Comet in bad way after big losses Comet is consolidating warehouses, service centres, shedding jobs at HQ and setting plans in motion to close or flog a load of stores after reporting substantial losses today. The UK arm of parent Kesa Electricals saw sales drop nearly seven per cent in constant currency to €1.8bn (£1.53bn) and posted losses of €10.3m (£8.9m) …
Their service is crap, I would much rather buy from DSG than Comet, 6 time they came out to repair my 3 month old TV, one of the faults was that there was no sound for 30 secs after you turrned the tv on, unless a volume button was pressed on the TV itself.
Repair guy's explanation....... it was the fault of my sky box AND my bllue ray player, strangely the fault on both these devices didnt exist on the replacement I finally got.
Truly terrrible
...whose staff follow you around like vultures, and try to coerce you into a) buying crap AV (cough*norton*cough) with every PC, plus of course good ol' Office. The staff at my local Comet (in Crayford, Kent - incidentally bang right next door to PukeWorld) are by contrast courteous and helpful, and respect your wish to be left alone to shop.
Perhaps these companies might finally learn that customer service and product knowledge should be of greater priority.
I'm always hearing horror stories of people being sold freeview boxes when the TV that they are buying at the same time has freeview built in or people being sold £40 "Gold Plated" HDMI cables when a £10 would do the job.
And Comet are the worst - their cable brand of choice is none other than Monster - purveyors of overpriced crap for years now. My parents were conned into paying £60 for a set of cables when they bought their first LCD TV. It was the devil's own job to get Comet to accept the return - only when we brought the set back to the store and loudly demanded to see the manager about a refund on the grounds of misselling could we get them to see sense.
Same old story, high street versus online. The only reason I like the high street is to have a proper play with the appliance I want to buy. When we ripped out our kitchen, we went down to Comet and others to take a look at the sort of appliances we wanted, had the mobile with the browser open and compared prices there and then. The standalone hob we wanted was 45% cheaper online than even Comets online only price. The poor sods don't stand a chance against a firm that simply needs a hosting service and a bloody huge warehouse to store the stock, located in some place where land rent is dirt cheap.
Just think how many TVs, PCs etc they could sell if only they developed a reputation for knowing what they were talking about and offering a great deal with great service, ie meeting needs/expectations!
I stopped going for anything other than a "distress purchase" because I know that the staff will:
a) not have a clue what they're talking about and I'll just become frustrated at their ineptitude
b) may have a slight clue what they're talking about but will still try and rip me off
c) not be at all interested but if there's a whiff of an extended warranty sale, may just feign it
They deserve it.
The reason for having bricks-and-mortar stores is so that people can look at stuff and talk to experienced shop assistants. If the "assistants" are all either Johnny-No-Stars wasters or out-and-out con merchants, then forget it. Add the high prices, and it's not hard to see why it's gone pear-shaped.
If the low quality of retail staff annoys you, you could always quit your career and share your hard earned knowledge for a measly £6.41ph. All the while taking abuse from your manager because you're not forcing enough extended warranties onto customers who are in turn giving you abuse for trying to.
*sigh*
Were non of you 16?
How about they actually hold stuff at the branches? I went out to buy a dishwasher a year or so back, under the misguided and old-fashioned belief that they would actually have stock at the big out-of-town outlets. How wrong I was.
If I want to wait three days for a missed delivery, i'll just buy something off the Internet, thanks.
A few years ago, back in the days of the black and gold logo, Comet was the only high street store I'd willingly use to buy electrical goods. Around the time they started rebranding their stores in orange and white, the quality of their instore and aftersales service started to take a real nose-dive, their prices stopped being as competitive, and their ability to get hold of stock seemed to suffer really badly.
Around the same time, their competitors over in the DSG camp seemed to finally realise that treating their own customers like crap was no longer a viable business plan, started to improve the level of instore service, revamped their stores to make them look less like a cheap tat bazaar, and managed to convert this once die-hard hater of all things DSG-related into someone who now would choose to visit one of their stores before even considering a trip to Comet.
Currys and Comet are next door to each other in the local retail park so I usually end up in both, and Currys generally have the better deals nowadays. I can even get Quidco discounts at Currys by ordering online and picking up instore.
Most amazing is when I bought a faulty fan heater last winter, took it back to Currys expecting a fight and got an immediate, no-questions-asked refund. I didn't even have the box!
There's far to many UK stores, especially the big chains could do with learning what good customer service is! Even the big chains in the US seem to understand this as we've come back from holidays there and even the kids have noticed.
