Supermarket getting rid of changing rooms. AIBU

[dottypotter]

The Local Asda had a changing room as they sell clothes etc where you could try things on. Its gone now, dont think it was anything to do with Covid they just got rid of it and put some more stuff to sell in its place.

There are times you want to try something on and cant. If you sell clothes shouldnt you be able to try them on? What would happen if all shops that solds clothes got rid of their changing rooms? Surely this will lead to more people bringing stuff back too?

A lady was looking for the changing room today for her daughter to try something on and was told the changing rooms have gone. She said to her daughter you'll have to try this on over your clothes then. Not the same is it.

Bit cheeky to get rid of the changing rooms just so they can push more stuff. Has the person who made that decision never needed to try anything on then. Mad.

The arrogance of thinking you know better than them what will make them more money

Oh dear. I think I preferred ignorant bliss...

I had no idea people did this (although now that you've mentioned it and knowing what I've come across in public loo cubicles before, I guess I'm not actually that surprised that people do disgusting things in other cubicles...).

Not sure I'll ever go barefoot in a changing room again...

So did mine. I wanted to try 3 styles of summer dress to see which one looked the best, & wasn't sure exactly which size I was. Asked an assistant where the changing rooms were as the old ones had gone, & she advised me to buy them all to try on at home & then take the wrong ones back. Well, I'm not going to do that with 6 dresses, am I? And the store is a 25 minute drive away. It's just not worth the trouble.

Haven't bought clothes in there since, & the extra selling floorspace they created by taking out the changing rooms is now taken up with permanent sale racks jam-packed with stuff which they can't shift. I can't believe this hasn't cost them money.

Of course you can take clothes with tags through self service check outs. Don't be so ridiculous

Tell that to my local.tesco who , after I scanned it all through thr self service then sent me to go queue again at the kiosk to get the tags removed.

I don't blame supermarkets one bit. The cost of theft is higher prices for all who shop there.

I have never seen a supermarket with a changing area, very surprised to hear that there are such things. I have occasionally bought clothes in supermarkets, generic things like leggings, PJs, fairly straightforward fitting. I guess if I were after a dress for a wedding or was a very unusual shape, I would shop in a clothes shop not a supermarket.

They can sell what they like, whatever people wish to buy. If you don’t like the set up, surely it is you that should shop somewhere else!

According to management at supermarket I work for, changing rooms accounted for so much money lost through theft, they’re infinitely better off not having changing rooms, even if it puts some customers off buying the clothes.

Knowing the lengths some customers will go to, shoplifting vast amounts of clothing/general merchandise, I’m inclined to agree. Not practical in supermarkets to have a staff member in charge of changing rooms, as happens in department stores, so changing rooms had to go.

Sainsburys near me still have their changing rooms locked since covid. Never reopened them. So I won’t buy anything from there now which is a shame because I used to get quite a bit. They have a massive clothing section, bigger than many high street clothing shops and no changing room.

At the Sainsbury’s here if you take clothes through a self service checkout the tags aren’t deactivated, so you end up setting alarms off and having to go back and get it sorted out if there isn’t a member of staff around that can help. Ends up being quicker to queue for a proper checkout.

Our store has a massive clothes section. There used to be a changing room but it shut during covid and they’ve said it won’t reopen. It’s a pain as I don’t have the money to buy various sizes and items and return.

I worked at C&A if a short while ,it is disgusting what people do in fitting rooms. We would daily be cleaning up wee, poo, dirty nappies, used sanitary towels and tampons. Men would masturbate in the cubicles.
People would thrust a pile of clothes at you and walk out wearing new stuff with the old in the middle.. Old and soiled clothing was left in the changing rooms.
I am surprised anywhere has changing rooms at all.

It’s annoying but I doubt it’s a ‘bad management decision’ - it will be based on what they’ve seen work in other stores. By work I mean increase profits.

I havent used a changing room in years.

@Ilovedthe70s yuk, that’s put me off using them now. My local Tesco has done away with changing rooms, you had to find someone to unlock them anyway, so I usually gave up. My local M&S is good, but they now only have one lot of changing rooms, but what they have done is they now only have one set of checkout counters, when they used to have 3 so lots of queuing, which really frustrates me.

I understand that people who buy clothes at George are statistically more likely to be senior executives in retail than anyone else.

Sadly, I don't have a "standard" figure, and as clothes sizing is so unreliable. I won't buy clothes without trying them on first. I often take 5 or 6 items into a changing room to find the correct fit. I am the same with shoes, although it usually takes more than 5 or 6 pairs for me to find a comfortable fit.

Given the number of posters who buy clothes online I often wonder if they either have the exact figure for a specific clothes size or are they wearing badly fitting clothes?

I have worked in retail for 18 odd years now. I have noticed a very significant decline over the years of interest in facilitating the ability to perform the very basic service of your shop. They want loyalty card schemes and promotions pushed but dont provide the staff to be able to do it. There was a time if your till broke you'd have an engineer out the same day to fix it

Now, quite happy for you to to be left with tils that crash every day, and unble to take card for months. No urgency to get things like that fixed at all.

However if a self service terminal starts acting up they come out to fix that.

We keep records of incidents/phone calls etc amd ask fir reference numbers of all the calls we make reporting problems with tils etc so when the inevitable complaints from customers roll in we can show that actually despite reporting the problem months ago and regularly chasing up , it's not been sorted yet.

Once they push everyone online or onto self service they loose interest in the very basics like a bum on a seat at an open til serving the customers.

I’m off to Tesco shortly. I’m wearing leggings and a lycra gym top. I’ll have no issue with trying stuff on over my clothes in the middle of the shop if I have to. Maybe that’s the answer, go shopping in skin tight lycra. 😂

Am I the only one that remembers that M&S did not have changing rooms at all until relatively recently? This was before on line shopping was a thing, so I suppose they were able to compete with other shops despite this policy.
They weren’t the only ones.
m&s policy was because they believed theft would cost too much.
it was quite a big thing when they first introduced changing rooms

There really needs to be a crackdown on shoplifting, the police are so disinterested that some people are starting to see it as "not really a crime". It is a crime, and shoplifters should always be arrested, booked and charged with a criminal offence.

If it makes a bigger difference to sales than it does to loss reduction/salary savings they'll bring them back. The customer has the power here.

Lose the changing room - lose my custom is my response.

They certainly had changing rooms when I worked there in 1995 so depends what you mean by “relatively recently”

I was in my local Tesco last month, had a top in my hand and looked for a mirror to see what it looked like on me. The assistant said no mirror in the store as it was a health and safety issue, what tosh. Went to Sainsburys, at least they have full length mirrors.

I think they introduced them in the late 1980s. I remember trying on a skirt over some trousers in M and S in Leeds in the early 1980s.

I live too far away from shops to be traipsing back and forth with clothes that don't fit, and I don't have the time to queue at the post office to return stuff.

I want to see and feel the clothes, and want the instant gratification of buying something that fits staright away.

When all changing rooms were closed during the tighter restrictions I got into the habit of keeping a tape measure in my handbag, and found that really useful.