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Phones4U has gone tits up.
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Sorry to hear - I quite liked them. What will there be left on the high street when all the phone shops are gone? I hear things are not going too well at Dickphone carhouse or whatever it's called these days...
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Sounds like they had the rug pulled from under them as they are a profitable company, it's just that Vodafone, EE and Three no longer want to sell to them, so they no longer have a product!
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Honestly Rastaman have you no taste?
I thought you were going to tell us that some sort of eminent human being had gone to his or her reward. Imagine our disappointment when it turns out that a crap high street phone shop chain has gone broke.
Of course a few hundred none-too-bright illiterate hustlers in suits will have to find other employment, but it's a big country. Vote counters will be needed of course for the predicted 80% turnout Jock referendum. That could keep the wolf from the door while they are looking for other work no one in their right mind would even contemplate.
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>> Of course a few hundred none-too-bright illiterate hustlers in suits will have to find other employment,
5,500 jobs at risk. Perhaps that post was a bit too heartless. This is a capitalist country after all. But I don't much like the modern High Street, if that's an excuse.
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>> Sounds like they had the rug pulled from under them as they are a profitable
>> company,
They were another typical victim of the venture capital company disease, bought for 1.4 billion years ago, that debt was saddled onto the company, they have made an "operating profit" but not when you take debt into account
O2 pulled out some time ago, Vodaphone was next, leaving them with just EE. P4U then tried to play hardball with the contract renewal with EE, a foolish move being the only supplier they had.
All the major networks have their own retail operations, P4U demise was inevitable.
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Dixons Carphone shares are up 2.5% today?
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Much same experience as WdB.
Went in store knowing what I wanted - particular model on PAYG for The Lad. Got hard sell on a contract from a kid in a cheap suit and not much older than Lad.
With one exception when I was lied to about capacity of a Sony Ericson in an attempt to sell me a then new fangles Blackberry at a silly price CW have been very good. These days though SIM only and phone from Amazon seems way to go provided you don't want the latest 'bling' handset.
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>> Dixons Carphone shares are up 2.5% today?
Yup, of course, they have fresh contracts with the providers, and competition has gone out the window.
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I only popped into a Phones4U last week to buy a plug for my phone. It was £4 cheaper than Carphone w****house next door! Shame, but that's the reality of capitalism.
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>> >> Dixons Carphone shares are up 2.5% today?
>>
>> Yup, of course, they have fresh contracts with the providers, and competition has gone out
>> the window.
>>
Why wouldn't what happened to Phones4u also happen to CPW?
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>> Why wouldn't what happened to Phones4u also happen to CPW?
The same pressures are there. It comes down to what the networks are prepared to pay for sign ups, the 'acquisition cost' in the jargon, and whether the 'broker' can operate at that price.
It's the same sort of decision that the insurance companies have to make on whether they use aggregators like confused.com
Historically CPW has been been efficient at acquisition, and the networks' own shops less so. But one has to assume they are getting better at it, and will also calculate how much of the business that P4U would have signed up will come to them anyway, now that they have such large footprints themselves.
When P4U said that Vodafone appeared to have behaved so as to cause maximum damage, Vodafone responded that P4U had declined to propose "competitive" terms and basically said its debt obligations prevented it doing so.
When the seller needs more money that the buyer needs to pay, there is no deal to be done.
Last edited by: Manatee on Mon 15 Sep 14 at 19:22
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>> >> >> Dixons Carphone shares are up 2.5% today?
>> >>
>> >> Yup, of course, they have fresh contracts with the providers, and competition has gone
>> out
>> >> the window.
>> >>
>>
>> Why wouldn't what happened to Phones4u also happen to CPW?
CPW isn't a financial basket case like P4U was, and being part of dixons its not dependent on phones.
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>> CPW isn't a financial basket case like P4U was, and being part of dixons its
>> not dependent on phones.
True but it would destroy the value nonetheless.
But CPW can do it for less, they have kept the contracts that P4U lost.
It would probably surprise me to know how much customer 'loyalty' CPW has - I know a couple of people who just go to CPW when their contracts are up, to see what the best deal is regardless of network. They usually end up with the same one, presumably because that the way the networks structure the payments to CPW.
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>>They were another typical victim of the venture capital company disease, bought for 1.4 billion years ago, that debt was saddled onto the company, they have made an "operating profit" but not when you take debt into account
O2 pulled out some time ago, Vodaphone was next, leaving them with just EE. P4U then tried to play hardball with the contract renewal with EE, a foolish move being the only supplier they had.
All the major networks have their own retail operations, P4U demise was inevitable. <<
An admirable precis.
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The Dixons Carphone 'merger' was the final nail in the coffin - phones4U were in Dixons Retail's stores after the latter stopped retailing mobiles itself.
When the networks were throwing capital around £30bn at a time for licences, they were happy to pay third parties good money to pile on customers as fast as possible, which they saw as a landgrab.
