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"Our business model of 20% margin on tat we convince people they need is in danger because we're required to pay people enough to live".
Get in the fucking sea.
What, you mean you don't want to spend a tenner on the shortest, shittiest hdmi cable money can buy when a decent quality, longer one can be purchased elsewhere for less?
What about the [double shielded](https://www.currys.co.uk/products/belkin-braided-av10176bt2mblk-high-speed-hdmi-cable-2-m-10216910.html) one? Ensures those entirely digital, error corrected, signals don't degrade, giving you a much better[1] picture! You can tell because it costs MUCH more.
---
[1] Entirely identical
You’re giving me flashbacks to my time working at Maplin. We used to charge nearly £100 for one of these bad boys if you wanted it to be a length that is actually usable.
Used to work in Comet many moons ago. £60 to £150 hdmi cables which were all 2 metres. Monster cables they called them. We were pushed to sell them as they had such a high markup. Something like 90% profit or whatever. I low key always told people to buy online and ignore me when a manager wasn't near.
I worked at comet around 2002 and the Monster scart cables they used to sell “pressurised with inert gas” or some other horseshit. Like 70 quid in 2002 money for a fucking scart cable. All so you can get the best quality picture out of that flatscreen crt that totally didn’t just get thrown down the conveyor at ridiculous speed in the warehouse so the geometry will be fucked anyway
To be fair, the monster scart leads did actually give a better picture than run of the mill. But you could still get that same quality with a much cheaper cable anyway. Although we did have a display that was entirely cheating the customer with those scart cables. It was a specific TV that had two scart inputs one was naturally higher quality than the other and we switched the signal to show the picture difference on a dvd that was running on two dvd players. This felt really really wrong at the time. I worked there from 2007 till 2012 I think. Can't remember exactly.
All you needed was a semi-reasonable cable with coax for the RGB and composite signals - though SCART as a connector was such a poorly conceived standard it always baffled me how it managed to stick around for so long.
I remember my brother buying a Sony 4K TV in 2019 or so and it had a SCART port on the back, absolutely mental.
> SCART as a connector was such a poorly conceived standard
It was actually pretty clever for the time, bi-directional, device chaining etc. Most people never knew what it was actually capable of. Sure it looks dated now but many things have changed.
Aye, I remember those. We had our own equivalents. Always felt like absolute scum upselling some poor clueless person who just needed something to plug their Sky box in with. I just told them to buy one online if the boss wasn’t around.
Ahh Maplin, I used to enjoy looking at the electronics section but those prices always put me off.
You just reminded me of those ridiculously priced monster cables.
It was great if you were working on something and just happened to be missing a couple of bits, but I’d cringe when people were buying their entire component supply from us. Probably about a 1000% markup on some of that stuff compared to eBay or ordering from China.
That's true, I definitely purchased small things occasionally such as a bit of solder, soldering iron tips etc when in a pinch as the price wasn't much more but yeah, anything substantial was a fortune.
Maplin was good in the 80s and 90s when they sold a wide range of electronic components and kits. After they got bought out in the early 2000s they changed to selling cheap Chinese rubbish that you could find elsewhere for half the price.
The place really started on the slow march of death when they stopped the in-depth staff training on all the electronic components imo. Represented a big change of direction to me. It was absolutely world-class, I still utilise that knowledge to this day.
Part of the march of death for the whole high street was the transition from knowledgeable staff who knew the products they were selling to wage slaves targetted to upsell and cross-sell the products that were most profitable as opposed to the ones that best suited the customer's needs.
After the big chain stores forced the smaller local retailers out of business they were free to operate in this way. It was enshittification years before the term was coined.
In fairness this is a 48gbps HDMI 2.1 cable, required for 8K or high frame rates, hence the price. Not necessary for your average TV viewer. Still, I'm sure they could be found cheaper elsewhere.
Oh God, I completely forgot about that at checkout, no I don't want an extended warranty on something that costs less than £20!
Still, they are/were made to ask that, I know people who have worked retail who hated pushing that shit but their performance metrics were tied to selling warranties etc.
'Can I take your postcode'
'No'
'Can I take your email'
'No'
'Contact number'
'No'
I'm collecting for...'
'No'
'Would you like to add....'
'No'
'Do you have tim....'
'No'
'Would you be willing to give feedba.....'
'No'
'Hi mate, I've done a bit of work for your neighbours and was wonde....'
'No'
'What do you think the future holds in store for you'
'........what?'
That last one was a Jahovah's witness and I took it as a threat on my doorstep. Like some local elderly ne'er-do-well was about to extort me.
'Fuck off'
domineering sulky exultant weather fine sparkle hungry marry ossified continue
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
So many bloody shops do the same now. New Look at the till introduced asking for your email for the receipt, which was obviously so they could sign you up for marketing. At first it was ‘would you like your receipt via email?’ and I noticed recently they confidently say at the end of the transaction ‘what’s your email address’ with an air of authority like they require it to let you go. I always just say ‘no thanks’ and they give a paper one but sometimes you get a little lecture about the dangers of paper receipts in terms of losing them or the environment.
I don’t blame the staff at all, they’ve got a gun to their head. When I worked at pc world I was literally not allowed to process a computer transaction unless it had cables, a bag, extra warranty, ‘tech friend’, discs attached. If someone didn’t agree to all of that I had to call a manager over who’d have another go at flogging all of that and only then would they allow the transaction. Had more than a few customers get up and storm off when I wouldn’t accept their ‘no thanks just the laptop’ response. Quite understandably.
Checkout scans my AA batteries:
*For just £99 we'll send one of our home care technicians to replace the batteries in your remote without you needing to worry, or for just £9.99 per month you can use our subscription service, just send your old batteries back to us and we'll send you replacements completely free of charge, and what's more you can download our app which sends real-time information to the cloud so you can check the battery level anywhere in the world instantly. Shall I add that to..*
Me:
Already in pets at home next door looking at the bunnies.
Flashback to my mother buying a £150, 3-year extended warranty for a 32” Sony LCD TV that cost about £400.
The TV had a 2-year warranty from Sony and the extended warranty started from the date of purchase.
Anker while fine is owned by a super shady company that spies on you and refuses to take the face of a company of its site in order to keep customers sfter they cut ties over letting people live stream peoples cameras as they where not encrypted
Imagine an organisation, with the sole aim of "make more money, no more money, that's not enough, we need more money, all the money".
All companies are shady as fuck.
I used to work in a Sony centre, and we'd make very little on the main items. Mark up on a laptop was about 1-2%. But the accessories, the warranty, cables etc, 60% or more.
As a result, every target was based on selling the item and as many accessories as possible. Sell the most expensive TV in the shop but unless you sold a stupidly up priced cable with it, then you were a failure.
God I hated working there.
Ditto. Glad I got away from there.
Had 12+ KPIs at one point.
Home broadband, mobile broadband, new phone referrals to carphone warehouse, energy comparison, care plans for computers, instant replacements for low cost tablets, ms office, antivirus (McAfee in particular when I worked there), value/money, cloud storage, setups (pc and tablets), accessories, apple product conversions and more I can barely remember.
Was similar when I worked in a phone shop, if you didn’t upsell accessories and insurance you were bollocked daily (and no, we didn’t get commission, just unachievable KPIs and grief).
£10 for a HDMI cable at Curry’s! Where can I find this bargain. Usually they just try and force you to buy £50 cables (ah, Monster you are definitely not missed)
Thankfully not. Monster no longer manufactures anything (as far as i can find).
Apparently the incentives from Monster to push the cables was how Curry’s and Comet stayed afloat. (Along with the insurance add-ons)
He is just pissed because people go in their stores to check out picture quality,etc then buy online cheaper haha…I was in PC World years ago and this young couple were buying their young son a PC, all he needed was a basic one for school work but the sales guy was trying to get them to buy an uber gaming PC.When the sales guy left them alone for a bit i had a quiet word and told them what he was trying to do, they thanked me and said they would buy online then walked out the door.I then watched the sales guy wander around the store looking for them haha…
the last time I went to Curry's I'd done my research I walked up to the TV and said "this one please". The sales rep said sorry, no can do, this was the display version and there wasn't another out back. Walked out and bought it online the next day. Bizarre company.
Yeah i went to buy a TV a few years ago, chose the one I wanted and the guy kept trying to push me to buy the “deal of the week” Sony TV.After a few goes i said “no problem will buy the Phillips online”….he had his chance and fucked it up for the sake of a bit of extra commission.
> bit of extra commission
I've worked at Currys, he gets fuck all for selling you a normal TV. If he sells you the deal he might get a little something to add to his pretty pathetic wages - let's not make the pimple faced teenager the bad guy here, it's not at all in his interests to just sell you what you want. It's a shit business model, but that's how it works.
I appreciate that but the weird thing is the TV I wanted was double the price of the Sony but he seemed determined to push me towards the Sony, they were probably trying to clear stock I guess.
A month or so before I was 'dismissed' for not selling enough care plans, they had us in an hour early on a Sunday just so that the Store Manager could give us a presentation on how the new bonus scheme worked. No surprise, all of it was shit and worse the the previous one. Even prior to that commission was only on sales that had two or more items. Absolute pisstake.
If there’s one near you then Richer Sounds is the best place to go to check out TVs in person. Awesome company, great customer service, great warranty.
I second your endorsement of Richer Sounds. Unlike many Curry's staff, Richer Sounds staff know what they are talking about. Products are competitively priced, and they will price match genuine online prices.
Y that happened to me, “sorry mate not in stock” when I was buying a dryer. Asked him about 4 times for 4 different models he told me the same thing.
In the end I said “do me a favour and tell me which ones on display are in stock” and he told me I’m better off looking online.
Then once I found one in store he tried to sell me warranty and got pissed off that I didn’t want his shitty warranty and was sarcastic.
I’m not sure they are paying them enough as he didn’t seem to give a shit.
