Tonight on Channel 4 at 9.00. Mary Portas goes in search of profit making companies who give bad customer service.

She won’t have to look far!

He should have left all his problems at home in a customer facing environment I always had to. It wasn’t a public holiday so they should have been open.

EDIT: I don’t want to go to the shop incase it hinders or messes up any investigation they may be doing. I just wanted some help taking it further as nothing seems to be happening now.

Admiralable – I know that the Mail would probably love a story where a 9 year old is sworn at by a shop employee

but that would be a lie, so it’s ok to lie but you want the death penalty for swearing!

but that would be a lie, so it’s ok to lie but you want the death penalty for swearing!

I don’t want the death penalty. Just a mild maiming!

I don’t want to go to the shop incase it hinders or messes up any investigation they may be doing. I just wanted some help taking it further as nothing seems to be happening now.

Maybe just contact whoever you complained to in the first place and ask for an update.

They’d be out immediately for gross misconduct.

On what evidence? because some frothing at the mouth nutter said it happened? I guess you would have a line up of all the staff that worked there and so the offended one could pick out the culprit.

Gamestation, you say?

Own him with Bomberman.

I don’t want to go to the shop incase it hinders or messes up any investigation they may be doing. I just wanted some help taking it further as nothing seems to be happening now.

lol, what investigation

Admirable I can say having worked for the company they won’t care. There will be at present no investigation. What would be your ideal outcome?

lol, what investigation

maybe MI-5 are involved by now??

I wanna go all out. Where’s my next port of call?

I’m sorry but why should anyone “Man up” and ignore this sort of treatment. It’s about time that retailers who treat their customers like this got what they deserve. I appreciate that the staff are on minimum wage so why should they care while the owners/shareholders reap huge rewards. Even so it’s time that these shop “assistants” realised that there are a lot of people with no job at all who would be glad to give it a go. I would try to find out who the CEO or whoever is and write a letter to him/her explaining the situation, the treatment you received, the shops location. Then explain that you took your business to one of their competitors.

Totally pointless as the loss of one sale will have no effect.

The sooner though that we all start doing it the sooner we will get the service we want. As opposed to the one that we deserve because we don’t complain to the right people or at all.

Some people may think a simple bouycott my one person will have little effect, but that is not the case.

When i was fourteen i went on work experience at Virgin Megastore. The advert they sent schools suggested work experience kids would do a range of tasks, including working on the shop flour. In reality they sent everyone to the basement to price stuff up all week. Not only were they mis-selling the experience, but I was asked to price up gay (soft) porn. The school complained and had them removed from the work experience register and i decided to boycott them. Twelve years later they went bust.

Play the long game.

Id just move on & spend the time your wasting on here playing games with your son…

Sadly the worlds not ideal, these things happen

Virgin megastores never went bust, they drove down the company value by lowering profits then sold to Zavvi at an attractive price, Zavvi went bust with Woolworths. Virgin relied on CD and DVD sales, high customer returns of DVDs and downloading impacted thier Market so they changed tactics and left the highstreet. Virgin still trades in CDs and DVDs elsewere and continues to own music production companies.

It wasn’t a public holiday so they should have been open.

There are a lot of possible reasons why the shop was locked up.

What are you expecting to happen? Do you know who swore at you? Do you know why they swore at you?

Me, I would have said ‘Fine, I spend my money elsewhere.’ and walked off.

price up gay (soft) porn

Didn’t mind pricing up the hetro porn then 😉

Virgin megastores never went bust, they drove down the company value by lowering profits then sold to Zavvi at an attractive price, Zavvi went bust with Woolworths. Virgin relied on CD and DVD sales, high customer returns of DVDs and downloading impacted thier Market so they changed tactics and left the highstreet. Virgin still trades in CDs and DVDs elsewere and continues to own music production companies.

What I really don’t understand is with Woolworths/EUK out of the market it gave the other CD/DVD retailers alot more breathing space. Yes the encroachment of online downloads and Supermarkets (minimal- smaller sections compared) however how badly run must HMV’s business model be? (they are the next shaky such retailer).

Zavvi went down not due to Virgin but Zavvi’s reliance on EUK (Woolies own wholesaler and distributor) that went down with Woolies.

No supply with bills/overheads means cashflow disaster.

including working on the shop flour.

They went out of business because nobody knew, they were in fact, a bakery.

Just go in ask for an XBox + Kinnect + about £200 of games, get to checkout and then deliver the commission line from Pretty Woman and walk out, they probably don’t get any commission and you’ll come across as pretty camp but hey it’s more manly than whining about it here.

EUK survived on the strength of the Tesco contract they had at the time. I understand they still are looking for a buyer. HMV are trying new measures such as a trade in system, but I can’t see it lasting. Virgin used it’s own grading system for CDs called ELVIS, were high selling CDs such as an xfactor release would be graded 1, best sellers such as Dark side of the moon were around 4. The grades went from 1 – 20, HMVs system is much flawed by comparison. It’s too slow and fiddly and doesn’t prioritse delivery stock as effectively. I can’t see them lasting on the highstreet, those retailers in my experience (I’ve worked for most in different capacities) don’t offer enough add on buys either, no ones tempted by a £3.99 Mr T keyring or a £5 pen with the stig on it when they get to the tills.

