14 
The retail parks of the country might be about to lose one of their most dedicated leaseholders, with struggling UK electronics retailer Comet said to be about to slump into administration.
The fridge, washing machine and TV specialist is believed to have made a loss of around £35m in the year ending April 2012, with more misery heaped on the chain thanks to trade insurers pulling their support and asking to be paid upfront for stock, due to worries about its financial health and the possibility of another sale and/or break-up.
Comet currently has some 240 shops around the UK, with the chain changing hands last year for just £2. Staffing levels have already been cut from around 10,000 to just over 6,000 under the reign of the new owners and former Dixons boss John Clare. [Guardian]
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Has anyone ever had a good buying experience at comet, or currys/pcworld?
Customer service is worth more than saving a couple of £ when buying a £1000 TV but these stores just don’t understand this.
John Lewis give away free 5 year warranties and have staff that seem to enjoy helping customers. That is why they are doing well and the others are not.
I’ve been lucky enough to never have problems with the few branches I’ve had to deal with, and it will be a real shame if they go down the tubes, but the only thing differentiating them from buying it for £20 less online is the customer service, and I’ve heard a lot of horror stories about that. Their staff are frequently shockingly uninformed too- I once asked about whether they stocked Walkman-compatible speaker docks and got a whole speil from a store manager about how the ones they had “had the wrong spike, you need a Sony spike”.
I have had terrible experiences with Comet for my previous laptop and their customer experience is just abysmal and almost as bad as their product knowledge. After that I haven’t bought anything from Comet since and will never will there again.
Totally agree that John Lewis are the way to go. They are usually competitive on price and are relatively easy to negotiate with. Plus the staff can string a sentence together, and customer service is great.
Hey! I’ll have you know that I received a number of thank you cards while I was working at Comet! Then again, I would happily go to a customer’s house to set up their equipment (for free) so long as it wasn’t too far out of my way and wasn’t the type of person to pressure towards a purchase.
I guess what many salespeople struggle to understand is that happy customers who trust you are a better prospect than grabbing a quick sale with a guarantee and then never seeing that person again because they disliked the shopping experience.
I’m sure there were some good staff such as yourself, but I, nor any of my family, have ever got to deal with any of them
I too worked in retail with some idiots who were more interested in making a sale and getting commission than ensuring the customer was satisfied. I always gave totally honest advise even if it meant they bought a cheaper device or didn’t buy one at all and I personally lost out because by ensuring the customer was satisfied also ensured that the store was also more likely to gain repeat business, but also more importantly, because I treated customers in the manner in which I would want to be treated.
Funny that John Lewis are the company that share their profits with the employees. Could the two be connected?!
I’ve got a Currys/PC World and a Comet just down the road from home that I use for emergency buys of computer bits etc.
Well I say I use them, but what I really should say is I go there, poke around and leave frustrated pretty much every time.
The stock is so limited, and even if I check stock online before going and can get what I want, I stand in a line only 2 people deep waiting for 10-15mins while the incompetent staff muddle through transactions and returns from other frustrated customers
I far prefer buying stuff from a physical shop to waiting for it to be delivered, but the shops just make it so difficult to support them
The thing that really gets me is how much they try to charge for hdmi and audio cables and the sales staff will tell any bullshit to make you buy a one for £70+!
Very true. Those sorts of things are horrendously expensive, and unfortunately they’re what I would most often class as weekend emergency purchases that can’t wait for a Tuesday delivery because I want to watch a movie on my new equipment NOW
It makes me laugh that, almost regardless of what you ask a Comet sales person about, the first words that usually come out their mouths are, “Oh that’s the one I have myself”. I’m guessing that was in lesson one of the Better Sales Person handbook.
From 2006 to 2010, it certainly wasn’t. However quite a few members of staff in the stores that I worked in while studying were rather keen on technology (outnumbered by those who didn’t give the slightest shit though) and so would often purchase products that took their eye. If a salesperson liked a piece of equipment and had found their own experience to be enjoyable, chances are they would recommend it to others.
I used to work for Comet, first as a full time employee before starting my degree course and then as a summer employee when I returned home. While there were a number of us who cared about customer service above everything else, myself included, there were an even greater number of people who only cared about making big sales with as many additional products and guarantees as possible and never bothered to actually learn about what they were selling.
This would have been a workable situation if the regional operating managers actually understood what their sales staff and store managers had to contend with. Of the very slight number which were actually good at their jobs, they were the people who had started out from the bottom of the company and worked up. Far too many were people joining the company through graduate schemes, believing that their business degrees meant they knew what it was like to sell products to people who visit that particular store. They seemed incapable of comprehending that some areas (such as that around the first store I worked in) were more affluent in others and this affected shopping habits.