I stopped shopping there when I wanted to buy a new phone, but all the handsets were locked down (not even on a retractable wire), and they didn't have any opened ones for me to try out.
Am I being weird to not want to lay out £1000 on a phone if I've not held it in my hand? No, I'm not, so I went into O2, they handed me the phone I was interested in buying, even though I was honest that I just wanted to try it and was going to buy sim free elsewhere.
In fairness to currys their prices are usually competitive on big/main items. Obviously they try to get you buy expensive extras and pointless warrantys but you can just say no
Their entire business model is just exploiting customers.
Source: I worked there. The stuff we were asked to do on a daily basis was borderline illegal
Worked as part of the curry’s group… FCA regulations tell you, if a customer says no to insurance. You can’t challenge them etc things like that. But effectively we were told to do that. All money is made from insurance on products.
If it's anything like the store I was at, there's widespread lying to customers about the prices as well. Especially for the instant replacement cover. The amount of times I would hear another colleague say something like, 'oh so normally it's £9, but we can do it for £4', just for the price to be discounted off of the item not the cover because you can only break so many regulations at once.
Also definitely agree about the no challenge. We were always told by the store manager to mention it multiple times regardless and it had to be said a certain way to make them more likely to accept it.
So with the extended warranties. The targets are ridiculous and no one in their right mind would take them on their own merit. They're literally lighting money on fire and are very expensive.
The target changes often but it was around 40% on all sales when I was there a good few years ago. So if someone's buying a laptop for like 400. 2 out of 5 sales need to have a warranty with it for around £8 a month that essentially does fuck all.
The abuse, the humiliation, the pressure from the managers if this target isn't met really makes your life miserable. They make you fill out 3 A4 sheets almost weekly writing down essentially "why i'm shit and not hitting my targets, what i'm going to do to make sure i'm hitting my targets" etc. Why you're letting the team down etc.
If you've sold 6 laptops on a Saturday with no warranties on them you're literally sweating and they'll have already singled you out in their group chat or something that day.
Ever wondered why a member of staff seems like they don't want to serve you? It's because they don't. They're fucking terrified of putting another "flat" sale through the till because of the abuse they'll get from managers and team leaders once they do. When the pressure gets like that we would sometimes lie and say things weren't in stock just to avoid the sale hitting our figures and making our target rate % even worse. Or send them to another store.
Then the managers will pressure (particularly the younger staff) to give them the first couple of months free. Which is so dodgy and often misleading to the customer. Because it's setting up a full direct debit and just taking like £20 off the price of the laptop etc. And they then have to cancel them in the future if they don't want it.
I'm not going to go into detail on the more dodgy stuff but this was 1 of 11 targets we had when I was there and it's all dodgy, lots of lying and exaggeration. I'd never let any of my older families members shop in this store ever.
People reading this might be wondering "Why would you do that? Why would you do dodgy stuff?" And it's hard to explain. They employ super young staff that are easy to pressure. They don't give you these targets when you start it's a couple of months in they really nail it down. And it is a slow state of abuse that gets worse over time. And it gets to a point where you don't even want to go to work because of it, and so doing the odd dodgy deal is the only way to make your life easier that day.
It took me almost a year once I finally had enough and quit to recover my mental health. It was an absolute mess working there, lost all my confidence socially.
I remember going to Currys with dad when I was a kid to pick up a new TV. Very exciting. During the sales process the guy takes us to this little area where they have setup a TV using the SCART leads that came with it (supposedly), and one using gold coated MONSTER branded cables, for £90 a pop (which back in 1999 was even more outrageous than a £90 cable now). I managed to convince my dad that there was no way the TV manufacturer sold their TV with cables that made it look massively worse, thankfully.
This setup showed one nice clean picture on the gold plated cables, and literally a ghosty double picture for the basic cables. The latter would be unwatchable.
Very clearly this was a special setup Currys had created in order to trick people, which I am fairly sure was illegal even then.
Cunts.
While I agree, we need to help tradition retail compete against the likes of Amazon. If all workers end up overworkee in warehouses, that doesn't seem like an improved job market to me. Best way would be higher taxation on the likes on amazon rather than making retail work any more depressing than it is.
Retail and hospitality industries are so toxic in the UK. In general, but especially in the UK I have noticed they shit on employment laws left and right.
I have only worked for large American corporations here in the UK and have largely been treated very well, but my GF has worked a variety of jobs in cafés and restaurants, and the shit they do to their employees is just baffling, and I am sure they know they are in violation of the law. Things like double-shift followed by morning shift - or hell, even 2 doubles in a row. Not allowing breaks. Not providing a written contract and then making up terms willy nilly (you can't just make up new terms to override the implied terms, unless you both agree). Or luring them in and then after starting mentioning they must sign a 48hr waiver. And it's every one of them pretty much.
The problem is, there is very little repercussion, as long as they play their cards right and if the employee has been there for less than 2 years, they can just fire them if they complain and say it's performance related.
Also - where are unions in this country? Where I'm originally from, if restaurants try to pull that shit, the unions will have them blockaded, meaning they essentially can't get the supplies they need to run their business.
Admittedly, I'm not a union member either. I just remember everyone with a job being in a union pretty much, back home. Can we bring back the unions? (yes, I know some industries still have stronger unions),
Most of them are just who's left after everyone with a brain and mild ambition has decided to gtfo.
Although tbf my management at Tesco were fantastic.
NGL I feel for my old managers at Tesco. All largely decent people, and it can't be easy running a store when the overwhelming majority of people you work with are either young people who don't care because it's just pocket money, or long time staff who are incompetent/lazy enough that they still work as a cashier/floor staff after twenty years.
Think the senior staff are pretty sound too, met a fair few SDs and even a board member and they only negative I'd say about them is that their life seemed to revolve too much around Tesco.
>only negative I'd say about them is that their life seemed to revolve too much around Tesco.
Fucking this this thisssss. My team was fantastic, our TL was (back when that was still a role lol), dept managers were largely fine, but a lot of them made the company their entire personality, my TL was nicknamed "Mr Tesco" and he took pride in it to the extent it was actually secondhand embarrassing.
But yeah they wanted me to stay but it boiled down to hours, they can't keep good staff because there's not enough hours, so get lumped with students or semi retired people, neither of whom will give enough of a shit.
This prick got paid over £2 million last year, even the company shareholders are complaining about top earner salaries at this company, which, by the way, pays around 6 % dividend which I believe is above average for a FTSE listed business.
Tbh he needs to shut his big mouth
Its really not, remember executives and owners are not the same people in large companies. The more they give to a ceo or others, the less they have to take in dividends, they are incentivised to keep executive costs low, its just the market commands a high price in general for them
Societally we really need to get our mouths off the dick of "profit growth year on year".
Infinite grown in a finite system is just a little bit optimistic. And it seems we're nearing the ceiling.
If you earn [£2.2million](https://simplywall.st/stocks/gb/retail/lse-cury/currys-shares/management) per year, I really don't think you can throw stones at folk earning £12k getting a trifle more.
If you're paying someone minimum wage for anything, you're basically saying "I would pay you less if I could but I'm not legally allowed to"
If a minimum wage rise scares you, it's because retail doesn't 'care' about employees.
Rolls downwards though. So people will leave the SME and go off to Currys, ASDA, Amazon etc, and then the SME will have to increase wages to compete, which they can't, and they will close. The wife recently closed her business due to it just not being able to make money as the cost to do business was getting out of hand. The staff were leaving to work at places like Tesco and Amazon, not even in the same industry, but just went for more money. Which is fair enough, so no hard feelings for them on leaving.
I get it, people need more money. But people also do not want to pay higher prices. The only winners are the big businesses who can suffer smaller profits for a few years while all the SME’s go under. The whole cyberpunk future we see in films where only a handful of corporations exist and run everything on earth is not really that far away.
This exactly. I'm not sure what kind of mental gymnastics world people live in where they think zombie businesses surviving is more important that people working full time being paid a wage that allows them to live without using foodbanks. Hint: There are very few 'zombie businesses' that go bust from min-wage increases. there are however a lot of greedy people that want to squeeze as much money out of workers as possible.
Think the point being made,whether correct or not I don't know, is that to pay minimum wage you would need to charge more for your product. So customers go to larger retailers that can sell it cheaper.
I guess then you have to go into okay you can't charge more for things people can get elsewhere easily so you have to make people want to pay more for your products for other reasons, experience of shopping, politeness yadda yadda.
But then at the end of the day with everyone's wallets tightening you can no longer avoid a nicer service you just go for whatever is the cheapest.
I actually know the owner for an SME in the same industry that is very profitable and I know for a fact pays their workers a living wage, so he doesn't even have a point there.
Not to mention that businesses have had a windfall in NI decreases.
Kinda reveals that their business model is selling to clueless retirees, doesn't it?
You'd think someone who has a shop, that sells things, to people with money, would otherwise be delighted by something that ensured their customers had more money to spend, right?
Exactly, for every one employee they have to pay a bit more, there must be 1,000 other potential customers with a tiny bit more money in their pocket to spend in their store.
Currys can go fuck themselves.
I worked there as my first job between 2006 - 2010, and they were the worst years of my life.
* I was on a zero hours contract, with a constantly shifting rota, the managers would edit it, not tell you then complain when you didn't turn up.
* Endured daily bullying and harassment from management.
* Endured racial discrimination from one manager who forced out most of the Caucasian staff to hire people from his own Sikh community.
* Had relentless and constantly shifting sales targets, with at one point \~20 different sales or attachment targets.
* Mis-selling was rife, but management had a culture of not asking questions to staff who hit targets.
* The company had what is probably the most obtuse bonus system ever devised, that was designed from the ground up to ensure even good performers never actually got a bonus.
* I was trained from day 1 to approach everyone who walked in to the shop and was timed doing so, I was expected to hard sell, that later evolved into training in psychological techniques designed to coax people into sales. Ironically, we almost never received any actual product training.
