Jonicero:
"I find House of Fraser too expensive, but often shop in Debenhams.
A plea to those of you who hate shopping/don't have time to shop/are too lazy to shop - please use our shops as soon there will be nowhere to shop for those of us who aren't standard sizes and who prefer to try clothes and shoes on in an actual shop and buy them from an actual shop. What will happen to all the shopping malls?
I don't want to spend my life spending £££ buying multiple sizes online, trying them on at home then returning them all. I would spend half my life in the post office, and faff around with refunds.
I window shop online, go into specific stores, try the clothes on - sometimes taking three sizes of the same item into a changing room, and buy there and then if it fits.
And as for shoes, I have such awkward feet that I often have to try on upwards of 20 pairs before I find any that are comfortable. I simply cannot do this if I can only buy online."
I'm fascinated by this post! You said in a later post you work part time and don't have kids to worry about. But you're asking people who have made the decision not to shop in these stores / bricks and mortar stores for their own personal reasons to stop doing that, accept the inconvenience of shopping in the way you want them to so that YOU can continue to buy a niche segment of clothing (plus sized) in person instead of online? Have I misunderstood? Do you actually think that's reasonable?
I'm also fascinated by the harbinger or doom posts 'if you shop online then you'll have nobody to blame but yourself when these stores close down' well... don't you think that these are the very people who don't care if they shut or not given that they're not using them?
I struggle to hold any sentimentality about whether a shop, which exists to make profit from customers, survives or fails. It's retail. It's not a cause for charity (going out of your way to use it when an alternative would work best for you). It's simple progress. And yes I've previously been made redundant from a retail chain that could not compete. And we deserved to go bust, we could not find a way to be competitive in the market, why should customers spend more for the same item that is more cheap elsewhere? Those who hold this view must have a privileged financial set up where they can choose to spend more than they need to on items.
I have a fairly neutral view of HoF (despite working there a few years ago and being treated like shit: never finding out shifts until a week in advance, NMW, your pay docked 15 minutes wage if you were back at your department a second after your break ended, despite break room being literally six minutes walk from many people's departments and being the only time you could use the bathroom, on a fifteen minute break!). If you like using them, lovely. If not, that's fine too. But there's no need for all of this over emotional desire to actively try cease their demise over a sense of sentimentality. The only downside would be how many people may lose jobs, but if everyone is still buying albeit from another place there'll be jobs there too. I know amazon warehouses have terrible employment practices (just like a lot of these stores with the facade of wealth like HoF) but I know of several towns around me who have huge proportions of their workforce employed at an amazon warehouse.
This has been a very interesting thread from both sides! I've enjoyed reading it.