Attentive readers will know that we have been pursuing an insurance claim. The replacement Bowers & Wilkins speakers arrived yesterday, and are fine. The old, much beloved speakers of perlmonger have been Freecycled, as has the broken amp (which has also been replaced).
That just left the television – and yesterday morning, a little plastic card arrived for us to go shopping in Currys.
We have a local youth club waiting for the old set, and it’s very irritating having only one working SCART socket, so we thought we’d nip (or pop) down to our local branch to pick up the Panasonic we’d selected.
We left the house at 12:10, and the branch is about 10 minutes drive away. We got home at 14:30 …
The first 45 minutes or so was spent waiting for a salesperson to come near the televisual section. There appeared to be very few staff in the store, and they must have lost a fair few sales – we’d have left, but we had no choice about where to shop. Eventually, a helpful chap came along, took our order, checked stock and went upstairs to “the cage”. And returned telling us that the warehouse manager wouldn’t let the only in stock model go, because “it had a scratch on the screen”.
He then helpfully spent 15 minutes ringing round all the local branches to see if they had this model in. They didn’t. Further investigation showed that Currys as a whole were expecting 142 sets on Friday. No, we couldn’t put in an advance order. We went back to the television section, but didn’t see anything we liked as much, so we returned to the cash desk to get them to make a note of what we wanted, so they could give us a call. The woman there wrote it on a piece of paper – not in a book, or anything – so I doubt we’ll ever hear from them again.
By now, we’d been there about 1.5 hours. But foolishly, we decided that we’d buy the new TomTom we wanted – a 720, with Traffic. Off she went to look at the shelves. No 720s with Traffic. So off she went to look in “the cage”. No 720s with Traffic.
We lost the will to live, but we’d come so far … she decided to look in the locked display cabinet in case one was lurking in there. But – where were the keys? 20 minutes later, she found the keys.
SUCCESS! We have a TomTom 720 with Traffic.
We came home, and ate a (very) late lunch, wondering to each other how such a store can make a profit. Their IT systems are rubbish, their stores are understaffed and chaotic. All the staff we did deal with were courteous and pleasant, but clearly thoroughly demoralised.
And you know what? – I did a search online when I got home, and the Currys in Fishponds Road has stock. I think I’ll go up there tomorrow.
It’s no wonder people shop online …
On the rare occasions I go into Currys, if I’m just browsing I’m plagued by the staff. But those times I actually want to buy something is there anyone about to assist? Not a chance.
Indeed – we were in there last week, looking at televisions, so we knew what to buy. Lots of sales staff *then*.
The worrying thing is that I’ve had the same experience you describe almost every time I’ve visited a variety of Currys stores across the country…. So yes, it does make you wonder how they ever make money.
If I have to buy from them now, I always go online instead.
Sadly, we can’t buy online, because we have a special card from the insurers.
My blokey has laughed like a loon at this one as he trains staff at Currys branches in Yorkshire and finds it totally frustrating as they ‘are buffoons and imbeciles’ and few employees are actually motivated to sell or even learn a basic knowledge of the stock.
He’s going to be kicking some arses thanks to your post though.
Management arse, I hope – as I said, the individuals we dealt with were unfailingly polite and courteous, but defeated by the system.
Even the girl on the till apologised for the delay.
I’ve had similar experiences in our local Currys. The trouble seems to be that they only have plenty of staff on duty at high traffic times, whereas we like to shop when there are few people about. This seems to mean there are also few sales staff about, too.
We’ve always found the staff unfailingly helpful and courteous when we do finally manage to catch one.
Having said that, we’ve found that Comet has a larger stock of certain things of which Curry’s don’t carry many examples, and they also have lots of staff, but they don’t seem very knowledgeable about the technical aspects.