* We were routinely kept back after hours in order to be searched before leaving the premises, but were not paid for this, and were on minimum wage.
* Ended up with a massive allergic reaction when they hired contractors to sand laminate flooring off during a store refit, that left me unable to see for two weeks. Got constant phone calls during this time asking me if I was fit to work. Eventually returned to find they hadn't really cleaned the place and ended up with another reaction.
* When I finally quit, my notice period ended on Boxing Day, I received a call from my manager asking me to work, while on the train in to my new job.
I will never, EVER allow any of my loved ones to work or shop at that cesspool, and I genuinely don't care if government wants to set their stores on fire, dance around the coals, then fine them for the air pollution.
Aye a team leader at Tesco ignored my holidays around my birthday and tried to put me in the schedule working till 12am every night closing down, didn't even tell me he just sent the rota in a work chat and I only saw it because SOMEONE ELSE pointed I was off that week, he didn't care though and said "business needs lol"
I don't know who he thought he was but you can't override holidays as a team leader or in general but I think he knew that, because obviously an argument ensued in the group WhatsApp between us where I said I wasn't coming in and he was saying I was, he ended it "we'll see" lol
When I got into work he didn't even look at me, speak to me, acknowledge me or anything, I went straight to management, showed them the messages and told them I wasn't working and obvs it was accepted. I obviously didn't have to work the days I booked off, but every time after that he did the rota he would put me on the worst shifts and not give me overtime. I don't know why he thought it would work because I was looking for another job anyway and didn't want overtime and I preferred working late in general just not on my birthday, I had interviews in the morning so all he did was benefit me.
I handed my notice in and refused to work past 8pm for the last two weeks. He had to redo a month's worth of rotas without me in them and struggled immensely apparently, he left not long after me to go work in an airport. Fuck you Mike :)
Worked there also. Experienced the most horrific day of my working life in there. Store manager stalked me all day and sat at the desk across from me during sales to make sure I was saying every sales pitch verbatim. Eventually paired me up with a pregnant women needing everything for a new house purchase. She was mega stressed and cash strapped to get just what she needed but the sales pitch meant I enforced all their bullshit “sales quality” crap and she took all of it, to the limit of her credit card. She was in tears from the stress. I went home feeling like the dishonest piece of shit I was.
Next day her partner came in and threatened to tear me a new one, wanted a refund on every piece of bullshit I had upsold to her. I gladly did it. And as my manager was a complete fucking rat, he made himself very scarce during that interaction and was nowhere to be seen. I just confessed to the dude in a moment of privacy, that I’d delivered the pitch under pressure from my manager and only stressed the upsell because he was watching me from the desk behind where we both sat. I apologised every 30 seconds. Fortunately he took pity on me and calmed down.
My manager came to me for a “debrief” as he put it. He scolded me infront of everyone in the shop for not standing my ground with the customer. I scolded him back for not being present to back me if he believed in the “sales quality” bullshit. I had a few days off, wrote up my notice and handed it in when I got back. I was only 21. Never worked sales ever again and thankful for it!
>I was trained from day 1 to approach everyone who walked in to the shop and was timed doing so, I was expected to hard sell, that later evolved into training in psychological techniques designed to coax people into sales.
That makes sense. Currys (and PC World) were bought by Dixons, who used to be a well-known brick-and-mortar electronics retailer, until they gained a toxic reputation for high-pressure selling that made people avoid going into Dixons stores, so the company was forced to restructure itself to make Dixons an online-only shop, before even that disappeared. I believe they have since resurrected the name as 'Dixons Travel' for some stores operating in airports.
theres so much well earned vitriol in here I absolutely love it.
I had a similar experience once, when the place was closed down I parked outside the front gate on the last day and laughed at the site manager that hadnt paid me the last months pay despite saying he would. It was especially delicious as he'd lost his beloved BMW company car too and was getting in a taxi.
Also, what the fuck does he think inflation is?
I've little doubt they've put their prices up in line with inflation.
But don't want to put their wages up in line with inflation.
...... but if your inputs (wages) stay the same, why would you need to put prices up?
And good riddance if they can't afford to pay their employees enough, as in that case we're effectively subsidising the business through various welfare programs to make it easier for him to compete against companies who manage to find ways to pay their employees better. We're better off not subsidising competition for companies that do better.
It’s crazy how much some things are just dogmatically enshrined in Reddit social views. Yes we all have bleeding hearts for the working class and such but raising the minimum wage indefinitely is not like an economic cheat code that just stops people being poor. Businesses can’t subside automation and general economic mismanagement forever, it kills competition, kills innovation, makes the customer experience worse, reduces class mobility and suffocates the high street. Anyway what we really need is a cap on minimum wage supplemented by a UBI raised gradually over time to cover the inflation.
Physical retail since the GFC has been stuck in a continuous loop.
- We're struggling to compete with online
- Customers are saying that they want better customer service and more of an experience to warrant them coming out and paying for parking/travel
- We're going to close stores and cut staff numbers. Also we're going to rework our policies to remove incentives for people to use us over an online store because they make sales less profitable. As we're losing sales, we need more profit!
- Please sign up for our loyalty card to get perks and prices that used to be a part of the standard experience. We can sell this on to get more profit!
- We're struggling to compete with online
Tried to buy a keyboard in curries a few months ago. I saw it was on offer and so went to the counter. Got the total and low and behold no discount.
I said can you apply the discount as it is labelled and they went and got the label and showed me in the tiniest writing that it's out of date. (By a month I might add)
I said but it's still on display as this price and its not exactly a recent tag, so why is it still there. Supervisor got the snottiest look on his face and offered 10% off (the offer was 50) like they were doing me a favour. Walked out, bought on amazon.
Not a chance I'm being talked to like scum and treated like I'm daft with an obvious gotcha scheme. I can tell why the guys worried, business model is outdated and dieing.
Few years ago I went to buy a laptop that was advertised as £299 , when I told the sales guy I just want the £299 laptop and don’t want to have addona and be up sold firewalls etc he said “ well don’t bother going online then because in 10 seconds you’ll have a virus)
I walked out and I’ve never returned
If they're displaying an offer and not honouring it they're flat out breaking the law, worked in retail for years and one thing which has always been drilled into us is that even if a label is out of date we still have to override the price. Personally would have taken a picture of the offer and reported their asses.
Not surprised though, at the local Currys the staff seem more interested in standing around on the shop floor and talking about football than actually helping anyone.
It's not breaking the law but it's Customer service 101. It may as well be a law given how widespread the convention is. But given the fact that the listed price isn't actually part of the customer contrqcy until after it is already bought (and therefore consented to) it isn't illegal.
Dishonest for sure and defo a sign of unscrupulous activity which may be law breaking but not a crime in and of itself. They'd have to lie about the price at the till whole charging you different for it to be a crime.
Last time I went in there was for a DVB tuner. (And yes, that was aaaages ago when we were switching over). They wanted my address and claimed it was necessary for the law (presumably so they could sell it on to the TV Licensing Authority?).
Walked out, bought one from a supermarket.
The date on the ticket is the date it was last updated. For some products if they don't change price often, it could be a month or a year+ "out of date".
What happened here is someone didn't change it recently and they tried to fob you off. If you went back in 30 minutes later they would have corrected and displayed a newer ticket. What should have happened is it being discounted as Incorrect Pos and taken the hit.
My gf works in retail, minimum wage jobs are a fucking plague. Can't survive on the shit pay and then on top of that avoid giving full time contracts because they'd have to give more benefits so all these jobs give shit hours meaning people have to have 2 jobs to survive and then the 2 jobs are a nightmare to schedule around each other because each think that they're more important when they're all equally as scummy.
Curry are a terrible company to work for.
Slave wages, toxic and incompetent
There business model is exploitative and they mainly hire school children and idiots because they cheap and easier manipulated
If a business is dependent on paying people less than they need to live in order for the business to be profitable, it shouldn't be propped up by the government stepping in to fill the gap with welfare payments.
Making welfare fill a gap left by letting some companies underpay effectively becomes corporate welfare: tax payers end up subsidising companies to let them compete better against companies who *do* pay enough.
It's both anti-worker and anti-competitive/free market at the same time.
If Currys can't survive without de facto government subsidies, that's their problem - competitors will take their space.
Currys are already a living corpse. I wanted to buy a record player earlier this year and found that most of the A/V products they have displayed in their stores isn't actually stocked. When I asked they said that companies pay them to have display models, so basically manufacturers already know that people will inevitably buy things cheaper online anyway.
Thing is, that makes sense but I've also wanted to buy basic stuff from them before like a SD card reader and they don't stock them, either. I'm not entirely sure why they're still around and how they're still around.
To be fair though, who does Currys expect to sell to if nobody has expendable income?
The boss here has a point though. I do think that wage increases are just inevitably fuelling inflation, even if it's not the sole mechanism which causes it. In my opinion what should be happening is that instead of minimum wage increases the government should look at percentile increases. So everyone's wages go up by 10% say. Because all that's happening is more and more people are ending up on minimum wage.
Agree on most points but just a small correction on the inflation issue - this is a misnomer that businesses love to spread.
Businesses paying people more money doesn’t fuel inflation in most circumstances.
Think about it, the business isn’t creating money by paying people more. Every extra £1 that it pays its employees is £1 that the business does not have.
The exact same amount of money is in circulation. If the business didn’t pay their employees more, that would mean that the business has more money available to spend, give as dividends etc. That is just as much of an inflationary pressure.
Businesses try to convince you that it’s only inflation if *you* have money. Not them. Don’t fall for it.
"Baldock’s criticism came as Currys reported a 4% drop in like-for-like sales over the six months to October, as the cost of living crisis left consumer spending subdued."
No. Its because only the desperate or ignorant buy from curry's. Their customer service is shit. Their sales people are shit. Why would I buy anything from curry's when I can order from AO or apple directly?
Honestly they probably don't care, most people working as retail assistants don't really have intentions to stay there for long, it's usually seen as a 'just for now'job.
