Out come the we hate retail mob
Firstly I work for Comet's competitor Dixons Retail (Annon because of this) and my thoughts are with the staff who will be losing their jobs thanks to this announcement.
I'm sure there will be much glee about this at my work over the next few days. Something I do not feel and will not join in with.
The other thing is the majority of people here are tech savy and know what they want / need, if you think Comet / Currys / PCW etc are expensive - go somewhere else. There's no need to call staff utterly useless and the companies rip off merchants.
Comet and Currys etc cater to a totally different market from readers here, I don't buy most of my kit from work, even with the employee discount it's cheaper to buy online. However if you don't know what you are doing there are some real advantages of going to a retail store even if you pay more.
Also I think that retail stores are working very hard to shake off the "hard sell" image of electronic retail, sure they still sell extended warranties and "over priced" extras but the core products aren't that badly priced when you consider the extra cost of bricks and mortar stores and I can certainly vouch for the staff were I work in regards to knowledge. Sure they sell everything from Cookers to Printers but there's always someone who knows what they're talking about that you can go to to get the right information for the specific product.
I personally think for the RIGHT person, an extended warranty can be worth the money. I certainly recommended my Grandparents take Dixon's extended warranty on their laptop as they stay 300 miles away from me and even GoToAssist/TeamViewer etc can't fix all problems.
Just remember when you are complaining about these stores you are complaining about people's livelihood. Quite often the negative reactions I see on tech boards are the same ones I used to have until I realised I have avoided these stores for years, and therefore had an outdated image of the service, and was definitely NOT the target market. Also remember that these companies have 100s of stores so it is very difficult to gauge an accurate representation of the company as a whole as opposed to the service in one store along with the fact people tend only to speak up when they feel they have been wronged as opposed to receiving good customer service.
It would be nice for every retail employee to be know every single thing about every single product in store, for retailers to be cheaper than online and give away free puppies and ice cream but then it'd be nice to win the lottery and have a "thing" with Charlize Theron, unfortunately I think the latter is more likely than the former.
Certainly I don't really want to work for Dixons Retail but I get paid a couple of quid above minimum, don't have to work in management and don't have to use hard sell on anyone so I can't currently complain too much.