Brit mobile network EE follows O2 by ending trading relations with retailer Dixons Carphone BT is ditching a two-decade trading agreement with Dixons Carphone in preference of selling services via its own network of high street stores, months after O2 called time on its contract with the retailer. "We have taken the hard decision to not renew our EE Mobile contract with Dixons Carphone, and shift our focus and …
"They aren't warehouses and they don't sell carphones"
they used to sell carphones, and there is nothing to stop you buying a phone from them and using it in your car.
the warehouse bit was that you could actually get a phone from them that day as they had most of them in stock instead of ordering and awaiting delivery as per most of the other vendors at the time.
do you remember when pretty much everything was shut on a sunday?
No been in one or seen one for around twenty years. I assume most folk do the same as me - buy a SIM with the number of minutes, data allowance etc you need at the best price and buy a phone separately online. If you are desperate, most suppliers will do next day delivery.
Is that little section inside Currys PC World with mobile phones part of carphone warehouse? I did ask about a phone in one of those a couple of years ago but the bloke did his best to be as unhelpful as possible and get rid of me; I think it was time for his lunch.
I'm no financial whiz or even a wannbe Gordon Gecko, but I'd have thought a reduction in phone sales would be all the more reason to consolidate into one seller, not to take your products out of one shop and open more shops to sell only your own product.
I can only imagine that their thinking is that once a potential customer walks into your shop, the hope is that you can hard sell/bamboozle them into not shopping elsewhere. Except those customers may never get to your shop because they popped into one of the other 6 phone shops on the street, all in a neat row next to each other, and got hard sold/bamboozled there first. It all sounds like a recipe for even greater churn where the only number they look at is new sign-ups.
"I'd have thought a reduction in phone sales would be all the more reason to consolidate into one seller,"
That 1 seller is making profit on the phone, the airtime contract and all accessories.
If the shop is yours you make all those other profits plus own the relationship with the customer who is likely to come to you with their issues and next requirements.
If only 1 shop is selling your stuff alongside other providers then how do you ensure that that 1 shop is not selling a competitors product in preference to yours?
The big problem for resellers that the change in refresh rates removed their main source of revenue: commission. They used to get paid up front for selling customers new contracts on the back of a new phone.
Unfortunately, at some point customers realised that this wasn't necessarily in their best interests and started increasingly to treat phone and contract as a separate items: keep phone, renegotiate cheaper tariff directly with the network; no middleman required. For many of us, phones have become just another piece of consumer electronics equipment.
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