Store managers were also an area of concern. As with the sales staff and regional managers, there were a few who could actually reasonably perform their job and were a joy to work with but the majority were useless – often caring far more about figures and seeking chances to spout their borderline racist and sexist comments (both men and women) as much as possible. Having managers who bullied members of staff did not make for a good working environment and, from that, you can hardly expect your sales staff to perform the best that they can.
However, I am sure that all of this is rather consistent with the majority of retail work. What was not consistent with the other stores was Comet’s reliance on the shittiest and ugliest point of sales displays that you could imagine. All those horrible cardboard signs stuck to the back of laptops, propped around TVs and totally robbing them of any aesthetic value. Such a simple change for a cleaner storefront would have really helped the chain.
John Lewis are relatively good – I have shopped there on occasion. One thing that is being omitted from the discussion in these comments is that John Lewis tends to be somewhat more expensive and the turn around time for claiming on the guarantees is pretty abysmal. Furthermore, one cannot correlate the “sharing” of profits to a better workforce – John Lewis pays a smaller base wage than companies such as Comet and Currys and does not offer monthly bonuses dependent on performance (not that these were ever met in Comet from 2007 onwards).
I found John Lewis cheaper on nearly every product. And even if they are more expensive, which they’re not, it’s irrelevant. You go into a store in the knowledge that Amazon will have it for cheaper, but that customer service and/or warranty will benefit you in-store. John Lewis gave me that security. Comet and Currys make me feel dirty.
I should have probably put in there that my experience is a little out of date with comparing the prices between the stores and things may have changed. However, the knowledge base of the Glasgow branch of John Lewis is pretty poor given that all of the sales staff I spoke to about televisions struggled with some very basic concepts. One thing that Comet could do right was staff training, at least while it was still using Oracle. When they moved to SAP NetWeaver, accessing and completing the modules were such a chore that many people simply ignored key training aspects.
Comet and Currys will probably have made you feel dirty because, as I mentioned, most of the staff are clueless and rabid for sales – eager to hound and pressure and their PoS look appalling. John Lewis staff aren’t considerably better, it is very dependent on the individuals that are working at the branch. The shopping experience is generally nicer though, likely as a result of the holistic feeling of their stores.
I agree that it is all dependent on individuals but I have yet to go into a John Lewis and suffer the same abysmal service I get from my local Comet, Currys, Currys Digital or PC World – I have never had worse customer experience than in my local Comet!
The last time I was involved in buying from Comet was a laptop – the sales guy said there were no more in stock so offered a far more expensive, considerably crapper model. I called the telephone sales from outside the store and ordered through them but they said the store should actually have a few in stock – turns out staff were hoarding them for themselves.
The last time I went into Comet was to see if they had the Nexus 7 but according to the sales guy I asked Comet don’t sell mobile phones!
I know there were probably some good people working for Comet somewhere, but every time I have gone to various John Lewis, not only have I received polite, constructive and knowledgable customer service, but also at least the same price if not cheaper than Comet/DSGI. Poor customer service is inexcusable and even if they survive, Comet will never have any of my money, ever.
Given their financial status, it certainly looks like they might not be taking much of your money again! That said, from prior experiences years ago, when a store is closing stock tends to be heavily reduced. Keep your eyes peeled for those bargains!
The real pity with high street retailers is that impressions of the stores and experience are based strongly on the lowest common denominators. For myself, I have always found shopping in Currys to be the worst and it doesn’t surprise me that the Currys Digital in the centre of Glasgow lasted roughly a year.
Staff hoarding is a pretty bad practice, it was often prevalent with end of line stock which could then be reduced considerably by the store – far past the usual D status discount. Little things like this probably didn’t do much to aid Comet in staying profitable.
I agree that John Lewis are definitely polite (though just as pushy as Comet and PC World, not quite at Currys levels) however it is definitely hit or miss with regards to whom you speak. The same applies for online though; you can shop from places with decent prices, nice web pages and an easy purchase process – only for the item to be totally wrong, damaged or late.
Pity to see that John Lewis, Currys and PC World haven’t learnt from Comet and stopped trying to fleece people with the price of HDMI leads – this isn’t the analogue era anymore (when a decent cable actually made a difference).
The price of things like cables is stupid, and is very similer to the likes of Jessops charging nonsensical money for memory cards you can get online at a quarter of the price. But until people start to realise that, I can’t see any of them changing.
And your point about potential clearance is well made. I shall have to ensure I go with someone so they can buy and I can reimburse.
Applied for a job there yesterday.. do you think it’s safe to say I won’t be getting it?…
That’s probably for the best… it would have been much worse if you were in the job for a week before this happened.