Dixons shares spanked after profit warning Dixons Store Group International saw its shares fall more than 20 per cent this morning after the company admitted Christmas trading had been poor. DSG International told the London Stock Exchange today that trading was down one per cent on a like-for-like basis. Group chairman Sir John Collins said: "Like for like sales were …
As always the exec tries to spin bad results. However John Lewis are reporting an overall improvement of over 7% on this time last year led by sales of personal technology and electronics...erm...DSG's core market?
Couldn't possibly be anything to do with DSG's 'box shifter sans customer service' attitude? It's about time Britain's premier employer of clueless spotty teenagers got a kicking.
I've never considered Currys or PC World as offering value for money. In fact quite the opposite since they seem to specialise in expensive peripherals and marked up consumer electronics. And extended warranties. At one time this high street rape might have worked, but these days even less tech savvy consumers know about the internet and sellers like Dell. DSG is going to have to adapt fast if it expects to survive.
I walked into a PC World last monday with a "sale" in full swing. For a sale there was hardly anyone in there and most of the discounts were derisory. One thing in particular caught my eye - there was a table full of LCD monitors with no manuals and no boxes. These monitors were manky and could have spent the last three months on the shop floor or could be returns (with dead pixels etc.). How much discount could you expect for purchasing one of these manky mystery devices? Ten percent off. It wasn't just pathetic, it was insulting.
PC World and Currys need a reboot because their results show that the general public might have finally figured out they can buy cheaper and better elsewhere.
Dixons/Currys are the biggest dinosaur shopping experience in town. Their range of products is unexciting, limited and the prices just ridiculous.
The knowledge of the staff is poor and their customer service is dreadful. We had a problem with Currys a few years ago. Suffice to say the store manager was always busy when my other half rang. So I called them to speak to him. I was told by 'Sharon' that he was of course busy. "Thats a shame" said I, "as I was going to give him some positive feedback!"
"Ooooo we dont get that very often!" was Sharon's excited reply.
Suffice to say the manager was on the phone within 5 seconds. He was owned!
Since then we've sworn never to buy anything more from them orther than a pack of batteries or an aerial cable in the direst of emergencies.
Once you have used online retailers such as Dabs/Ebuyer/Overclockers et al, just why would you bother with Currys?? The quicker they go the better.
Vista isn't awful, especially when it's preinstalled. It's stable, it works and it's better than XP on machines that meet the specs. Windows Me deserved the hate, Vista doesn't. It could do with a service pack though, and more fine grain control of features such as UAC which is a clumsy clickthrough annoyance. The biggest issue with Vista is probably the realisation that it represents 20 years of bloat and not even Microsoft seem to have a clue where they're going next with the platform.
Anyway none of that has to do with DSG's problems. They're simply a crappy electronics chain that sells overpriced tat with extended warranties. Consumers may be as ignorant as they ever were but these days most of them have internet access and finally they're in a position to know when they're being ripped off. They're not even that competitive with their peers such as Comet.
that is being ripped off by everywhere!
I had an argument with someone from the UK distro of the Drobo hdd enclosure that was charging a stonkin £365 for one unit - the us version would have cost £270 to buy, ship and pay import duty on!
That's not even mentioning the HP tablet laptop that a guy at work bought from saudi recently for about £450... costs £1400 over here!
Another good example is the new ipod touches - the price of the 8gb model in the UK is the same as the 16gb model in the us.
The psp slim costs about £87 in japan, the uk? that'll be £130! but of course many of the stores won't even display this price and will show the "bundled" price instead, usually with games that very few people actually like!
The best thing about the net is that the UK is finally getting to see the prices other places are being charged, and I for one am disgusted by how much we pay for the same items.
Oh, and about pc world.. I was wandering around there recently and saw a little sticker attached to the price of one of their TV's - "we'll install your TV for you... for £300!!!"
the sooner the UK customer stops companies taking them for a ride the better!