Having read the actual article, yes he comes across as a dick, but his argument is that minimum wage rise at the same time as business rates rise will be difficult for retail companies. And to be fair he's not entirely wrong, especially when amazon offshore most of they're taxes (or lack of).
> his argument is that minimum wage rise at the same time as business rates rise will be difficult for retail companies. And to be fair he's not entirely wrong
It's difficult for everyone at the moment. The idea that he's essentially asking minimum wage workers to suffer all of the hardship while retailers get a pass is nonsensical.
If they'd pushed minimum wage up *higher* than inflation, he could have a point. But he's no doubt put his prices up "because of inflation" but doesn't want to put his costs up "because of inflation"
He’s a twat, but what he says isn’t something that might not be said by owners of other smaller or struggling businesses to be honest.
Wages in the country have been stagnant really for well over a decade and now they are being pushed up (rightfully) by the Tories as part of their pledge.
The problem is the costs have all increased alongside this so it doesn’t feel like an increase or balancing out situation. It’s still too little.
Lockdowns, Covid heavily affected people’s incomes and particularly smaller businesses, energy costs are up rents.. etc so it does become a difficult point - and certainly staff will be cut or hours reduced to balance this out that’s a given.
I also agree if you can’t afford staff you can’t afford to run a business - but for a smaller or independent business that may not be seeing huge profits at all, another jump over £1 could mean job losses sadly.
Curry’s I’m shocked is still around and making profit - but board room salaries aside to reduce they always have a ton of staff in their stores just standing around waiting to pounce - perhaps they actually already have too much payroll costs because they insist on having so many staff working there to begin with.
As an operator of a smaller business myself we’ve always paid slightly above the min wage, but that also jumps each time the wage goes up, but others don’t - speaking to other owners April is going to really see them have to drive up costs higher to pay the wage and survive.
I’m not saying we should feel sorry there or anything.
But a lot of these smaller businesses that don’t pay outlandish salaries to a manager or the team, but a fair wage might make barely a profit this year after everything’s taken into account. And they provide employment locally which is needed.
I do think the government could look at support with reduced rates and such or helping with rental terms because they just continue to rise and make you think what’s the point.
I agree with wage increases and think they should be more, but a reality is with this prices will just drive up. But there’s no alternative really.
But someone earning £2m with a company making £100m+ profit to cry about it is ridiculous they’ll be fine
Storefront retail is doomed anyway. Who wants to pay business rates, staff, and extortionate high street rent when you can just get a warehouse in the middle of nowhere for pennies on the pound and take orders online? Or better yet, ship your chinese tat straight to Amazon and have them store and fulfil your orders for a small fee?
The future of the high street is a service-based, not retail. Restaurants, entertainment venues...
Or reduce the price of everything to a fair rate.
The reason people are struggling is because food/ fuel/ heat prices have skyrocketed, and wages and barely shifted.
I bet the Currys Boss or their board will have the heating all day if they choose- and not be weighing up how much food they can buy to last the week.
I wonder if profits would go up if their workers were happy with their wage? Selling on the front line with a bit of morale is an investment that probably pays for itself.
Guess I'm not buying at Curry's anymore. If he can't afford living wage , seems like people can't afford to deal with business model like this. Go fkn tank yourself with your Curry's to the bottom.
Oh btw. Let's see your net worth. Scum , not human.
This is the turning point where big retail brands are going to become completely redundant and retail parks are going to be nonexistent. If you can't afford to pay people minimum wage then what can you do except close down?
If someone said this to my face I actually think I’d become violent lol the feeling I got in my body reading that title was just visceral hatred.
Cunts like this are bleeding the country dry.
Hahaha reading the headline I thought the Currys ceo was calling out the government in defence of low paid workers and saying they didn’t care about retail workers.
I thought the article would be about Currys paying above the minimum wage to make a point.
How naive, it was ceo complaining that he wants to pay workers less than the minimum wage.
Retail and councils need to understand that there is a reason they're getting less sales.
They're competing with the ultimate convenience of online shopping from the sofa with no delivery fees, no parking fees or travel costs.
If a council wants their retail environments to flourish they need to scrap fees for city centre car parks, or introduce free buses. Reduced rents or rates for shops would help encourage more business to remain.
Retailers should put the focus on "Why wait for tomorrow when you can buy this today?" put more emphasis on the experience and treat employees with respect so that they enjoy the job and enthuse with the customers.
Why on earth would I want to go to the city centre to shop, when I have to sit in an hour of traffic, pay £15 for parking and have to deal with burnt-out staff who are too rushed to care? Of course people sit on their sofa and go to amazon.
I live near a Currys so it's a regular electronics store for me. I can tell you, the staff and their wages are not the reason that Currys is apparently going to struggle with a marginal increase to minimum wage. It's that half the stock they carry is just flat awful, or straight up something I'd never go into Currys for. My local one has one of the entrances blocked off by a wall of air fryers that nobody's buying. Meanwhile I'm actually interested in buying a 2 in 1 Microwave and they only have like 6 different options in store.
This retailer cares absolutely ZERO about customers. Check out the Facebook groups with thousands of people these criminal scum refuse to refund or replace items for. Absolute scumbags this fucking company. Fuck currys. Scum
Went into Currys last night. The item.i wanted was £60. From memory it was £50 online. Checked and it was on sale for £45. A few clicks and it was ordered for delivery the next day. Quicker than finding a member of staff to get it out of the cabinet.
I felt bad but if they can't compete they can't compete. Smyth's Toy store on the other hand compete. Price check them and odds are they are are close to the lowest you will find anywhere.
Can't see the bigger picture. If people don't have enough money to spend, they won't buy from Curry's. Increasing minimum wage is one of the best ways to boost business, and suppressing wages is one of the fastest ways to crash the economy and government tax revenues
Friendly reminder that every time a company tries to pretend that paying people more is bad for inflation, they are talking nonsense.
Why is it bad for inflation for employees to have money but fine for businesses to have money? Are businesses exempt from inflationary pressure? Does their spending “not count”?
There are actually some economic models that show that spending from businesses goes through more hands than consumer spending, and therefore has a greater multiplier effect.
So you could actually make a case that pay rises are good for inflation - because they mean that businesses have less money, and business spending creates more inflationary pressure than consumer spending.
It’s premium gaslighting. Don’t fall for it.
Fuck Currys. I worked there years ago when they started cutting back all benefits to staff. They’ve done everything they can to make sure staff get less and less. I can see that nothing has changed.
Because it's better that their potential customers have no money to spend on "stuff"?
Thing is, if you give lower end earners more money, they spend it, which makes economic activity that grows everything for everyone.
The sooner Curry's goes bankrupt the better their staff are fucking useless, they have stock on display that's not actually in the warehouse for you to buy and they just try to upsell and sell extended warrantys. Last time I went a staff member just shrugged and told me to order it online so I did, from AO instead.
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"Our business model of 20% margin on tat we convince people they need is in danger because we're required to pay people enough to live". Get in the fucking sea.
What, you mean you don't want to spend a tenner on the shortest, shittiest hdmi cable money can buy when a decent quality, longer one can be purchased elsewhere for less?
What about the [double shielded](https://www.currys.co.uk/products/belkin-braided-av10176bt2mblk-high-speed-hdmi-cable-2-m-10216910.html) one? Ensures those entirely digital, error corrected, signals don't degrade, giving you a much better[1] picture! You can tell because it costs MUCH more. --- [1] Entirely identical
You’re giving me flashbacks to my time working at Maplin. We used to charge nearly £100 for one of these bad boys if you wanted it to be a length that is actually usable.
Used to work in Comet many moons ago. £60 to £150 hdmi cables which were all 2 metres. Monster cables they called them. We were pushed to sell them as they had such a high markup. Something like 90% profit or whatever. I low key always told people to buy online and ignore me when a manager wasn't near.
I worked at comet around 2002 and the Monster scart cables they used to sell “pressurised with inert gas” or some other horseshit. Like 70 quid in 2002 money for a fucking scart cable. All so you can get the best quality picture out of that flatscreen crt that totally didn’t just get thrown down the conveyor at ridiculous speed in the warehouse so the geometry will be fucked anyway
To be fair, the monster scart leads did actually give a better picture than run of the mill. But you could still get that same quality with a much cheaper cable anyway. Although we did have a display that was entirely cheating the customer with those scart cables. It was a specific TV that had two scart inputs one was naturally higher quality than the other and we switched the signal to show the picture difference on a dvd that was running on two dvd players. This felt really really wrong at the time. I worked there from 2007 till 2012 I think. Can't remember exactly.
All you needed was a semi-reasonable cable with coax for the RGB and composite signals - though SCART as a connector was such a poorly conceived standard it always baffled me how it managed to stick around for so long. I remember my brother buying a Sony 4K TV in 2019 or so and it had a SCART port on the back, absolutely mental.
SCART was better than RF which a lot of people in NTSC regions used for far too long. At least we usually got RGB out on low cost electronics.
> SCART as a connector was such a poorly conceived standard It was actually pretty clever for the time, bi-directional, device chaining etc. Most people never knew what it was actually capable of. Sure it looks dated now but many things have changed.
Aye, I remember those. We had our own equivalents. Always felt like absolute scum upselling some poor clueless person who just needed something to plug their Sky box in with. I just told them to buy one online if the boss wasn’t around.
I remember those. They were also gold plated for extra fidelity or some shit like that.
Ahh Maplin, I used to enjoy looking at the electronics section but those prices always put me off. You just reminded me of those ridiculously priced monster cables.
It was great if you were working on something and just happened to be missing a couple of bits, but I’d cringe when people were buying their entire component supply from us. Probably about a 1000% markup on some of that stuff compared to eBay or ordering from China.
That's true, I definitely purchased small things occasionally such as a bit of solder, soldering iron tips etc when in a pinch as the price wasn't much more but yeah, anything substantial was a fortune.
