back to article DSGi profit plummets 30%

DSG International (DSGi) saw annual profit tumble 30 per cent today, after the struggling electrical retailer was forced to cut prices to shift stock amidst a tightening of consumer spending. The firm, whose stores include Currys and PC World in the UK, Elkjop in Nordic countries and UniEuro in Italy, reported pre-tax profit …

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  1. David H
    Thumb Down

    Not surprised

    Consider the reasons why US electrical retailer Best Buy are about to establish stores in the UK; they either must be confident of making a profit in the UK (allowing for startup costs) or alternatively have a suicidal death wish (I don't think so somehow).

    And that "Currys.digital" rebranding idea was a "good idea" (not) as well; that's like renaming Windscale Sellafield (or whatever).

  2. BoldMan
    Coat

    snigger

    Stop laughing at the back there!

  3. John Chadwick

    I know..

    Why don't they just sell out to Best Buy?

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Heres a hint.

    USB cables are not worth £20. Patch cables are not worth £15. Until DSG stop using the razor blade business model (including printer cartidges) I wont buy a single thing from them. I will pay a premium for the convenience of shopping there, but Im not taking the fisting they seem intent on giving their customers. If your local chippy charged £2.99 for cod and chips + £20 for salt + £8.99 to extend the wrapper warranty to 12 minutes would their sales be increasing? Of course not. They made this be by treating their customers like scum.

  5. richard
    Jobs Halo

    good points all round

    let the kicking commence.....it really is a terrible shopping experience isn't it? what a waste of outdated buildings and below-useless staff....

    carry on the kicking folks.....

  6. Mark
    Gates Horns

    About the onlt thing they got right..

    Is the PC World reserve and collect. I picked up a Netgear 802.11n router for £80 the other week, cheaper than all the box shifters, picked it up on the way home from work, and noticed it's £130 walk-in PC world price...

  7. Chad H.
    Thumb Down

    30% down

    70% to go.

  8. Chris Richards
    Alert

    @richard!

    Oi! I used to work there, and I'll have you know it was a far from outdated building (although the air con was up to nothing).

    And I was useless at my job, but that's because they paid me £2.70/hr to do it and I didn't feel that was enough to be useful. You try motivating yourself to shift a washing machine or remerchandise the games section on that wage!

    scart leads were, and probably still are, their biggest profit maker. But it seems now their ridiculous markups will be their downfall... tee hee.

  9. Simon Ball
    Thumb Down

    Their whole business model is now a contradiction

    Charging extortionate prices to the one group of consumers, who by very definition, are most able and willing to shop online, or at least, check prices online.

    Newsflash boys and girls - the fact that there are still plenty of people in this country who don't own a computer does NOT mean that plenty of your CUSTOMERS are first-time buyers, never mind first time users. I'd imagine that the overwhelming majority of people who are inclined to buy a brand-new computer already own one. Insulting their intelligence is not a recipe for success.

    We have now achieved a sufficiently large concentration of computer geeks in society to bring network effects into play. Forget six degrees of separation; pretty much everybody who uses a computer will directly know SOMEBODY - whether colleague, friend, immediate family or extended family - who knows enough about computers to steer them away from PC World.

  10. Stefan
    Coat

    Deja Vu?

    I saw this coming years ago when I worked at Pissy World. I managed to get my ass outta Dodge and gave DSG the old spanish archer (el bow)!!

    Heehee glad to see they're managing to go tits up.

    Coat... coz I got my sweatshop produced PC World fleece and buggered off. I use it for painting in now.

  11. Andre Carneiro
    Thumb Up

    News of their demise....

    Maybe be slightly exaggerated... but still made my day. Good riddance, for all I care, greedy, useless morons.

    (Aaaaand breathe)...

  12. blackworx

    Ha ha!

    Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaaaaaaa!

    That is all

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    My 20 year campaign is working...

    In 1988 I walked into my local Currys with the intention of buying a television. After 20 minutes of the entire floor staff standing in a circle laughing and carrying on I walked over and asked who was the manager. He duly made himself known.

    I then asked where I could find an emporium that sold televisions as opposed to had lots in store and made no effort to sell them to people with ready cash. He attempted to laugh it off until I opened my wallet and showed said cash.

    Took myself off to a branch of a well known "never knowingly undersold" department store, where attention was forthcoming, the telly was 15% cheaper and came with a 5 year warranty as standard (rather than as a £50 extra).

    I vowed then never to set foot in a DSG store. To date I've kept to that - including their online enterprises.

    Mine's the one with a list of independent retailers in the pocket.

  14. hey_may
    Paris Hilton

    Outlook 'challenging'?

    I don't find Outlook particularly challenging and where's the Paris Hilton angle?

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Re: My 20 year campaign is working...