I love the argument you can have with people
"I'll offer you £100 for that psp"
"I'm sorry sir, it's in our system as being £130 and we can't sell it any cheaper"
"but you can"
"we can't change the prices, I'm sorry"
"bull, you can apply discounts at various rates on your EPOS system, it is perfectly capable of having the price reduced on a per transaction basis"
*cue being turfed out of shop for telling the truth by an irate manager*
It couldn't possibly be that now every man and his dog has now got a pc and a laptop, the sales of them are falling off. PC sellers don't seem to realise what sort of a market they've been in recently.
PC's have been a must have item for years now, and the last couple of years, with the fall of laptop prices and their increase in spec's they became a must have item too and everyone started buying them. even my grandparents, who have trouble with a video recorder, bought themselves a laptop!!
the downside to this is that they've saturated the market, now, like tv's before lcd became common, people will only buy a new one if their old one dies. either that or they need one 'for the kids' . obviously the sales are going to slow down a bit (dixon groups own problems aside)
i've got a laptop that was hi-spec 4 years ago, its still good enough now to do pretty much anything, even play modern games (the only thing i've done is put a bigger hard disk in which took all of 2 mins) . Unless there's a good reason, ie it dies or something insanely new is introduced, i'm still going to be using it 4 years from now. I can't see this being much different to most other people with them.
The best retailer on the high street is obviously John Lewis. No other retailer even comes close.
Online I would say Amazon. They have great prices. You can return something within 30 days for any reason or no reason at all. Also they have a little known thing where if you buy something from Amazon and the price goes down in the next 30 days they refund the difference - no questions asked. You have to phone them, but this is useful with electronics.
Other decent online retailers include play.com, hughes direct and of course Misco for any proper computer kit.
Obviously avoid the Dixons Group at all costs. Lets hope they go out of business soon. Lets make it happen.
considering the useless service, the poor prices and the disgusting stores. Not that the afore-mentioned Comet are any better. They also seem to have forgotten the value of customer service.
Give me John Lewis (or if you are lucky enough to still have one) your proper local independent electrical store anyday. In both cases the staff have a proper stake in making sure buying from them is a decent experience both for your wallet and soul. Perhaps there is a connection there....
I was in dixons, sorry Currys Digital just before christmas.
I always like listening to their sales patter to customers who are looking for a level of information that only someone with inteligence greater than a trained monkey could achieve.
On this occaions, a couple of womed had asked questions about sat-nav's. These being a couple of hundred quid in anybody's money. The droid said all the information was shown on the price tag. On being asked if he new answer to question, he didn't. On being asked if anybody else did, he said everone was busy.
He then went on to say, Go to John Lewis, they will know the product.
They walked out....
...with some home truths about DSGi that you would all love to know. But when I try, my posts somehow never make it ...sometimes makes you wonder if someone on el reg is in DSG pockets - since everything in my posts can be backed up with evidence.
Doubt even this will get seen either *sigh*
It would seem that 'Joe Public' has woken up to the fact that DSG stores are a bunch of rip-off merchants, staffed by people who know little or nothing about their product range and provide dreadful after sales service.
It does not surprise me that their profits are down - probably a combination of Vista and people voting with their feet and buying their electronic products elswhere.
At every opportunity, I advise friends and colleagues to avoid DSG like the plague so in a small way, I'm doing my bit to help DSG along their way............
To be honest I think it's got to do with Vista somewhat, as apparently this holiday season has seen a lot of Macs being shifted (that's what I understood from the last netstat OS market share anyway).
I think it's a combination of vista not bringing any must-have features and having poor reputation. Upgrading from a Win98 PC to 2000 or XP was an big improvement, not so with Vista.
Also I know a few people who actually gave up buying a new PC because of all the issues with Vista and they didn't find any PCs preloaded with XP in the shops anymore. If customers don't want Vista and you only sell Vista, customers will go look next door (next door being the apple store apparently).
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