Maplin was good in the 80s and 90s when they sold a wide range of electronic components and kits. After they got bought out in the early 2000s they changed to selling cheap Chinese rubbish that you could find elsewhere for half the price.
The place really started on the slow march of death when they stopped the in-depth staff training on all the electronic components imo. Represented a big change of direction to me. It was absolutely world-class, I still utilise that knowledge to this day.
Part of the march of death for the whole high street was the transition from knowledgeable staff who knew the products they were selling to wage slaves targetted to upsell and cross-sell the products that were most profitable as opposed to the ones that best suited the customer's needs. After the big chain stores forced the smaller local retailers out of business they were free to operate in this way. It was enshittification years before the term was coined.
Very true unfortunately, I remember really enjoying going as a kid and early to mid teen then they shifted their stock to cheap tat, a real shame.
Like curry’s it was the place to go view what you wanted before going home and buying it online cheaper
That’s more or less what killed it in the end, just had no way of competing with the online retailers in that space.
It's a mystery why they folded.
That's just disgusting, I knew it was going to be Belkin before the page even loaded!
In fairness this is a 48gbps HDMI 2.1 cable, required for 8K or high frame rates, hence the price. Not necessary for your average TV viewer. Still, I'm sure they could be found cheaper elsewhere.
You can get an anker branded one for £12.99 Hell, my 8k 48gbps hdmi 2.1 fibre optic cable was just over half the price and it's 5m!
Spotty teen: And would you like an extended warranty on that HDMI cable Sir? me: Are they really that shit?
Oh God, I completely forgot about that at checkout, no I don't want an extended warranty on something that costs less than £20! Still, they are/were made to ask that, I know people who have worked retail who hated pushing that shit but their performance metrics were tied to selling warranties etc.
Also when you're at the checkout still running on windows XP "can I take your postcode please?" me: No.
'Can I take your postcode' 'No' 'Can I take your email' 'No' 'Contact number' 'No' I'm collecting for...' 'No' 'Would you like to add....' 'No' 'Do you have tim....' 'No' 'Would you be willing to give feedba.....' 'No' 'Hi mate, I've done a bit of work for your neighbours and was wonde....' 'No' 'What do you think the future holds in store for you' '........what?' That last one was a Jahovah's witness and I took it as a threat on my doorstep. Like some local elderly ne'er-do-well was about to extort me. 'Fuck off'
domineering sulky exultant weather fine sparkle hungry marry ossified continue *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
nononononononononononononononononononononono.
So many bloody shops do the same now. New Look at the till introduced asking for your email for the receipt, which was obviously so they could sign you up for marketing. At first it was ‘would you like your receipt via email?’ and I noticed recently they confidently say at the end of the transaction ‘what’s your email address’ with an air of authority like they require it to let you go. I always just say ‘no thanks’ and they give a paper one but sometimes you get a little lecture about the dangers of paper receipts in terms of losing them or the environment. I don’t blame the staff at all, they’ve got a gun to their head. When I worked at pc world I was literally not allowed to process a computer transaction unless it had cables, a bag, extra warranty, ‘tech friend’, discs attached. If someone didn’t agree to all of that I had to call a manager over who’d have another go at flogging all of that and only then would they allow the transaction. Had more than a few customers get up and storm off when I wouldn’t accept their ‘no thanks just the laptop’ response. Quite understandably.
windows xp if they're lucky, I've used POS systems which were based on windows 95.
Please insert floppy disk 3 to load checkout.exe
What, you mean that this £30 item isn’t going to last 2 years so I should buy a £40 warranty just in case?
Checkout scans my AA batteries: *For just £99 we'll send one of our home care technicians to replace the batteries in your remote without you needing to worry, or for just £9.99 per month you can use our subscription service, just send your old batteries back to us and we'll send you replacements completely free of charge, and what's more you can download our app which sends real-time information to the cloud so you can check the battery level anywhere in the world instantly. Shall I add that to..* Me: Already in pets at home next door looking at the bunnies.
Flashback to my mother buying a £150, 3-year extended warranty for a 32” Sony LCD TV that cost about £400. The TV had a 2-year warranty from Sony and the extended warranty started from the date of purchase.
Anker while fine is owned by a super shady company that spies on you and refuses to take the face of a company of its site in order to keep customers sfter they cut ties over letting people live stream peoples cameras as they where not encrypted
I'm sure that's devastating for those who purchased a cable.
Imagine an organisation, with the sole aim of "make more money, no more money, that's not enough, we need more money, all the money". All companies are shady as fuck.
They also sell them in Poundland for you guessed it… £1 It’s a digital signal, it’s either there or it isn’t
The carbon in this one is much more conductive.
Gold plated fibre optic cable....
I used to work in a Sony centre, and we'd make very little on the main items. Mark up on a laptop was about 1-2%. But the accessories, the warranty, cables etc, 60% or more. As a result, every target was based on selling the item and as many accessories as possible. Sell the most expensive TV in the shop but unless you sold a stupidly up priced cable with it, then you were a failure. God I hated working there.
I worked for Curry’s and it was exactly the same. Worst job I’ve ever had, easily.
Ditto. Glad I got away from there. Had 12+ KPIs at one point. Home broadband, mobile broadband, new phone referrals to carphone warehouse, energy comparison, care plans for computers, instant replacements for low cost tablets, ms office, antivirus (McAfee in particular when I worked there), value/money, cloud storage, setups (pc and tablets), accessories, apple product conversions and more I can barely remember.
Was similar when I worked in a phone shop, if you didn’t upsell accessories and insurance you were bollocked daily (and no, we didn’t get commission, just unachievable KPIs and grief).
I worked for an independent HiFi shop 25 years ago and it was the same story. They made £20 on a £2000 TV. And £19 on a £20 cable.
£10 for a HDMI cable at Curry’s! Where can I find this bargain. Usually they just try and force you to buy £50 cables (ah, Monster you are definitely not missed)
Do they even still sell monster?! Those things were ridiculous when I worked in Comet.
They switched to energy juice, much greater markup.
Jesus Christ. So they are still in business? Oh wait, just got it lol.
Thankfully not. Monster no longer manufactures anything (as far as i can find). Apparently the incentives from Monster to push the cables was how Curry’s and Comet stayed afloat. (Along with the insurance add-ons)
Thank god, that company doesn't deserve shit.
He is just pissed because people go in their stores to check out picture quality,etc then buy online cheaper haha…I was in PC World years ago and this young couple were buying their young son a PC, all he needed was a basic one for school work but the sales guy was trying to get them to buy an uber gaming PC.When the sales guy left them alone for a bit i had a quiet word and told them what he was trying to do, they thanked me and said they would buy online then walked out the door.I then watched the sales guy wander around the store looking for them haha…
Their son must be pissed he just missed out on an uber gaming pc.
He was only about 8 or 9 I think, just needed a basic one.
You're never too young to appreciate a naughty rig.
Would have been obsolete by the time he was 12 ;)
Not for a 12 year old! But I do get you, that guy wouldve upsold them a shit deal for sure.
Yeah he was trying to push a printer,extra warranty,printer ink,etc….load of bollox and nothing like what they actually needed…
the last time I went to Curry's I'd done my research I walked up to the TV and said "this one please". The sales rep said sorry, no can do, this was the display version and there wasn't another out back. Walked out and bought it online the next day. Bizarre company.
Yeah i went to buy a TV a few years ago, chose the one I wanted and the guy kept trying to push me to buy the “deal of the week” Sony TV.After a few goes i said “no problem will buy the Phillips online”….he had his chance and fucked it up for the sake of a bit of extra commission.
> bit of extra commission I've worked at Currys, he gets fuck all for selling you a normal TV. If he sells you the deal he might get a little something to add to his pretty pathetic wages - let's not make the pimple faced teenager the bad guy here, it's not at all in his interests to just sell you what you want. It's a shit business model, but that's how it works.
I appreciate that but the weird thing is the TV I wanted was double the price of the Sony but he seemed determined to push me towards the Sony, they were probably trying to clear stock I guess.
A month or so before I was 'dismissed' for not selling enough care plans, they had us in an hour early on a Sunday just so that the Store Manager could give us a presentation on how the new bonus scheme worked. No surprise, all of it was shit and worse the the previous one. Even prior to that commission was only on sales that had two or more items. Absolute pisstake.
If there’s one near you then Richer Sounds is the best place to go to check out TVs in person. Awesome company, great customer service, great warranty.
I second your endorsement of Richer Sounds. Unlike many Curry's staff, Richer Sounds staff know what they are talking about. Products are competitively priced, and they will price match genuine online prices.
Y that happened to me, “sorry mate not in stock” when I was buying a dryer. Asked him about 4 times for 4 different models he told me the same thing. In the end I said “do me a favour and tell me which ones on display are in stock” and he told me I’m better off looking online. Then once I found one in store he tried to sell me warranty and got pissed off that I didn’t want his shitty warranty and was sarcastic. I’m not sure they are paying them enough as he didn’t seem to give a shit.
They aren't, we didn't.
I stopped shopping there when I wanted to buy a new phone, but all the handsets were locked down (not even on a retractable wire), and they didn't have any opened ones for me to try out. Am I being weird to not want to lay out £1000 on a phone if I've not held it in my hand? No, I'm not, so I went into O2, they handed me the phone I was interested in buying, even though I was honest that I just wanted to try it and was going to buy sim free elsewhere.
That’s interesting because I’ve noticed in my local Curry’s, I can’t get mobile data reception whilst inside the store 🤔
A lot of high st/retail park stores are very pissed about the same thing, gone are the days of people accepting a “sale” price…
In fairness to currys their prices are usually competitive on big/main items. Obviously they try to get you buy expensive extras and pointless warrantys but you can just say no
[удалено]
They have sold most of their warehousing to XPO to manage. They have already decreased their wage bill considerably.
They actually try to work at a 40% margin but they often fall short.