    "In 1988 I walked into my local Currys with the intention of buying a television. After 20 minutes of the entire floor staff standing in a circle laughing and carrying on I walked over and asked who was the manager. He duly made himself known."

    One can only assume from that statement you walked into said emporium and performed some kind of stand-up comedy routine?

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    @Anonymous Coward(s)

    "One can only assume from that statement you walked into said emporium and performed some kind of stand-up comedy routine?"

    You mean, they told them that their extended warranty was very good value for money?

    And if anyone's been inside a Currys recently they may have seen the references to "Product Support" plus an additional charge - at least they're being (fairly) honest for a change.

  17. Matt W
    Thumb Up

    @ ACs - Other retailers

    Just bought a new washing machine from Boots ! I never even knew they were in the business, and they were £63 cheaper than DSG.

    DSG need to seriously work on their pricing, service, stock, staff ...well, the whole thing really.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Went in there yesterday

    ... a poineer Blur-Ray drive was £140, the actual price of this drive anywhere else £70.

    It's no surprise they're going out of business they've been ripping off their customers for years. Nearly everything they sell has 100% markup to other retailers.

  19. richard

    @ Chris Richards

    sorry, i'm sure some staff were pretty good, but watch your toes on those washing machines.....

    i was actually referring to the decor in pissy world where they still use the old rainbow apple logo which apple ditched about 10 years ago...

    and why do the staff on the tv adverts wear ties? and need stabbing...

  20. Alistair

    This is very, very bad news

    A bit like when you crush a cockroach, 50% chance its a mum and seconds later all the baby cockroaches escape her twitching body and scurry away. So when DSG goes scrunch, there'll be a lot of unemployed morons running around the retail parks and high streets, getting jobs in shops you do go to.

  21. Steve

    The game is up.

    Too many people know how much PC World will rip you off. At uni I shared a house with a couple of people who worked in the PCW call centre - they regularly advised people to go to somewhere like Maplins as they couldn't bring themselves to charge so much for a USB cable.

    We also have a citical mass of technical knowledge which means that most people already know someone with more technical knowledge than the average PCW sales assistant. I recently had this conversation:

    Luddite Brother: I was thinking about getting a computer.

    Me: Well, let me see what kind of deals I can find before you shell out any money.

    Luddite Brother: That's what "get a computer" means - I give you money you find or build me a computer.

    In some ways it would be a shame to see them go though as it's so entertaining to eavesdrop in the shop and listen to people who don't know what they are buying trying to talk to someone who doesn't know what they are selling and neither of them wants to admit they're clueless.

  22. John
    Stop

    Hahahaha.

    You guys make me laugh. You've had a bad experince in Pc World or Currys and then think that the whole business is total rubbish.

    As to prices of laptops, washing machines, etc, never heard of Price Match ??

    Research your replies, before you make them.

  23. Dave Silver badge
    Joke

    comment

    When a spokeman for DSG was asked for a comment on this news, his response was "...errr....hang on, I'll have to ask a manager".

  24. W

    Icons

    In other news, I've been adblocking the icons one by one over the past few months (for a more discrete browsing at work experience). That Jobs Halo one up there is the last one to crop up.

    PS: Any company that rebrands itself as ".digital" in this day and age is on to a loser. In 1998 (or even 1988), maybe...

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    @ John, RE: Price Match

    Two words:

    Managerial Discretion.

    I should know, I worked there for a year and a half (a year and a half too long) and if a customer started going on about the 'price promise', often the managers said no, against a policy that is supposed to get more customers to come into the store. The irony.

    As a whole, the customer experience is rubbish because a lot of the call centre guys didnt know what they were doing, the staff knew only enough to qualify them to sell sausages, the pay scale is awful and the internal training is abysmal. Additionally, the pressure the company puts on their in store technicians is ludicrous.

    But then again, swings and roundabouts. Bad customers have bad experiences, good customers have good experiences (mostly). If you go in there expecting a hard time, you'll probably find you get one.

  26. John
    Thumb Up

    Anonymous Coward

    I still do work there.

  27. Matt Quinn
    Happy

    Re: My 20 year campaign is working...

    Elsewhere I've recounted my experience of dealing with one of Currys managers who's underling had mis-sold my elderly Mother-in-law an extended warranty on a TV.

    I actually produce TV programmes for a living and threatened him with press exposure. At which he laugehd and claimed (to paraphrase) that as one of the world's largest electrical retailers they were "flameproof".

    Seems not! And I'm delighted to see the predictions I made a year ago to his repulsive fat lying face come true....

    When I learn exactly when the Edinburgh Hermiston Gait store is to be shut I'll be sending a crew down to film it. And I'll take particular delight in watching a certain middle-aged, grossly overweight, arrogant lying cheating scumbag waddle towards the rest of his workng life as a doleite...