Now they are looking at costs, and also realised that the likes of Carphone weren't recruiting customers for them but for themselves.
Both Dixons and Carphone have been looking forward to very slim pickings. It is no longer possible to make money just from selling electricals through bricks and mortar shops.
Dixons has no option but to compete well online, but that doesn't do much to reduce store costs so they just get more overheads for the same sales, and offloading stores is not a quick process when they are on long leases. Dixons' best opportunity for chasing profitability in the short term has been to cut its costs which it has been doing aggressively for 5 years. At the same time it has been trying to develop services alongside product sales, and working with some success to shed its longstanding reputation for abysmal service, but reputations take a long time to change.
Carphone's retail business model was also looking increasingly broken, with the networks looking minded to try and manage without them, although it has done better at hanging on to its contracts than P4U.
The principal claimed synergy around the Dixons Carphone merger is to join forces on exploiting the "internet of things", essentially the anticipated increasing connection of nearly everything to the internet. It doesn't sound like a complete business plan to me, though I haven't made a study of it.
In the short term it's usually good news for a company when one of its competitors goes bust, but when the cause is external and common to all, it's not something to celebrate.
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Sorry to hear - I quite liked them.
And I'm not and didn't. But that's based on an irritating ad campaign that blighted the C4 coverage of the 2005 Ashes, and one bad experience in a branch the same year. AC's description is spot on: he (the cheap suit, not AC!) knew less about the product than I did but seemed prepared to say anything to get me to sign up. I may just have been unlucky but I doubt it.
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As Zippy said up the thread, it was because various companies no longer wanted to supply them with phones.
Why?
Does this mean that all the non-direct sellers are going to fail? Is it simply that the various companies would rather sell their products through their own outlets or online?
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So it seems. Cutting out the middleman, but I doubt prices will decrease!
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I have always dealt direct with Orange for several years. They offer the best coverage in my rural area and are, mostly, ok to deal with. The people working in my nearest EE shop are most helpful when I ask them dumb questions.
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>> So it seems. Cutting out the middleman, but I doubt prices will decrease!
>>
With 4 main mobile providers plus Carphone W plus Tesco etc, all selling basically the same phones and very similar contracts, I doubt prices can go down much without someone else taking a fall
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I upgraded my O2 contract phone through Phones 4U in May 2013 as they were giving a better deal on O2 than O2 were even though I had been with O2 for 20 years or whatever!
Lately though I have seen more and more deals which are direct with the supplier especially EE - wife, daughter and pal have all taken advantage of much publicized voucher codes to get phones direct from EE for unbeatable prices.
In this day and age of Martins Money Tips and such like it must be very easy (and controllable) for big companies to raise funds / customers very quickly through voucher codes.
Lastly, re Dixons, I cannot honestly think of any product that I would think of looking at their prices. Do they still sell Monster SCART cables at £25 a pop?????? :)
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>> Do they still sell Monster SCART cables at £25 a pop??????
>> :)
>>
Currys do a 2m HDMI cable for £79.99!!!!
tinyurl.com/pylxfyr
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Dixon's/Curry's still has a place on the high st imo. There are always going to be times when waiting x days for delivery is not fast enough and you have to have whatever it is now.
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>> Lastly, re Dixons, I cannot honestly think of any product that I would think of
>> looking at their prices. Do they still sell Monster SCART cables at £25 a pop??????
Dunno why you say that. I went into the curry web site and picked the first bosch dishwasher on the list.
It was 249 quid, and I couldn't get it cheaper anywhere else, and I could also go into the shop and actually see it and poke around with it.
Now whats so wrong with that?
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Dixons Retail realised some time ago that price on large products has to be a given.
The accessories are optional, but the more ridiculous of prices for most of those were also reduced years back - ink in PC World, for example: so I was surprised to see the £80 HDMI cable bundle, especially on an own brand cable.
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In the barbers today it was the talk of the day as one of the affected phone shops was next door.
The feeling was that it would likely become yet another charity shop.
Tough to see how the High St will bear any resemblance to the past or even today's scene in due course. Only things it's difficult or inconvenient to buy online ( like haircuts for example ! ) will survive.
My mother's generation couldn't have countenanced a world without shops to 'go round' and even my wife says she'd miss it but the younger generation seem happy enough to wander about heads bowed like religious devotees in silent worship of their handheld devices.
I wonder if there will be a whole generation who develop a permanent stoop as a result, or will they all just eventually get run over as they, in time, zone completely out of reality and the drivers of the vehicles who hit them do so without realising while they check their tweetface account?
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>> I wonder if there will be a whole generation who develop a permanent stoop as
>> a result, or will they all just eventually get run over as they, in time,
>> zone completely out of reality and the drivers of the vehicles who hit them do
>> so without realising while they check their tweetface account?
Last year I walked a traditional high street, as it was in the old days, and it was heaving. The place was Sheringham, and the only difference to that town verses any other was they had resisted having a Tesco store*
High street destruction is a two part process, The Superstore kills the diversity on the high street (butcher, baker, fishmonger etc etc) and the internet suddenly becomes an attractive alternative.
