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?

It's a vicious circle, the high street is poor so we shop online, the high street gets worse, so we shop online.

We live in a rural area and it's far easier to shop online than it is to go into the city to shop. I think I've been to our local city to shop once in the last 12 months.

John Lewis and Waitrose treat their staff well, and surprise, surprise, they have well trained, motivated and engaged staff who can see a direct connection between how they treat customers and the footfall and sales in their store.

Lower those standards and you get a store like M&S that used to be great (when they treated their staff well) but now struggling to survive. Poor choice of goods, messy looking stores and staff who are grumpy and fed up working there.

I'm a conspiracy theorist about this. The bean counters are happy if shops are scruffy and the staff are surly and demotivated. It means customers shop online so they can justify sacking staff and closing high street stores. Happy days, the numbers look good to the Board of Directors and shareholders. Online shopping is now romping ahead in terms of profit contributions, so who cares if people lose their jobs.

My pet hate is going into a shop and being confronted with a 20 year old shop assistant who says "yerrrrright, mate". I despair.

What really infuriates me in stores is when they don't have prices displayed. I hate having to ask staff how much an item is and usually choose to leave it unless it's something I desperately want.

I have never encountered this. What shops are these?

Meanwhile, business is booming on the internet.

We can't have it both ways and neither can the retail industry. Internet shopping has its pros and cons but so does going into a shop and seeing/touching a product and being served by a helpful, knowledgeable human being. The trouble is, we now split our spending between high street and online, but we don't have twice as much money to spend, so something has to suffer - and it's the high street. It's more expensive to provide a physical shop premises and staff to run it, than to operate a website and deliver from a warehouse.

The internet has been the ruination of many jobs and services - retail is just one of them. Companies like Debenhams and M&S can hardly complain if takings are down on the high street, because all that's happened is that our spending has transferred to their online operations instead. It's the smaller retailers and the independents I feel sorry for. It's much harder for them to compete. I think we should all make more effort to buy from independent shops even if it costs a little more, at least some of the time. Use it or lose it.

I spend a fortune on books and buy mainly from Amazon because of price and convenience but I still buy maybe every fourth book (I buy a lot) in Waterstones because I am aware that it will disappear if people like me buy from Amazon all of the time.

Tesco last week, with many of their Christmas gifts and the local Farmer's shop and local independent furniture and decor shop. They aren't alone though

It's a vicious circle, the high street is poor so we shop online, the high street gets worse, so we shop online

It's the same with banks though.

They stand there watching queues to the door and would rather have 6 people stood doing nothing at the beaurou de change and mortgage advisory desk, and a further 4 people walking up and down said line, offering "help" . Except that help is to be forced to use some self service thing not everyone can use for part of their transaction , and one sodding cashier trying to serve every one.

Get behind the bloody counter people. You are doing fuck all while your collegue is run off her feet.

I can't type today. TK Maxx can be bad for not having prices too on certain items.

You choose to go shopping on the high street in a major city with your elderly mum who can’t walk very well on one of the busiest shopping days of the year and it’s not a very nice experience?

Who could possibly have foreseen how it would turn out?

I find most staff in the big High Street shops to be friendly and helpful, my response to indifferent retail staff is usually ‘they’re not treated well enough to give a shit’. Sad, but true.

I save my ire for the small, independent retailers; our local market town has loads of them. I want to support them so I’ll pay to park in the town and am prepared to forego the savings I might find online if I can afford it. In return it would be nice to be acknowledged by the proprietor when I enter their empty shop, and if I ask a question about an item and they give me a one-word answer with a blank face I think to myself ‘why am I going out of my way and spending more than I have to for this person who doesn’t appear to care that I’m in their shop about to buy something?’ I don’t owe them a living.

If they want a successful business they need to understand they have to offer something on top of what we can get online; a friendly chat with a lonely customer who hasn’t spoken to another human being all day or expert advice (such as cab luggage sizes). Just some added-value in human form that people will go out of their way to find.

Clapping was a little odd, esp to us Brits, but at least it's a positive response. I would rather be clapped in than ignored.

I'd rather be ignored than encourage shops to demean their staff in that way.

Clapping? Jesus wept. What next, scraping and bowing?

We were out shopping the whole day yesterday and on Boxing Day and it was absolutely fine. I wouldn’t say that there was not enough staff I would rather say there were lots of customers. We visited different places but no complains. Parking was nightmare but it’s expected. Some coffee shops were very busy but it’s again expected. Toilets were fine some were better than others. So you were probably unlucky. Shops do struggle due to our shopping online so less staff are understandable.

