Went to purchase phone instore how ridiculous and confusing is this?

[Netcurtainnelly]

Ive always gone into the EE store and bought a phone outright. Been with EE many years.

The store then changes the sim and does the photo transfer and everything.
I have recently been in to buy a new phone which I saw on their website at three hundreds and forty nine pounds.

We sat down to do the sale and the assistant told me it was Five Hundred as I am buying in-store. She said she didnt know why.

They said I could order it online for 349 on their website from my phone and get click and collected delivered to them. I could collect instore and they would help with sim change and everything.

I went to try this later, no offer to help me in the shop, and they said they couldn't order for me.

When i went online later after leaving the store, you could not order click and collect. I rang the helpline and they confirmed that. I could order to my home address only.

I could then take the phone to the store when it arrived and they would still help me with set up.

This is batshit bonkers isn't it.
First they wanted to charge loads more for me to buy in-store.
Then the assistant told me I could order from my phone click and collect to the the store and they would help.

That turned out not to be true when I got home. No click and collect. Direct to my home only, then take it to shop and they will help.

They could have just sold it to me in-store for 349. They are going to help set up apparantely anyway so why all this fuss?

Long standing customer both for phone and Sim.
Anyone work in a phone shop?
Any advice?
Why so much more in-store?
Why send me away telling me I can order myself and get click and collect to store and then help when the phone arrives when I cant?

Ive never known this before?
Very confusing and unhelpful and they have possibly lost a sale. I would have bought when I was in-store.

What would you do?🤔🙄
Should I complain?

I guess they are charging more instore because they are helping you with the sim etc but 150 more???

That still dosent make sense anyway because they are still helping if you order online and then take it in?
Be great to hear from anyone who has insight or works in a phone shop in particular.

They'll exist for as long as the business is there to make them viable. Once it reaches a tipping point where very few people want to pay standard in-person retail prices when you can routinely pay far less online, or indeed very few people want to buy them at all, they will go.

Whether it's something still very in demand (such as books or holidays), something that has become obsolete in the past decade or two (such as VHS tapes or film cameras), or something that routinely disappeared from society long before anybody alive now was born (such as powdered periwigs or bottles made from animal skins) - if selling them on the high street stops being viable, they will disappear from the high street. People run businesses in order to make money; not primarily to keep things available for a tiny minority of people who will give them custom.

Indeed. Many people are happy to have the entire market at their fingertips - and also the ability to find the very cheapest prices for themselves. They wouldn't actually want to go to a high street to pay a much higher price for a much more limited choice.

Even if travel agents freely searched for and offered every single holiday that somebody could find online themselves - commission free - they would still need to charge considerably more, as you're paying for a person's time. Just like if you called in an electrician for simple jobs such as changing light bulbs or wiring plugs, you would still pay the going rate based on their time and livelihood, even though they're extremely basic tasks that most people do for themselves (or may ask somebody to help with if they're elderly, frail and/or disabled) without thinking for a moment that it would require a professional.

I think you need some fresh air.

Yes, most high streets are full of empty shops now - and those that are taken up anew are service-based/leisure business rather than pure retail. It seems bizarre to think that the internet would have come along and just waited quietly unobtrusively in the corner, rather than transforming all areas of life.

Just as one example of many, a lot of us of a certain age will recall the ubiquitous adverts for 118 118 a couple of decades ago, along with the scramble for loads of companies wanting to cash in big-time by offering their own directory enquiries services to everybody who regularly used them, once the market was opened up to competition. How profitable do you think they are now? How many people under 40 now have ever, or will ever, use them?

The same with ringtones: there was a time when a tinny version of the then-current top 20 songs was available to buy for a few pounds, as advertised widely in all kinds of magazines. Nowadays, when you can record/download any track that's ever been released for free; or indeed any sound at all and add it to your phone yourself...?

But if you work in a bricks and mortar phone shop, it isn't your job to know about or deal with online phone orders - even from the same branded company.

Try going into Tesco and asking the person who works in the in-store bakery about online shopping slots from the same supermarket - even if you only want to order bread to be delivered and nothing else... they won't know either; they might have a bit of a 'best guess', but they will assume you would just look online if you wanted accurate info.

I had this recently with EE and just ordered it via their app in the end. They were useless in store!

New phone came within 48 hours and these days you just put the two phones next to each other and it transfers everything over within 10-15 minutes. You don’t even need to faff about with SIMs these days, it’s all digital at least with iPhones. So easy (and I’m a complete tech dunce).

Yeah that's crap. I think it's almost like banks.

They don't want you to use the shops so they can justify reducing bricks and mortar stores. So make the experience as painful and long and expensive as possible.

Then they can save more money by saying that shop performed poorly and nobody uses it anymore. So they close it down.

Sympathies..why is life so bloody complicated for the most standard of transactions🤯

But nearly everyone wants/needs a mobile phone nowadays so even if you like going into a shop if that wasn't an option you would still buy a mobile. And its easier and most people stick with the same provider so tgey aren't going to lose sales.

They’ll exist for as long as they are needed and used but you pay for their service. A LOT. My parents refuse to book flights online and insist on using ‘lovely Gill in Lunn Polys down the high street’. They pay nearly 20% more for the exact same flights I can buy online because of Gill (and it hasn’t been Lunn Poly for at least 20 years!)
Same concept with your mobile phone shop.