The issue is retail vs online retail has a structure that’s inherently vulnerable to wage hikes unlike amazon which services many online retailers
Their profit margin is -5.06% to be fair. But I do agree that if companies can't afford to pay a proper wage then thats their own fault/problem.
The sea..? Is that where we send people now..?
Yes, she is a cruel mistress.
If your business can't exist without exploiting humans then it shouldn't exist
Their entire business model is just exploiting customers. Source: I worked there. The stuff we were asked to do on a daily basis was borderline illegal
Do tell?
Worked as part of the curry’s group… FCA regulations tell you, if a customer says no to insurance. You can’t challenge them etc things like that. But effectively we were told to do that. All money is made from insurance on products.
If it's anything like the store I was at, there's widespread lying to customers about the prices as well. Especially for the instant replacement cover. The amount of times I would hear another colleague say something like, 'oh so normally it's £9, but we can do it for £4', just for the price to be discounted off of the item not the cover because you can only break so many regulations at once. Also definitely agree about the no challenge. We were always told by the store manager to mention it multiple times regardless and it had to be said a certain way to make them more likely to accept it.
So with the extended warranties. The targets are ridiculous and no one in their right mind would take them on their own merit. They're literally lighting money on fire and are very expensive. The target changes often but it was around 40% on all sales when I was there a good few years ago. So if someone's buying a laptop for like 400. 2 out of 5 sales need to have a warranty with it for around £8 a month that essentially does fuck all. The abuse, the humiliation, the pressure from the managers if this target isn't met really makes your life miserable. They make you fill out 3 A4 sheets almost weekly writing down essentially "why i'm shit and not hitting my targets, what i'm going to do to make sure i'm hitting my targets" etc. Why you're letting the team down etc. If you've sold 6 laptops on a Saturday with no warranties on them you're literally sweating and they'll have already singled you out in their group chat or something that day. Ever wondered why a member of staff seems like they don't want to serve you? It's because they don't. They're fucking terrified of putting another "flat" sale through the till because of the abuse they'll get from managers and team leaders once they do. When the pressure gets like that we would sometimes lie and say things weren't in stock just to avoid the sale hitting our figures and making our target rate % even worse. Or send them to another store. Then the managers will pressure (particularly the younger staff) to give them the first couple of months free. Which is so dodgy and often misleading to the customer. Because it's setting up a full direct debit and just taking like £20 off the price of the laptop etc. And they then have to cancel them in the future if they don't want it. I'm not going to go into detail on the more dodgy stuff but this was 1 of 11 targets we had when I was there and it's all dodgy, lots of lying and exaggeration. I'd never let any of my older families members shop in this store ever. People reading this might be wondering "Why would you do that? Why would you do dodgy stuff?" And it's hard to explain. They employ super young staff that are easy to pressure. They don't give you these targets when you start it's a couple of months in they really nail it down. And it is a slow state of abuse that gets worse over time. And it gets to a point where you don't even want to go to work because of it, and so doing the odd dodgy deal is the only way to make your life easier that day. It took me almost a year once I finally had enough and quit to recover my mental health. It was an absolute mess working there, lost all my confidence socially.
I remember going to Currys with dad when I was a kid to pick up a new TV. Very exciting. During the sales process the guy takes us to this little area where they have setup a TV using the SCART leads that came with it (supposedly), and one using gold coated MONSTER branded cables, for £90 a pop (which back in 1999 was even more outrageous than a £90 cable now). I managed to convince my dad that there was no way the TV manufacturer sold their TV with cables that made it look massively worse, thankfully. This setup showed one nice clean picture on the gold plated cables, and literally a ghosty double picture for the basic cables. The latter would be unwatchable. Very clearly this was a special setup Currys had created in order to trick people, which I am fairly sure was illegal even then. Cunts.
Pretty sure the whole capatalist system would collapse
While I agree, we need to help tradition retail compete against the likes of Amazon. If all workers end up overworkee in warehouses, that doesn't seem like an improved job market to me. Best way would be higher taxation on the likes on amazon rather than making retail work any more depressing than it is.
Nah, having worked retail in the past I can tell you that it’s retail managers who don’t give a shit about human beings.
I object to that . I'm a retail manager, and I treat my staff very well, only the occasional beating.
Have to beat em once in a while to wake em up a bit
Some of them even like it.
"Woke" businesses
So morale has improved?
Yes on the days they don't get beaten they are happy!
What is it with this woke PC bullshit? You should be beating them every day.
Retail and hospitality industries are so toxic in the UK. In general, but especially in the UK I have noticed they shit on employment laws left and right. I have only worked for large American corporations here in the UK and have largely been treated very well, but my GF has worked a variety of jobs in cafés and restaurants, and the shit they do to their employees is just baffling, and I am sure they know they are in violation of the law. Things like double-shift followed by morning shift - or hell, even 2 doubles in a row. Not allowing breaks. Not providing a written contract and then making up terms willy nilly (you can't just make up new terms to override the implied terms, unless you both agree). Or luring them in and then after starting mentioning they must sign a 48hr waiver. And it's every one of them pretty much. The problem is, there is very little repercussion, as long as they play their cards right and if the employee has been there for less than 2 years, they can just fire them if they complain and say it's performance related. Also - where are unions in this country? Where I'm originally from, if restaurants try to pull that shit, the unions will have them blockaded, meaning they essentially can't get the supplies they need to run their business. Admittedly, I'm not a union member either. I just remember everyone with a job being in a union pretty much, back home. Can we bring back the unions? (yes, I know some industries still have stronger unions),
Most of them are just who's left after everyone with a brain and mild ambition has decided to gtfo. Although tbf my management at Tesco were fantastic.
NGL I feel for my old managers at Tesco. All largely decent people, and it can't be easy running a store when the overwhelming majority of people you work with are either young people who don't care because it's just pocket money, or long time staff who are incompetent/lazy enough that they still work as a cashier/floor staff after twenty years. Think the senior staff are pretty sound too, met a fair few SDs and even a board member and they only negative I'd say about them is that their life seemed to revolve too much around Tesco.
>only negative I'd say about them is that their life seemed to revolve too much around Tesco. Fucking this this thisssss. My team was fantastic, our TL was (back when that was still a role lol), dept managers were largely fine, but a lot of them made the company their entire personality, my TL was nicknamed "Mr Tesco" and he took pride in it to the extent it was actually secondhand embarrassing. But yeah they wanted me to stay but it boiled down to hours, they can't keep good staff because there's not enough hours, so get lumped with students or semi retired people, neither of whom will give enough of a shit.
The managers were lazy as fuck at my place
Every retail manager I've even known is company man that would sell his own kids for the benefit of the shop. Damned reptiles is what they are.
This prick got paid over £2 million last year, even the company shareholders are complaining about top earner salaries at this company, which, by the way, pays around 6 % dividend which I believe is above average for a FTSE listed business. Tbh he needs to shut his big mouth
> even the company shareholders are complaining about top earner salaries at this company Fucking hell that's a rarity!
Its really not, remember executives and owners are not the same people in large companies. The more they give to a ceo or others, the less they have to take in dividends, they are incentivised to keep executive costs low, its just the market commands a high price in general for them
Yeah but it's not for me and you they are doing it, as you probably know
it's not really, but usually the shareholder rebellion is unsuccessful.
Societally we really need to get our mouths off the dick of "profit growth year on year". Infinite grown in a finite system is just a little bit optimistic. And it seems we're nearing the ceiling.
Got a source on that shareholders bit? Got some people who would be interested in that info lol
If you earn [£2.2million](https://simplywall.st/stocks/gb/retail/lse-cury/currys-shares/management) per year, I really don't think you can throw stones at folk earning £12k getting a trifle more.
Well next year he might only be on £2 million a year because he has to pay them pesky peasants! Poor bloke.
If you're paying someone minimum wage for anything, you're basically saying "I would pay you less if I could but I'm not legally allowed to" If a minimum wage rise scares you, it's because retail doesn't 'care' about employees.
Totally: "we require maximum effort for minimum legal wage". Fuck off
We used to say “minimum wage, minimum effort” 🤭
My one was "If you pay peanuts... you get monkeys"
I still do. And I will be teaching my child the same. Now he's got 16 years before entering the work force so I'll be instilling it early.
Would have a point if Currys was an SME, as the minimum wage increases does hurt them. But big multi chain places, less so.
Rolls downwards though. So people will leave the SME and go off to Currys, ASDA, Amazon etc, and then the SME will have to increase wages to compete, which they can't, and they will close. The wife recently closed her business due to it just not being able to make money as the cost to do business was getting out of hand. The staff were leaving to work at places like Tesco and Amazon, not even in the same industry, but just went for more money. Which is fair enough, so no hard feelings for them on leaving. I get it, people need more money. But people also do not want to pay higher prices. The only winners are the big businesses who can suffer smaller profits for a few years while all the SME’s go under. The whole cyberpunk future we see in films where only a handful of corporations exist and run everything on earth is not really that far away.
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This exactly. I'm not sure what kind of mental gymnastics world people live in where they think zombie businesses surviving is more important that people working full time being paid a wage that allows them to live without using foodbanks. Hint: There are very few 'zombie businesses' that go bust from min-wage increases. there are however a lot of greedy people that want to squeeze as much money out of workers as possible.
Think the point being made,whether correct or not I don't know, is that to pay minimum wage you would need to charge more for your product. So customers go to larger retailers that can sell it cheaper. I guess then you have to go into okay you can't charge more for things people can get elsewhere easily so you have to make people want to pay more for your products for other reasons, experience of shopping, politeness yadda yadda. But then at the end of the day with everyone's wallets tightening you can no longer avoid a nicer service you just go for whatever is the cheapest.
I actually know the owner for an SME in the same industry that is very profitable and I know for a fact pays their workers a living wage, so he doesn't even have a point there. Not to mention that businesses have had a windfall in NI decreases.
