtime - I have taken to reading with the last of the natural light so as to reduce electricity consumption and avoid Bill Shock. I afford myself some black humour. "Dark days we live in, what dark days," as I descend into peaceful rest from monitoring global economic indicators.