To be so angry with the British high street?

[peoniesarejustperfect]

Went sales shopping yesterday with my elderly Mother yesterday. We went to an 'affluent' city in the south east. We always go shopping after Christmas and it's a bit of a tradition and we normally really enjoy it. Yesterday was just so depressing - it made me fizz with anger. I hardly know where to start!!

The shops were just horrible - full of badly merchandised sales stuff which looked totally uninviting.

In several of the shops we went into there were no staff on the shop floor - we wanted to ask where different departments were (to save Mum walking too much), but no one to ask and poor signage.

In House of Fraser (one of the stores which is remaining open) we waited for 25 mins in the luggage department for a member of staff - there was no one there to help - no tape measure, no useful signs about cabin luggage allowances and no one to take any cash. We hung around for ages with two other families - no chairs to sit on, we just stood around. After a while we all gave up. The same in lingerie - no staff on duty. We had lunch there, which was really nice, but the restaurant loos were closed for cleaning when we went in at 12:15. What restaurant shuts its loos at lunchtime??? They suggested we left the restaurant and 'popped down' two floors to use another loo.

The British high street keep moaning but really, why on earth would anyone want to shop there? Why do they deserve our hard earned cash? It's incredibly expensive to park and the retailers don't seem very keen on keeping customers happy - let alone delighting them! There's not enough staff and with some notable exceptions, many of them are poorly trained - it all seems a bit of an effort for them.

Last Christmas we went to the US. I know it's different in America, but every morning in Macy's, when the doors open, a group of staff clap the shoppers in. We couldn't get over this and asked a sales assistant about it - she told us it's an honour to be picked - to welcome customers, look them in the eye and say thanks for coming. US retail is facing similar challenges, but what a different response. Helpful staff directing you to places, gorgeous merchandising, seats everywhere and staff trained to sell.

Anyone else fed up with the high street?

My 17 year old works in retail and he wasn't asked a single question about the products that they sell in the shop that he works in. Unless you shop at an independent, it seems that product knowledge can't be expected as part of customer service. We expect the High Street to provide prices that compete with the Internet but to minimize costs they hire people on zero hour contracts. They end up having to go from job to job rather than retail jobs of the past where there was a proper career path and it was respected.

In my experience the UK high street sees good customer service as making returns easy, click and collect available and a few pleases and thank yous when you pay. Generally we don't want to be approached by sales assistants like in the US and I avoid stores like Lush and Victoria's Secret where they hassle you as soon as you walk in.

In Japanese department stores, the staff line up and bow as you walk in. The saying "Customer is King" in Japan is "Customer is God" You can have your purchase beautifully gift wrapped for free. No idea about working conditions but it's even more customer centric than the US. The McDonalds menus actually have "Smile- 0 yen" as an item.

Ds said that there were queues of people waiting to pay out of the door but the number of people working was the same as usual as the shop manager didn't have the budget for more. I think that you were extremely naive to expect a good experience at the busiest time of year.

They end up having to go from job to job rather than retail jobs of the past where there was a proper career path and it was respected.

I'm not one to favour High St chains, but plenty of them have pretty decent career paths for those who want them and are willing to put in the work, attend courses, etc. My sister in law is a regional manager for M&S after starting on the shop floor as a Saturday girl. My neighbour is a Matalan store manager, after starting as a Christmas temp. Like of lot of "entry level" jobs, you have to do the crap at first but once you've established yourself, you can start to go for promotions and move around stores as you climb.

goldengummybear DD had a job in a gadget shop as a Christmas temp and had to demo quite a few products. She developed quite a bit of product knowledge in the two months she was there.

Gwenhwyfar
But they change and revise them anyway. There's no guarantee thatprinted shop signs would be accurate after a few months.

I get that it might be nice for some shops to have the information, but them not having signs up telling passengers to be the information they need for their flights isn't a sign of poor service on the high street.

There are many other things to be irritated with on the high street, but 'shop doesn't tell me cabin bag sizes for my airline' isn't one of them.

Hmv is in administration 31.12.18.

Just putting together an Amazon shop, and another bonus of online shopping reared out.

I was looking for an item we've used for years and it's only by finding it on Amazon, I realise the manufacturer sells a different version that looks like it would be better suited for our use.

Just checked with DW, and she's never seen this in any shop when she's bought the "normal" version.

Whilst this might seem a failure on the part of the manufacturer, it's also likely they hit a wall in that most shops simply can't (or won't) carry a large range.

Despite my best efforts last week, I've just ordered an XBOX game from Amazon. None of our local stores had any in stock, including Game, Sainsbury, Argos, Asda, and Morrisons. Thought I'd struck lucky in Sainsbury as they had a pile on the shelf but when I took one to the till, and the guy went to the storeroom to get the disc, he came back empty handed saying they had none. (So why the hell have the empty boxes on the shelves then!!!). So, back home to Amazon it was. Shops only have themselves to blame for not carrying stock. All the stores I checked had stock in stores miles away when I checked them online, so it was simply a stock control failure in that they had the stock in the wrong places - one branch of a store was showing 13 in stock, yet all our local branches showed out of stock. I thought computerisation etc was supposed to improve things like stock control??