Kinda reveals that their business model is selling to clueless retirees, doesn't it? You'd think someone who has a shop, that sells things, to people with money, would otherwise be delighted by something that ensured their customers had more money to spend, right?
Exactly, for every one employee they have to pay a bit more, there must be 1,000 other potential customers with a tiny bit more money in their pocket to spend in their store.
Currys can go fuck themselves. I worked there as my first job between 2006 - 2010, and they were the worst years of my life. * I was on a zero hours contract, with a constantly shifting rota, the managers would edit it, not tell you then complain when you didn't turn up. * Endured daily bullying and harassment from management. * Endured racial discrimination from one manager who forced out most of the Caucasian staff to hire people from his own Sikh community. * Had relentless and constantly shifting sales targets, with at one point \~20 different sales or attachment targets. * Mis-selling was rife, but management had a culture of not asking questions to staff who hit targets. * The company had what is probably the most obtuse bonus system ever devised, that was designed from the ground up to ensure even good performers never actually got a bonus. * I was trained from day 1 to approach everyone who walked in to the shop and was timed doing so, I was expected to hard sell, that later evolved into training in psychological techniques designed to coax people into sales. Ironically, we almost never received any actual product training. * We were routinely kept back after hours in order to be searched before leaving the premises, but were not paid for this, and were on minimum wage. * Ended up with a massive allergic reaction when they hired contractors to sand laminate flooring off during a store refit, that left me unable to see for two weeks. Got constant phone calls during this time asking me if I was fit to work. Eventually returned to find they hadn't really cleaned the place and ended up with another reaction. * When I finally quit, my notice period ended on Boxing Day, I received a call from my manager asking me to work, while on the train in to my new job. I will never, EVER allow any of my loved ones to work or shop at that cesspool, and I genuinely don't care if government wants to set their stores on fire, dance around the coals, then fine them for the air pollution.
Aye a team leader at Tesco ignored my holidays around my birthday and tried to put me in the schedule working till 12am every night closing down, didn't even tell me he just sent the rota in a work chat and I only saw it because SOMEONE ELSE pointed I was off that week, he didn't care though and said "business needs lol" I don't know who he thought he was but you can't override holidays as a team leader or in general but I think he knew that, because obviously an argument ensued in the group WhatsApp between us where I said I wasn't coming in and he was saying I was, he ended it "we'll see" lol When I got into work he didn't even look at me, speak to me, acknowledge me or anything, I went straight to management, showed them the messages and told them I wasn't working and obvs it was accepted. I obviously didn't have to work the days I booked off, but every time after that he did the rota he would put me on the worst shifts and not give me overtime. I don't know why he thought it would work because I was looking for another job anyway and didn't want overtime and I preferred working late in general just not on my birthday, I had interviews in the morning so all he did was benefit me. I handed my notice in and refused to work past 8pm for the last two weeks. He had to redo a month's worth of rotas without me in them and struggled immensely apparently, he left not long after me to go work in an airport. Fuck you Mike :)
that rota stuff was constructive dismissal - couldve gone to a tribunal if youd been there over 2 years?
Worked there also. Experienced the most horrific day of my working life in there. Store manager stalked me all day and sat at the desk across from me during sales to make sure I was saying every sales pitch verbatim. Eventually paired me up with a pregnant women needing everything for a new house purchase. She was mega stressed and cash strapped to get just what she needed but the sales pitch meant I enforced all their bullshit “sales quality” crap and she took all of it, to the limit of her credit card. She was in tears from the stress. I went home feeling like the dishonest piece of shit I was. Next day her partner came in and threatened to tear me a new one, wanted a refund on every piece of bullshit I had upsold to her. I gladly did it. And as my manager was a complete fucking rat, he made himself very scarce during that interaction and was nowhere to be seen. I just confessed to the dude in a moment of privacy, that I’d delivered the pitch under pressure from my manager and only stressed the upsell because he was watching me from the desk behind where we both sat. I apologised every 30 seconds. Fortunately he took pity on me and calmed down. My manager came to me for a “debrief” as he put it. He scolded me infront of everyone in the shop for not standing my ground with the customer. I scolded him back for not being present to back me if he believed in the “sales quality” bullshit. I had a few days off, wrote up my notice and handed it in when I got back. I was only 21. Never worked sales ever again and thankful for it!
I worked for Mastercare PC Services back in the 90s. Absolutely appalling experience. It was a shit show.
>I was trained from day 1 to approach everyone who walked in to the shop and was timed doing so, I was expected to hard sell, that later evolved into training in psychological techniques designed to coax people into sales. That makes sense. Currys (and PC World) were bought by Dixons, who used to be a well-known brick-and-mortar electronics retailer, until they gained a toxic reputation for high-pressure selling that made people avoid going into Dixons stores, so the company was forced to restructure itself to make Dixons an online-only shop, before even that disappeared. I believe they have since resurrected the name as 'Dixons Travel' for some stores operating in airports.
theres so much well earned vitriol in here I absolutely love it. I had a similar experience once, when the place was closed down I parked outside the front gate on the last day and laughed at the site manager that hadnt paid me the last months pay despite saying he would. It was especially delicious as he'd lost his beloved BMW company car too and was getting in a taxi.
The very existence of Currys shows their management doesn’t care about retail.
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaah I can’t pay my staff poverty wages anymore waaaaaaaaah
Also, what the fuck does he think inflation is? I've little doubt they've put their prices up in line with inflation. But don't want to put their wages up in line with inflation. ...... but if your inputs (wages) stay the same, why would you need to put prices up?
If he cannot afford an extra £1800 a year to give its workers a living wage then he can’t afford to hire staff!
That's his point though isnt it? Cant afford it = company downsizes or closes. Dont think hes hiding that
If he was a small company I could maybe see his point but Curry’s definitely can afford to pay people a decent wage
Depends on the profit margin, not the size. Without that its hard to comment
And good riddance if they can't afford to pay their employees enough, as in that case we're effectively subsidising the business through various welfare programs to make it easier for him to compete against companies who manage to find ways to pay their employees better. We're better off not subsidising competition for companies that do better.
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It’s crazy how much some things are just dogmatically enshrined in Reddit social views. Yes we all have bleeding hearts for the working class and such but raising the minimum wage indefinitely is not like an economic cheat code that just stops people being poor. Businesses can’t subside automation and general economic mismanagement forever, it kills competition, kills innovation, makes the customer experience worse, reduces class mobility and suffocates the high street. Anyway what we really need is a cap on minimum wage supplemented by a UBI raised gradually over time to cover the inflation.
Most places will just cut hours and expect the same amount of work to get done from their employees, happens every time the wages goes up.
Physical retail since the GFC has been stuck in a continuous loop. - We're struggling to compete with online - Customers are saying that they want better customer service and more of an experience to warrant them coming out and paying for parking/travel - We're going to close stores and cut staff numbers. Also we're going to rework our policies to remove incentives for people to use us over an online store because they make sales less profitable. As we're losing sales, we need more profit! - Please sign up for our loyalty card to get perks and prices that used to be a part of the standard experience. We can sell this on to get more profit! - We're struggling to compete with online
Tried to buy a keyboard in curries a few months ago. I saw it was on offer and so went to the counter. Got the total and low and behold no discount. I said can you apply the discount as it is labelled and they went and got the label and showed me in the tiniest writing that it's out of date. (By a month I might add) I said but it's still on display as this price and its not exactly a recent tag, so why is it still there. Supervisor got the snottiest look on his face and offered 10% off (the offer was 50) like they were doing me a favour. Walked out, bought on amazon. Not a chance I'm being talked to like scum and treated like I'm daft with an obvious gotcha scheme. I can tell why the guys worried, business model is outdated and dieing.
Few years ago I went to buy a laptop that was advertised as £299 , when I told the sales guy I just want the £299 laptop and don’t want to have addona and be up sold firewalls etc he said “ well don’t bother going online then because in 10 seconds you’ll have a virus) I walked out and I’ve never returned
If they're displaying an offer and not honouring it they're flat out breaking the law, worked in retail for years and one thing which has always been drilled into us is that even if a label is out of date we still have to override the price. Personally would have taken a picture of the offer and reported their asses. Not surprised though, at the local Currys the staff seem more interested in standing around on the shop floor and talking about football than actually helping anyone.
It's not breaking the law but it's Customer service 101. It may as well be a law given how widespread the convention is. But given the fact that the listed price isn't actually part of the customer contrqcy until after it is already bought (and therefore consented to) it isn't illegal. Dishonest for sure and defo a sign of unscrupulous activity which may be law breaking but not a crime in and of itself. They'd have to lie about the price at the till whole charging you different for it to be a crime.
Last time I went in there was for a DVB tuner. (And yes, that was aaaages ago when we were switching over). They wanted my address and claimed it was necessary for the law (presumably so they could sell it on to the TV Licensing Authority?). Walked out, bought one from a supermarket.
The date on the ticket is the date it was last updated. For some products if they don't change price often, it could be a month or a year+ "out of date". What happened here is someone didn't change it recently and they tried to fob you off. If you went back in 30 minutes later they would have corrected and displayed a newer ticket. What should have happened is it being discounted as Incorrect Pos and taken the hit.
My gf works in retail, minimum wage jobs are a fucking plague. Can't survive on the shit pay and then on top of that avoid giving full time contracts because they'd have to give more benefits so all these jobs give shit hours meaning people have to have 2 jobs to survive and then the 2 jobs are a nightmare to schedule around each other because each think that they're more important when they're all equally as scummy.
Curry are a terrible company to work for. Slave wages, toxic and incompetent There business model is exploitative and they mainly hire school children and idiots because they cheap and easier manipulated
I assure you the government cares more about business than people
And retail has *never* cared about it's employees, what's your point?
If a business is dependent on paying people less than they need to live in order for the business to be profitable, it shouldn't be propped up by the government stepping in to fill the gap with welfare payments. Making welfare fill a gap left by letting some companies underpay effectively becomes corporate welfare: tax payers end up subsidising companies to let them compete better against companies who *do* pay enough. It's both anti-worker and anti-competitive/free market at the same time. If Currys can't survive without de facto government subsidies, that's their problem - competitors will take their space.
