Be Excellent To Each Other

The problem of having stuff delivered has yet to be properly solved, particularly if you've not got someone who can easily be at home to accept deliveries. Until that happens I frequently find it more convenient to visit somewhere like Argos, especially if it's something of any size.

Our local Argos always seem to do alright. I use it myself from time to time as their website is good for telling me the stock levels in a branch so I know whether I'm wasting my time going in there. That's the kind of link between online and store that other companies need really.

As for HMV, I used to buy loads in their sales years back, particularly boxed set DVDs. Any recent sales I've looked at in-store though have been disappointing though.

That's what services like http://www.collectplus.co.uk/selling-online/ are for.
Order your items to be delivered to the local corner shop then pick them up on the way home.

Tesco Direct do a similar "collect from store" service that I've used a few times. It's a far better option than trying to guess whether the courier company will even bother to try a delivery on your day off.

Oh, collect+ is brilliant. The problem is the paucity of retailers who support it.

I use argos quite a lot for low value items that I need straight away, I can reserve it on line and swing by it on my way home.

EDIT I seem to be quite the anachronist.

PC world do it too, although it's kind of fucked. They don't have live stock levels, it updates at midnight, and lets you "reserve" something for 24 hours as long as they had 4 or more in stock the previous midnight.

So if you "reserve" something in the morning, and go to collect it in the evening, it's entirely possible they will have sold all 4 of the stock they had of the item. They sometimes put items to one side for you, but I think possibly only for large and/or expensive items.

There's also been a few times where I've reserved games on clearance, only to find that they've misplaced all the discs.

REPENT! REPENT!

Argos is great. Occasionally they'll beat prices (I bought a Blu-ray player from Argos that was £69.99, but was £80 from Tesco - both online and in-store) and the iPhone app to reserve items is very useful.

Often they won't be the best price, but when you take convenience into account it's often not that much more expensive than getting it delivered from an online retailer.

When the cracks started to show a few years ago HMV seemed to say 'well if we can't corner the DVDs, games, music and books industries, we'll have a go at ipods and stuff.

Last time I went in half of the store was a hardware section.

Convenience is a greater driver toward a purchase than cost is to me.

Yeah, it was looking dicey for a while but its still going. They had to move from their position on the Hayes into Morgan's Arcade. I think the floor space is slightly less but they do have an extra upstairs room dedicated to vinyl. It looked like it was going to go under for a while due to a divorce case with the owner, and an unsympathetic council ramping up the rent owing to the construction of the St. David's 2 opposite. Some argued that this was to shove the scrappy looking indies off the high street so as not to mar the sleek, souless new feel of the Hayes.

Now it's been inherited by the owner's daughter, Ashli Todd. I've known her for a while and she's pretty canny. They're still doing their in store gigs, have a good online presence and have managed to increase their bond with the music community, especially through Radio 6. It's thoughtfully laid out and decorated too. Prices aren't as cheap as online naturally, but people still go. Actually, since it's payday I might pop in after work. Last year Phil Jupitus worked a day in the store. Fun!

Homebase and Argos are always rammed with people when I go in to their stores. If they're in trouble then it's madness! Especially since the Homebase around the corner from my house is really convenient!

Feck me,

Worst film I've ever seen bar all except The Last Castle, and even then only just. That. Teddy. Bear. Thing. At. The. End. With Nicholas Cage pseudo-blubbing.

Man, it's almost enough to never risk watching any film ever again, in order to avoid even the minute risk of having to watch anything else that's even remotely as sick-making.

Can't comment on the other two you mention as I've not seen them - and I'm not likely to either.

You've clearly never seen Zardoz......

Now that I'm a good deal better off and fairly busy, I'm also leaning more towards convenience than cost which is why I've bought more from HMV on impulse over the last couple of years than for a very long time.

The big shock I had on returning to Cardiff some years back (around 2006) was chip alley having turned into a shiny place with lots of chain eateries lurking within. As for the Hayes, I mostly remember it as Spillers, a dilapidated MVC, and two ominous looking stairs to underground toilets, which were always chained up. Then again, this was all pre-docks/development/countless coffee houses.

On that top-ten list, I'd hate to see Argos go (I use it fairly regularly) and Ocado being nuked out of existence would be a shame. The difference in quality between it and other home delivery services is so great it's not funny.

IMO the most important name on that list is Weir Group, who are a major engineering solutions and services provider, rather than previous-gen retailers/holiday providers who, in my opinion at least, will likely go the way of the dinosaurs sooner or later. I've never worked for them but they're pretty reknown.