'The ones that would rather be with their families and reflect that in the service they provide to customers are the ones that don't help the High Street and will be doing the sad faces when made redundant'

@Frouby
Do you expect them to prefer to be in work over the Christmas period?

I agree too. Went shopping before Christmas and it was rubbish. Poor choice, poor quality and none of the sizes i needed. Recently I bought a cardigan from Marks & Spencer and had to take it back a few weeks later as it had gone all bobbly and washed like a dish rag. Not what I expect from Marks. I'm not going to bother shopping there anymore. I find Matalan better quality these days and cheaper.

There are certain places where the staff behave as if they're doing you a favour. Matalan is particularly awful so we don't go there anymore. Our local Next is pretty crap, you usually have to wait for the staff to stop having conversations amongst themselves to actually serve you.
It's depressing and the reason we mostly use Amazon now. Staff only have themselves to blame as far as I'm concerned.

I blame the planners/town councils to be honest. The High Street started to die the moment out of town retail parks opened, and people could park for free and do their weekly shop at the same time.

I shop mainly online due to being a size 18/20 and refusing to dress like a pensioner as Evans (the main High Street option) would have you believe is trend. And I refuse to put a penny into any of the Arcadia group.

Last time I was in the UK, I went to Debenhams and couldn't find any sales personnel at all. There were 2 women who seemed to be spending a long time standing in lingerie, where I needed to ask someone something, but despite me circling for 15 minutes, they didn't stop, so I assumed they were customers.

Went to the children's department and couldn't see any staff there either - but when I went to the desk a lady popped up. Not in uniform, but had a name badge on. She informed me that Debenhams had done away with the uniforms - she wasn't impressed, and nor was I! How the fuck are customers supposed to spot staff members if they're not in uniform?!

Turned out the 2 women chatting in lingerie were both staff members too but they just couldn't be fucked to help out (I went back that way and spotted their name badges - hadn't looked before because no uniform)

Bad move, Debenhams.

Should point out this was Easter time so they might have changed back by now, I don't know.

Yeah man it's not the same. Affluent or otherwise

Overworked by arse! I went into a Currys yesterday to spend over a thousand pounds. There was a group of staff gossiping and completely ignoring the customers. When I finally got someone's attention, they hadn't a clue about the product I wanted to buy - I knew more than they did and they actually said completely wrong things about it. I just left and bought from Amazon instead.

If "physical" shops want to survive then they have to massively improve customer service - customers are a necessity not a nuisance. I can understand it when they are clearly short staffed in a busy shop but when they're just stood in a group laughing and ignoring customers, they don't deserve to survive.

Transport doesn't help either - car parking is hard to find and it's too expensive on the bus; if the 4 of us go on the bus and back to the city it's £18. Then you get there and people are rude, shop assistants are low paid and don't know their stuff through no fault of their own and it's mostly (in small towns) charity shops and coffee shops.

We saw my DBro over xmas and his town has about 10 coffee shops, many charity shops and 2 fuddy duddy clothes shops. We have a lot of shops in Bristol so could shop there but the traffic is horrendous, parking is expensive and so is the bus fare.

I've stopped shopping for clothes on the high street for the sake of my blood pressure.

There are retailers who have responded to the online threat and turned things around eg Waterstones and HMV. With a bit of effort it is possible. Stores have to be nice places to be or why not just shop online? I think it's laziness, not on the part of the shop workers but from the top.

I am surprised that people are defending poor customer service on the basis that people would rather be with their families than working. What happened to people doing a professional job?

Sadly we still have an attitude from highstreet shoppers that the "customer is always right" when, as anyone in retail will tell you... they rarely are.

Customer service skills as a whole are dying off in this country, it is an art to do it properly, and as someone who prided myself on always providing good customer service and resolving issues (or at least making the customer feel like it has been - if it couldn't be resolved) it makes me sick the minimal level of service you see some staff give too. It goes both ways.

Supermarkets:

Hate the self checkout but also hate being asked by a random spotty teenager (credit for trying) asking me "so... got any plans for New Year's Eve?"

The Range is a shop that is very poor at displaying prices. It's a constant guessing game.

For me it is that shopping is do joyless compared to even 10 years ago. I have a decent budget but cannot find anywhere to spend it. I have an alternative style of dress but I am finding it hard to get quality basics on the high street as they either have no natural fibres or are cheap stuff that'll fade and deform after a few washes. There is more stuff be strangely less variety, particularly for more decent midrange fitted stuff. There seems to be less black stuff and things in bright colours. So much beige and grey and what's with the flounces!
I really want to shop but I can't because there isn't anything I want to buy on the high street. It is a symptom of business thinking that investors and shareholders arw the real customers and that staff are irritants you have to pay. It isn't just a problem on the high Street.