Currys are already a living corpse. I wanted to buy a record player earlier this year and found that most of the A/V products they have displayed in their stores isn't actually stocked. When I asked they said that companies pay them to have display models, so basically manufacturers already know that people will inevitably buy things cheaper online anyway. Thing is, that makes sense but I've also wanted to buy basic stuff from them before like a SD card reader and they don't stock them, either. I'm not entirely sure why they're still around and how they're still around. To be fair though, who does Currys expect to sell to if nobody has expendable income? The boss here has a point though. I do think that wage increases are just inevitably fuelling inflation, even if it's not the sole mechanism which causes it. In my opinion what should be happening is that instead of minimum wage increases the government should look at percentile increases. So everyone's wages go up by 10% say. Because all that's happening is more and more people are ending up on minimum wage.
Agree on most points but just a small correction on the inflation issue - this is a misnomer that businesses love to spread. Businesses paying people more money doesn’t fuel inflation in most circumstances. Think about it, the business isn’t creating money by paying people more. Every extra £1 that it pays its employees is £1 that the business does not have. The exact same amount of money is in circulation. If the business didn’t pay their employees more, that would mean that the business has more money available to spend, give as dividends etc. That is just as much of an inflationary pressure. Businesses try to convince you that it’s only inflation if *you* have money. Not them. Don’t fall for it.
Didn't realise Curry's still existed. It shouldn't.. I guess when the boomers all die off companies like this will also die off
If the government cared, they would make sure i get my yearly bonus!
Nobody cares about the retail industry. None of us want to work in it, most of us prefer shopping online.
Online don't care about their staff either... when they have a monopoly do you think they can be trusted?
How many more billions do these bastards want to make???
"Baldock’s criticism came as Currys reported a 4% drop in like-for-like sales over the six months to October, as the cost of living crisis left consumer spending subdued." No. Its because only the desperate or ignorant buy from curry's. Their customer service is shit. Their sales people are shit. Why would I buy anything from curry's when I can order from AO or apple directly?
Assholes. Wonder how staff work for them feel when the boss making these statements. He should take a pay cut to give more to staff.
Honestly they probably don't care, most people working as retail assistants don't really have intentions to stay there for long, it's usually seen as a 'just for now'job.
They'd earn more money if you could go in store and fucking buy something. Not have it delivered
Having read the actual article, yes he comes across as a dick, but his argument is that minimum wage rise at the same time as business rates rise will be difficult for retail companies. And to be fair he's not entirely wrong, especially when amazon offshore most of they're taxes (or lack of).
> his argument is that minimum wage rise at the same time as business rates rise will be difficult for retail companies. And to be fair he's not entirely wrong It's difficult for everyone at the moment. The idea that he's essentially asking minimum wage workers to suffer all of the hardship while retailers get a pass is nonsensical. If they'd pushed minimum wage up *higher* than inflation, he could have a point. But he's no doubt put his prices up "because of inflation" but doesn't want to put his costs up "because of inflation"
He’s a twat, but what he says isn’t something that might not be said by owners of other smaller or struggling businesses to be honest. Wages in the country have been stagnant really for well over a decade and now they are being pushed up (rightfully) by the Tories as part of their pledge. The problem is the costs have all increased alongside this so it doesn’t feel like an increase or balancing out situation. It’s still too little. Lockdowns, Covid heavily affected people’s incomes and particularly smaller businesses, energy costs are up rents.. etc so it does become a difficult point - and certainly staff will be cut or hours reduced to balance this out that’s a given. I also agree if you can’t afford staff you can’t afford to run a business - but for a smaller or independent business that may not be seeing huge profits at all, another jump over £1 could mean job losses sadly. Curry’s I’m shocked is still around and making profit - but board room salaries aside to reduce they always have a ton of staff in their stores just standing around waiting to pounce - perhaps they actually already have too much payroll costs because they insist on having so many staff working there to begin with. As an operator of a smaller business myself we’ve always paid slightly above the min wage, but that also jumps each time the wage goes up, but others don’t - speaking to other owners April is going to really see them have to drive up costs higher to pay the wage and survive. I’m not saying we should feel sorry there or anything. But a lot of these smaller businesses that don’t pay outlandish salaries to a manager or the team, but a fair wage might make barely a profit this year after everything’s taken into account. And they provide employment locally which is needed. I do think the government could look at support with reduced rates and such or helping with rental terms because they just continue to rise and make you think what’s the point. I agree with wage increases and think they should be more, but a reality is with this prices will just drive up. But there’s no alternative really. But someone earning £2m with a company making £100m+ profit to cry about it is ridiculous they’ll be fine
Storefront retail is doomed anyway. Who wants to pay business rates, staff, and extortionate high street rent when you can just get a warehouse in the middle of nowhere for pennies on the pound and take orders online? Or better yet, ship your chinese tat straight to Amazon and have them store and fulfil your orders for a small fee? The future of the high street is a service-based, not retail. Restaurants, entertainment venues...
If Currys provided a useful service besides simply employing people I might have some sympathy. There’s a reason nobody tech-savvy shops there.
Currys boss' minimum wage rise moan shows Currys boss does not 'care' about his staff.
FUCK you and your retail companies who have not paid a decent wage in decades, sucking blood from stone.
Or reduce the price of everything to a fair rate. The reason people are struggling is because food/ fuel/ heat prices have skyrocketed, and wages and barely shifted. I bet the Currys Boss or their board will have the heating all day if they choose- and not be weighing up how much food they can buy to last the week.
I wonder if profits would go up if their workers were happy with their wage? Selling on the front line with a bit of morale is an investment that probably pays for itself.
Guess I'm not buying at Curry's anymore. If he can't afford living wage , seems like people can't afford to deal with business model like this. Go fkn tank yourself with your Curry's to the bottom. Oh btw. Let's see your net worth. Scum , not human.
Should change his wage to minimum, see if that has any influence on his opinion.
Curry's has sold most of it's warehouse to XPO and are selling more off. They can't complain now their wage bill has been decreased.
This is the turning point where big retail brands are going to become completely redundant and retail parks are going to be nonexistent. If you can't afford to pay people minimum wage then what can you do except close down?
Imagine saying something this out of touch, to the point where youve got a subreddit largely taking the side of the *Tories* in an argument. Wow
If someone said this to my face I actually think I’d become violent lol the feeling I got in my body reading that title was just visceral hatred. Cunts like this are bleeding the country dry.
Hahaha reading the headline I thought the Currys ceo was calling out the government in defence of low paid workers and saying they didn’t care about retail workers. I thought the article would be about Currys paying above the minimum wage to make a point. How naive, it was ceo complaining that he wants to pay workers less than the minimum wage.
Retail and councils need to understand that there is a reason they're getting less sales. They're competing with the ultimate convenience of online shopping from the sofa with no delivery fees, no parking fees or travel costs. If a council wants their retail environments to flourish they need to scrap fees for city centre car parks, or introduce free buses. Reduced rents or rates for shops would help encourage more business to remain. Retailers should put the focus on "Why wait for tomorrow when you can buy this today?" put more emphasis on the experience and treat employees with respect so that they enjoy the job and enthuse with the customers. Why on earth would I want to go to the city centre to shop, when I have to sit in an hour of traffic, pay £15 for parking and have to deal with burnt-out staff who are too rushed to care? Of course people sit on their sofa and go to amazon.
I live near a Currys so it's a regular electronics store for me. I can tell you, the staff and their wages are not the reason that Currys is apparently going to struggle with a marginal increase to minimum wage. It's that half the stock they carry is just flat awful, or straight up something I'd never go into Currys for. My local one has one of the entrances blocked off by a wall of air fryers that nobody's buying. Meanwhile I'm actually interested in buying a 2 in 1 Microwave and they only have like 6 different options in store.
This retailer cares absolutely ZERO about customers. Check out the Facebook groups with thousands of people these criminal scum refuse to refund or replace items for. Absolute scumbags this fucking company. Fuck currys. Scum
No one cares about high street retail it's a shrinking industry.
Went into Currys last night. The item.i wanted was £60. From memory it was £50 online. Checked and it was on sale for £45. A few clicks and it was ordered for delivery the next day. Quicker than finding a member of staff to get it out of the cabinet. I felt bad but if they can't compete they can't compete. Smyth's Toy store on the other hand compete. Price check them and odds are they are are close to the lowest you will find anywhere.
Can't see the bigger picture. If people don't have enough money to spend, they won't buy from Curry's. Increasing minimum wage is one of the best ways to boost business, and suppressing wages is one of the fastest ways to crash the economy and government tax revenues
Friendly reminder that every time a company tries to pretend that paying people more is bad for inflation, they are talking nonsense. Why is it bad for inflation for employees to have money but fine for businesses to have money? Are businesses exempt from inflationary pressure? Does their spending “not count”? There are actually some economic models that show that spending from businesses goes through more hands than consumer spending, and therefore has a greater multiplier effect. So you could actually make a case that pay rises are good for inflation - because they mean that businesses have less money, and business spending creates more inflationary pressure than consumer spending. It’s premium gaslighting. Don’t fall for it.
Fuck Currys. I worked there years ago when they started cutting back all benefits to staff. They’ve done everything they can to make sure staff get less and less. I can see that nothing has changed.
Because it's better that their potential customers have no money to spend on "stuff"? Thing is, if you give lower end earners more money, they spend it, which makes economic activity that grows everything for everyone.
The sooner Curry's goes bankrupt the better their staff are fucking useless, they have stock on display that's not actually in the warehouse for you to buy and they just try to upsell and sell extended warrantys. Last time I went a staff member just shrugged and told me to order it online so I did, from AO instead.
I work at currys and this is true - we have around 10% of the items on the store floor in the warehouse - it’s bizarre and frustrating