*Alas Tesco made it in last year -
Last edited by: Zero on Mon 15 Sep 14 at 19:51
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>>I wonder if there will be a whole generation who develop a permanent stoop as a result, or will they all just eventually get run over as they, in time, zone completely out of reality and the drivers of the vehicles who hit them do so without realising while they check their tweetface account?
Here's your answer Humph
www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2014/sep/15/china-mobile-phone-lane-distracted-walking-pedestrians
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Now whats so wrong with that?
Two words: John Lewis. Same price for the basic Bosch machine, they give you a two-year warranty, you can look and feel all you like and you won't feel dirty when you leave.
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>> Now whats so wrong with that?
>>
>> Two words: John Lewis. Same price for the basic Bosch machine, they give you a
>> two-year warranty, you can look and feel all you like and you won't feel dirty
>> when you leave.
Some folks have a long journey to get to a John Lewis.
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Popped up to Tesco earlier to get a few essentials in.
They are currently refurbishing the store which is an" Extra" even though it isn't five years old yet!
What made me chuckle was the new café that they were building. It juts out in to the car park and includes outside seating under parasols, overlooking the car park, petrol station and industrial estate!
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>> Popped up to Tesco earlier to get a few essentials in.
>>
>> They are currently refurbishing the store which is an" Extra" even though it isn't five
>> years old yet!
>>
>> What made me chuckle was the new café that they were building. It juts out
>> in to the car park and includes outside seating under parasols, overlooking the car park,
>> petrol station and industrial estate!
>>
Tesco have lost their way. Used our local Home Plus branch a few times recently - poorly staffed by disinterested people, and I notice the high value stuff like TV's are being stripped back to make way for tat
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Our local Tesco (Wokingham) has shut the in-store bakery, and now imports bread from Weybridge or someplace. The bread used to be the best around, plenty of choice and always very fresh, it isn't now, and if I hadn't signed up for home deliveries for a year I would probably shop elsewhere as I reckon they are quite heavily over-priced on some stuff.
Though I dropped into Lidl yesterday morning to find something for lunch and the choice was nowhere near as good as Tesco.
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Never bought anything from P4U or any similar shop. I've been in them for a walk round, but seemed far too hard sell, put me right off.
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>> Though I dropped into Lidl yesterday morning to find something for lunch and the choice
>> was nowhere near as good as Tesco.
>>
You can never get everything you want in Lidl, the shops are much smaller so it is physically impossible.
What they do sell us, in my opinion, mostly very good. Tonight we had large corn on the cobs. 20p each!
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>>
>> What they do sell us, in my opinion, mostly very good. Tonight we had large
>> corn on the cobs. 20p each!
>>
Lidl will also sell you the means to eat it.....
www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE-vYQ6tcXY
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Lidl will also sell you the means to eat it.
Teeth? Is that why it's so popular on here?
};---)
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Found P4U to be unpleasant and pushy on the couple of times I've visited. I feel sorry for the staff, but not sorry to see the brand go.
Ref DSG will never spend another penny in there as long as I live, and price will not be a factor in that. After my diswasher packed up at 13 months old and I was told that it lasted the 12 month warranty what more did I expect and that they didn't care what the SOGA said they would not do a thing, I was left in no doubt that they wont see me again.
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Some folks have a long journey to get to a John Lewis.
Are you among them?
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Last year I dropped in to John Lewis to buy a mid range iPad Air for my son as his school had started to use them in class.
I was in a smart suit and was roundly ignored by staff there. When I finally found someone to help they were quite snooty.
I was advised by a well to do friend that I probably looked like I had to work for a living and so wasn't within their target customer range!
Won't be back there in a hurry!
Last edited by: zippy on Mon 15 Sep 14 at 20:53
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>> Some folks have a long journey to get to a John Lewis.
>>
Bit of a trek of us, two and a half hour trip. Bit too far just to have a look round a washing machine.
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It's a bit ironic that they've called in the receivers.
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>> Some folks have a long journey to get to a John Lewis.
>>
>> Are you among them?
Kind of but I happily use both.
Last edited by: Zero on Mon 15 Sep 14 at 22:00
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John Lewis in Sheffield is our nearest.
It's about 15 miles to rive, then you must negotiate the City's horrid road system and then you have to pay a fair whack of dosh to park.
If we clothes shop, it tends to be Meadowhall - free parking and shops under cover + plenty of toilets!
Standard M & S & Debenhams clothing (underwear, shirts etc.) we order on-line and for M & S collect locally and for Debenhams, usually buy enough for FOC delivery.
That's why on-line is attractive for us for so many things.
Having said that - we did buy our TV at John Lewis, as our local Curry's is small with a limited selection.
Last edited by: Roger. on Tue 16 Sep 14 at 09:15
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Another bites the dust. - J Bonington Jagworth