If HMV does shrinks its stores significantly – whats left? Surely room for someone to come in and set up stand alones (tescos etc)

Game Group plc

Unity House Telford Road
BAsingstoke
Hampshire
RG21 6YI

Peter Donald Lewis…. Chairman
Ian Shephard …. CEO

Try one of those @gamegroup.plc.uk

I don’t know Hora, I think buying those products off the highstreet is dying out. Be it Tesco or anyone else selling them. Trading under the name HMV is worth more than the business from what I can see. Stand alones don’t really work Woolworths tried it with Music Zone and despite shops looking busy, some talented people at head office buying trends are different now. I know of some HMV branches were the smaller sister company Waterstones provides more profit. I would downsize HMV branch sizes, stock mostly chart and keep the strong back catalouge going online. I can see how having a large premium space shop can work anymore if lots of the stock doesn’t sell quickly. Or split the company into several parts, like WHSmith did, WHS News, WHS and WHS Travel. The higher profit areas (news) putting profits back into WHS by sub letting the shop floor space.

I remember a very old Viz “advert”, which ran along the lines of “Nat West, the bank that likes to tell you to **** Off”, because at the time the Nat west had the slogan “the bank that likes to say yes”. Probably early 90’s IIRC.

Stand outside this store on a saturday with a sandwich board “Gamestation, the store that likes to tell you to F— Off”. Avoid actually writing the F word and I can’t see the police getting onto you about your language, watch the manager come running out “what the **** are you **** doing!!??!!” Explain the situation and that you’ll return every saturday unless he fires the member of staff and you get a heavily discounted console & Kinect.

Agree and good idea. I read somewhere that they are merging Waterstones/HMV branches in some areas.

On topic- OP. I really do feel your wasting your time/missed the opportunity.

The only thing to gain now would be you’d explained to your son that a complaint to the manager etc is in order however (next time) he would learn better a ‘excuse me, what did you just say’ would reinforce/teach him.

If you are doing this for yourself then its a storm in a teacup.

I wonder where shop working staff go to to complain when they are sworn at?? happens at least 3 times per duty shift for me, normally shoplifters or customers who feel they have been wronged!

A customer ranted and swore at me 10 times sunday morning at half 10 because we wouldn’t serve him his free makeup with the paper he had brought somewhere else. The reason for his swearing was due to the fact the store was closed!! didn’t open till 11, we opened the doors to let customers use the cafe, big signs and annoucements stating it was browsing time only, or visit the cafe.

I normally let the guards bounce them out the door!!

LMT a good friend of mine used to manager a posh clothes store chain in London and regularly she used to get ‘customers’ coming in with blatantly old/secondhand clothing demanding full refunds or exchanges saying they were faulty (we are talking she’d worked there for years yet the clothes presented were often even older). Tactics included swearing and physical threats. I wont go into the demographics of the customers but they were all the same….

Any update Admiralable ?

Have you been back in touch with head office to find out how their investigations are coming along ?

btw, I think you’re probably right about not going back to the shop in case it hinders or messes up any investigation at that level – best to let them get on with it quietly I guess.

Still at least now that Ro5ey has provided you with the name of the company’s chairman, you know who to pursue it with if you don’t get any satisfaction.

Did you manage to get your hands on the stuff that you were after btw – or has all the worry concerning this dreadful situation put the dampers on it all ?

Something similar happened to me when I was out with my 4 year old daughter. to be honest I dealt with it there and then, got the guy to apologise to me and my daughter and left it at that. If unable to deal with it at the time I’d have gone back the next day to sort it.

I’m assuming the people who think it’s not a big deal don’t have kids. In the grand scheme of things they may be right, it may not be a big deal. thing is I try my hardest to bring my kids up to be decent human beings and to treat everyone with respect. there are just some situations that such behaviour isn’t acceptable. Like it or not we’re all role models for the younger generation.

I think we should just accept the inevitable and speed up the process . If HMV, Waterstones, Game, WH Smiths etc would just admit defeat and we hand over our entire town centres to Tesco, we’d all be to demolish all those faffy, outdated stone buildings – which lets be honest – with their nooks and crannies aren’t very user friendly.

Then with the newly flattened land they could build an absolutely **** enormous shed, with friendly staff who won’t tell you to **** off, and stock every coldplay album you could ever want. And, of course, an equal sized car park so we can all drive there.

Actually… we’re nearly there already aren’t we

Then with the newly flattened land they could build an absolutely **** enormous shed, with friendly staff who won’t tell you to **** off, and stock every coldplay album you could ever want. And, of course, an equal sized car park so we can all drive there.

I think your vision of the High Street is not far off from reality, only I would go one stage further and the one massive shed would be a drive through, where the brain dead would no longer need to find a parking space to shop, they could simply order there cheap plastic tat via an intercom, so removing any need to interact with humans directly at all.

The vehicles would roll on one large conveyor belt and would be puked out at the other end of the shed, where a army of ex Argos staff would fill the boots & the shoppers happy with their day shopping could join the traffic jam back home!