Though I guess it doesn't help that some stores seem to employ the kids that our glorious education system has spectacularly failed as well.
... the plan at head office is to bear some losses while they put the major competition out of business.
Shame they are all trying to do the same thing though! Stick to your core business, make sure you know what you are doing, put the customer at the centre of your business (with training second)
"a firm that simply needs a hosting service and a bloody huge warehouse"
Actually, they don't need much of a warehouse either: most of the time stuff just gets drop shipped from the manufacturer or distributor. The only remaining reasons retailers exist are to take the hit on warranty repairs, returns and Card Not Present fraud in exchange for their diminishing margins.
As you imply, a thankless task and a race to the bottom...
theres a comet store near me just up the road its sad that a company struggles in the market but maybe the reason why is maybe cause everyone is either not buying or there buying online. could be either but you also have to watch comet to because they try and sell you warrentys or guarantees with products and there a big selling point thats how they make money so if they ask you do you want any guarantee with it just say no.
To think of the past time I actually bought a piece of electric equipment from a regular shop.
I think the last thing was my washer from a local non-chain supplier. And that's because he delivers, fits and carts off the old one often the same day. Same goes for after sales. Bugger all choice mind.
Having said that, I'm struggling to join the chorus of "good riddance". retail is falling apart at the moment. This is not a good sign.
I recall the days when you checked the Hi Fi out elsewhere then went to Comet for the box. Times change eh. Still I never found them that bad, but there again I never assume a salesman knows anything about what they are trying to flog. They just think they do, or like to give that impression. I just hope the one down the road from me is one that is staying.
I would much rather shop at Comet than DSG... I think I have an innate hatred for the Dixons, Currys and PC World group and would struggle to hand over any money to them...The online prices at Comet are the same as instore, and when I needed a new Dyson vacuum cleaner, they were by far the cheapest, by a hundred quid, and I got a £65 cleaning kit free... yaay... They also phone you an hour before they turn up, so you dont have to remain housebound waiting for them...
Saying that, I usually prefer to buy online rather than instore, so that you get the seven day distance selling regulations to return the item if you want...
Its going to get harder to actually touch the item you want to buy before you buy it soon, as the online marketplace kills off the bricks and mortar way of shopping...
All these places are equally useless; white goods and kettles and toasters are simply not that interesting. You don't need a particular one, you just need one. Right now. I always find myself driving around until I find somewhere that will let me put one in my car there and then, waiting 4 days and taking a day off work to wait for them, to replace a broken freezer simply does not solve the problem.
For that reason we got our most recent large white-good replacement from Tesco. I could take a washing machine through the checkout and to my car. Instantly. After they said it was OK to use one of the large cages they use for shelf stocking to transport it ;-)
Their business model is to exploit the ignorant - overpriced cables, own brand crap, 'specials' from major manufacturers trying to use up a stock of old components. How long did they think that 'taking the piss out of the customers' was going to work as a business model?
My brother happens to work for a small well-regarded electronics retailer. They've kept a solid business going through a surprisingly old-fashioned method - knowledgeable staff, hire purchase finance with some rental (all of which they handle themselves - giving them a direct and ongoing relationship with customers), they do their own repairs, everyone knows everyone else, and everyone knows the customers. They might charge a bit more (although their prices are pretty fair), but people feel reassured that they're getting what they pay for, and they're getting the best advice. They'll even advise you not to buy something if it's not suitable. Sailed right through the recession.
I haven't shopped in Comet for years: mainly because I got fed up after visiting a number of their stores over a few months to buy certain things, only to be always told that the reasonable piece of equipment that they were displaying prominently at a reasonable price was "out of stick", and that they "were not sure if they were getting any more", but they could recommend that I buy this other piece of equipment that they had "unfortunately, it costs a little more.", when it always cost substantially more.
I came to the conclusion that the so-called sales item was the bait that was used to get customers on the hook to buy over-priced goods.
As for the others: they all have their equally poor points: clueless staff, almost aggressive attempts to sell extra insurance, and so on.
Sod them all, I say.
Comet and Currys are about the same, in my experience. I feel sorry for the poor sods who'll lose their jobs; their lack of knowledge is more down to the company culture than a failing on the staff's part. I used to work for DSG (not in store) so I know how they work and have a pretty good idea of Comet's modus operandi.
Most of my major white goods purchases have been from John Lewis and believe it or not, the Co-Op. Both of 'em generally had decent stock availability, good prices and product knowledge.
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