As for HMV, it's very sad that 4,000 jobs are under threat, but I mean come on. Even old buffers like me use iTunes/Amazon routinely to buy virtual and physical movie, game and music media - and I'm one of those quaint, old fashioned souls who actually pays for his stuff *at all*, rather than ripping it off from somewhere, someone or other.

To all those who scoffed (and still laugh) at anti-piracy slogans about "killing music" or whatever, and/or that somehow such things were "helpful", well, I have to say that things don't look too rosy to my eyes, as compared to five, ten or twenty years ago.

Think I last went into HMV in the 1990s.

I'm amazed the UK offshoot of Blockbuster is still around. The North American version imploded spectacularly a couple of years ago.
I think HMV Canada are owned by a different company, but it's the same story over here - way overpriced, and the only time they seem to do any business at all is around Christmas, when people are forced to pay their higher prices for stuff that other stores have sold out of due to selling for much cheaper. They also quietly dropped videogames recently, having introduced them with great fanfare a couple of years ago.

That's not entirely accurate - music sales are still fairly strong - more than strong enough to prop up HMV. Their problem will be people buying their music digitally rather than on "real" media.

This is a really good piece on the subject - it's US based and a little old now, but it's still an interesting read:
http://pdf.aminer.org/000/299/018/the_p ... haring.pdf

Clearly, however, piracy isn't helping.

Aye. The 'reserve online and collect with a code' system Argos use is really quick and effective.

I don't think piracy killed them. They killed themselves. Just why would you go there when you can source anything you want from your desktop at a lower price.

Have you seen some of the prices in HMV? Box sets for 100 quid that are a quarter of that online!

Most of these chains that go bust do so because of ineptitude and failure to adapt. Why the hell would you use Jessops when there are a myriad of online specialist retailers who will do a better price for you? Bristol Cameras for example only charge a fiver per unit more in-store than they do online.

These ineptly run companies run into the arms of the hedge funds who see an opportunity to write the assets off and they get destroyed. And don't worry, the directors will get paid off nicely.

And here's a story not reported. Remember that feel good story about the employees of the Woolworths in Dorchester buying the store and turning it into a success story? Closed down 6 months ago and is now a Poundland!

Remember when Our Price (or whatever they were called by that stage) introduced the facility to download mp3's to your music device in-store shortly before they imploded?

A former Our Price manager on El Reg has revealed that in his store they never sold any mp3's from their booth. Not one.

What Grim and Chinny said. The biggest problem as far as I can see (with me exceedingly well tutored eye, obv) has been the tax loopholeitude used by the likes of Amazon to ship stuff via Jersey and not pay VAT.

I thought amazon, rather than use jersey, were based in luxembourg and the UK warehouses were distribution centers, or somesuch.

Whilst clearly tax loopholes are part of how online retailers cut costs, there's way more to it than that. Perhaps HMV would be more competitive on price if there weren't these loopholes online retailers can use, but I don't think it would be enough to turn around their fortunes in the long term.

That too, but their CD and DVD sales were through "indigostarfish", based in Jersey.

Ah, ok.

This is quite an interesting post about where they were going wrong in the past (post is from about 6 months ago)

http://www.philipbeeching.com/2012/08/w ... f-hmv.html

(Linked to via twitter i *think* from Doccy-G)

The last time I was in an HMV was just before Christmas when they opened a HMV 'display shop' (or similar wording) in Fareham shopping centre around 2 doors away from a Game.

The video games they were selling in HMV before Xmas were all full RRP (so 44.99 / 49.99) whereas in game a few doors down they were in the mid 30's (or you could pick up online for low 20's)

After Christmas they were packing the store up and had massive 'SALE' signs and stickers in the windows , so I went in to have a look and the discounts on titles were £5 , so they were still vastly overpriced.

The last think I remember buying in an HMV was an ipod because they were basically the same price everywhere and they actually had them in stock.

It's a pity some of these companies don't hire Bruce ('Eveready' - Ed) to sort them out. He'd also conveniently re-write history 25 years later ensuring everyone comes off blame free apart from those pesky pirates.

I went into an Argos just before Christmas. It was empty so I got served immediately and my thing took seconds, so, um, swings and roundabouts, init.

That's not Chippy Lane, that's the Brewery Quarter. Chippy Lane, however, was 'done up' to match it, which is the real tragedy. It has a Gregg's now, for fuck's sake. The clientele is largely unchanged which makes the contrast quite amusing, and not to mention any hipster cunts who thought one of those posh flats overlooking Chippy Lane would be such a bohemian place to live don't you know.