    And hey; remember, I'm only one of MANY MANY disgruntled ex-customers. Which is what DSG's main product has been over the past 20 years and is the reason why it's on the slide.

    It's quite pleasing to know that those wastes of space who have made Currys/DSG what it is today will probably never work again; i.e. those in or approaching middle age who have made their 'home' there. Their business practices throughout their career having been based on dishonesty and wholesale un-professionalism...

    Unemployable is the word! And given the way they treated their customers over the years they deserve everything that's coming!

  28. Daniel
    Dead Vulture

    Incompetent Fools

    Well being an ex technician as of the 25th, I can now take great pleasure in looking at this. But I would like all to bare in mind there are some geniunely nice people work for DSG, many managers will bend over backwards to help.

    Now I know what you're thinking... but "nice guys finish last" the complete ar*ehole managers are the ones who get power. I have been stuck in the situation where me and said nice manager were solving a customer issue, agreed on compensation, started processing it, only to have said A-Hole manager walk across and tell the customer to ring customer services if she wants customer service!

    We had a new manager start just 2 weeks ago, in 2 weeks, 3 people have left, myself included and many more intend to follow. DSG suffers from poor managment at all levels. How many times have you had poor service? whose fault is it? It's not the poor PFY with little to no training or even interest in the area. It's the stupid ass of a manager who decided it was a fantastic idea to hire him/her.

    Now... anyone know where I can find a job? ;)

  29. mark
    Jobs Horns

    Bullshit bollox.

    Most area managers at DSG talk bullshit, and they employ staff who know absolute bollox about both retail and the items they are charged with selling.

    Please, all of you who are posting on this forum, ask me to name names, as an ex employee of 25 years, I will be happy to oblige.

    Oh revenge is sweet!!

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    heh heh Daniel

    ...I think I know which store you're talking about ;)

  31. Joan Nicolson
    Thumb Up

    LOL Ex Currys Edinburgh

    'Pay peanuts get monkeys' mentality has hastened DSGI's demise. DSGI have always treated their staff and customers like scum. 'what goes around comes around'. A Currys manager quit. Her mother, a Sales Advisor for 20+ years also quit. She moaned DSGI had stolen her bonuses,with unfair and impossible targets. Ended up living in an ex council house, shared with two other Currys staff, owned by a DSGI Manager. Funny really because the writing was on the wall years ago, for those of sufficient intelligence, to see the predictable outcome. The talented, and those with integrity, voted with their feet years ago.

  32. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    Bullshit Bollox

    The sad thing is the retail management wankers who have systematically been "Allowed" by the upper echelons to turn DSG and it's ilk to shit will no doubt end up in some other company and will continue to bully and harrass through sheer ignorance those companies staff and turn those organisations to shit also.

    And as for half of those posting in this thread with their experiences of dismay and resentment I bet you a years salary that these morons continued to shop in these stores. The consumers want everything for sweet FA, want all the bells and whistles and service as well for naff all. It's like the Internet industry they want the lot but dont want to pay for it - Tossers! Your as bad as the DSG stores you slate ya hypocrites!

    I despise DSG and it's senior management team, HR functions who are nothing more than an asswipe away from being useless (Odd one or two were fit and worth a sken at that's all). and lets make special mention of their Regional Managers especially the ones in Lancashire, (Yes take a bow wankers you are the biggest bunch of useless untalented fookwits I've ever had the misfortune to witness) you reap what you sow but sadly the genuine emplyees are the ones to lose out - You guys deserve much better but the wankers who managed it badly and the dipshit lusers who shopped there and contributed to its downfall ironically deserve all they get!

    The retail industry is changing the assholes who work in it sadly never will but the customer has the choice pay for value and quality or don't in which case you deserve DSg, PC World, Curry's and the like.

  33. Dave
    Pirate

    @Anonymous Bollocks

    "And as for half of those posting in this thread with their experiences of dismay and resentment I bet you a years salary that these morons continued to shop in these stores. The consumers want everything for sweet FA, want all the bells and whistles and service as well for naff all. It's like the Internet industry they want the lot but dont want to pay for it - Tossers! Your as bad as the DSG stores you slate ya hypocrites!"

    Made the mistake of doing that once. Have never gone back. I have a rule in this life when it comes to retail. Treat me nice, I'll come back and recommend to others. Treat me like shit, and I'll walk out of the store and spread the word.

    In electronics retail the margins are competative. If your point of difference is selling a piece of kit slightly cheaper than everyone else, it isn't a sustainable business plan.

    If you give outstanding customer service, it costs you little in terms of training and support, but gets people coming back, and will actually save money on the advertising budget, as people will recommend to others, and thats free, and has better impact than press or other media.

    DSG rot in hell

  34. John
    Flame

    RE -- Bullshit Bollox

    Go on then name names....

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