My parents were delighted to find a 'proper' video rental store and were determined to give it business. This was until it snowed and my parents, suddenly afeared of snow, were unwilling to drive to it to return the movie (some crap along the lines of "oh but we live in the country now and snow was blowing across the roads and it was bad" - well, you bought the AWD vehicle and haven't bothered putting winter tires on, whose fault is that? And when you came here to the city to visit us you complained about the snow then too) and so added several movie channels to their cable subscription. I've repeatedly pointed out that my father's expensive TV should let him do Netflix but he's reluctant to try such things as he's one of those 'oh it's not working immediately? it's BROKEN FOREVER and it's YOUR FAULT' people.*



Back in the day (mid 90s) the big HMV at Yonge/Dundas as well as the nearby (now demolished!) Sam The Record Man were both THE PLACES to go for games. I saw games in there that I never saw for sale in any specialist game store before or since - obscure Sega CD stuff like Kei-o Flying Squadron, the 32X CD version of Fahrenheit, or my Bubblegum Crisis screensaver.

Nowadays they just don't have room for games, what with the Bazinga! t-shirts and Nicki Minge posters. Oh, and some CDs. Hell, they don't have room for a pleasant browsing experience: by trying to cram so much stuff into as small a building as possible, you can't browse without being jostled by other people. Fuck that.

*Tedious aside:

I've always looked at those Brennan adverts and wondered what the point was? They seem really fiddly and awkward.

All the more surprising my technophobic dad wanted one. He liked the idea of just being able to shove his CDs in and have it rip them for him. I still don't see how that's any different from using iTunes or any other MP3 software, but what do I know? He has sworn by that fucking thing since he had it. I wish I'd remembered to ask the last time I spoke to them.

I'm also not sure how they (getting on topic for a second) work when it comes to getting your downloaded MP3s on them. It seems almost a luddite's solution, in that it still seems primarily aimed at people who buy CDs as that's the main way of getting the music onto it. Quite where flashing the internal memory to update the database comes in I don't know, as the alternative seems to be using the remote to punch the names in a method not unlike non-predictive text messaging circa 1998. It also seems odd that it doesn't really want find a way to supply you with music, though I'm sure Brennan (now that he's cut his hair) is harried by online music companies who want to allow his customer base to buy from their service directly onto his dodgy boxes.

Not also forgetting the fun of trying to set up a playlist with that tiny screen. He tried to play a 'Christmas' playlist for us, but the thing kept shuffling onto excruciating guitar-wank in the form of the "Merry Axemas' album.



Now that's a bleaching job gone wrong. I do recall a photo of legendary redhead pr0nstar Flame where her rear exit looked a little bit purplish.

I remember looking at the website for the Brennan and it said something about sending you out a CD with firmware on it every 6 months or so. Whether you have to pay for it, I don't know.

It all just seems a bit barmy to me.

I think that in the mind of an old person a computer often represents hassle and difficulty, they'll use them when necessary. They relate much more easily to a physical object which sits there and just does one thing, even if it doesn't do it very well.

I've had girlfriends like that.

The HMV website is down now.

I've just had a read at their website having never heard of this thing and apparently you can plug a USB stick into it and then play mp3s from it or copy them onto the internal hard drive. With that functionality it's not an entirely pointless gadget I suppose, but it's blatantly aimed at yer luddite given the simplistic way the copy on the website is written and how it prioritises simplicity over utility. They know their market and they're aiming squarely at it to be fair to them. It's all incredibly smug though and reading about it makes me want to punch Martin Brennan in his stupid face. I did also wonder if they'd taken the quote from the Register review out of context but no, it is indeed pretty glowing.

Not good for Bradford, according to the T&A:

Just checked out the Brennan and *choke* HOW MUCH? So you could get a 320 GB one for £439, or just buy an iPod, an iTunes Match sub and an AirPlay speaker for the same, and that would have far more uses. Still, as people have said, I guess it's a possible purchase for people who hate new tech.

EDIT: Also, for a company selling such expensive kit, it's a pity they couldn't afford to employ a web designer or copywriter.

I think news is about to break about Blockbuster going into administration too.

Edit: and there is is.

That's one I will actually miss a bit. I've bought loads of games there. The only games shop now close by is a shitty independent one that never has what I want.

Huh. I have a friend who works for them. He elft HMV to join them. Just had a kid, too. That's a bad lot of luck, for sure.

I went into administration once. Worst 2 months of my life, but then I got another job.

Is the online marketplace and the stores part of the same company for Blockbuster ?

And is that going to affect you more than HMV (I know I've bought two games from them recently following links via Savygamer)

/bows

They're actually the only retailer to ever outright refuse to let me join their affiliate program, without even giving me a reason, so I was never making money from them anyway.

Bollocks, we do actually use Blockbuster (albeit rarely) if there's a film we want to watch that evening rather than just waiting on Lovefilm to randomly select it.

I thought Blockbuster had gone bust about 10 years ago.