back to article Dabs warns staff: Your roles are 'at risk of redundancy'

Dabs.com has notified a significant number of sales staff that their roles have been placed at risk of redundancy. The move at the etailer follows sweeping changes that parent company BT made last year as it merged its three reseller businesses under the leadership of John Thornhill and laid off some workers including senior …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    poor buggers

    even if the yare sales staff, the yhave my sympathy. been through similar and it sucks donkey balls.

  2. g e

    Sounds like

    the legal hoops HR have to go through in the process of making people redundant, consultation phases are mandatory, I believe, as are a few other things and all these things have to be seen and documented to be done before you can actually make people redundant otherwise you leave yourself open for unfair dismissal or a bunch of other no-win-no-fee lawyering from the dismissed.

    1. Danny 14

      Re: Sounds like

      your point being? At least the staff now have a chance to hunt around for work before they are on the dole rather than being told on friday "here is your months pay, see ya".

  3. G R Goslin
    Thumb Down

    BT rides again

    Dabs wouldn't need to make anyone redundant if they only traded as they used to. I used to buy principally from Dabs, but now I've given up even looking at their site, since they never seem to have any stock of the stuff I want to buy, and at the price I want to pay for it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: BT rides again

      I wasnt aware they were owned by BT. That explains why they have dropped from one of the best component suppliers in the UK to absolutely bloody useless and "stockless"!

      BT, turning incompetance into an artform!

    2. N2

      Re: BT rides again

      DABs was on the slippery slope from the moment BT bought it, whos origins remain entrenched in the seventies with little concept of competition.

      Shame really & sad for those who carry the can, but I wonder how many directors have been placed on the danger list?

  4. Scarborough Dave
    Thumb Down

    Haven't used Dabs since a few months after BT bought it.

    In the old days Dabs had great prices and great service, the RMA system was sweet all done online.

    Then BT came along and the prices were no longer great, customer service slowly went downhill and the RMA system was challenging.

    Real shame for the team there as there were some really good people I dealt with, but just shows you how quickly BT can take a good business and drive it into the buffers!

    1. Return To Sender
      FAIL

      Re: Haven't used Dabs since a few months after BT bought it.

      Yup, same here. Still look at the Dabs site occasionally, can't remember when I last actually bought something though. They used to be my #1 go-to.

      "At risk of redundancy" and "consultation" basically means "we aren't making numbers, management lacks the imagination to fix it, we've decided to take the easy option and get rid of a load of you, the decisions are already made so don't fool yourselves into thinking any differently - this is just a legal requirement so's you can't sue us later". Been there, done that, got the P45 (pink slip, I believe, for our friends across the pond).

  5. tin 2
    FAIL

    Incompetent Dabs?

    Indeed. In their great customer database migration of April 2011-ish my account disappeared. I've emailed and rung (0870, 30 min+ wait) several times, because not only can I not order anything, I can't retrieve old invoices. After my emails in April, and their apologies for not sorting it quicker, we emailed back and forth until August with them ignoring most of the requests, at which point I gave up. Seems they don't even need customers like me. BT have cocked up what was a pretty decent place to buy from.

    1. Arrrggghh-otron

      Re: Incompetent Dabs?

      I was wondering what happened to my dabs account when I tried to login to check an old order to see if it was still under warranty. Oh well, bye bye dabs, it was fun while it lasted.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    consultation

    must be THE fugliest words in the last few years.

  7. Nuke
    Flame

    I would not dealt with a BT Company

    I used to be a regular customer of Dabs. Then one day a salesman called me and told me (proudly) that BT now owned them.

    I pointed out that BT were the bar stewards who chaged me an "admin" charge to pay my own phone bill, so Dabs and anyone else connected with them could go to hell. I am glad they now have.

  8. Fab
    Unhappy

    Shame

    I was a massive fan of Dabs. I remember in the days before you could buy online, they used to have 3-4 page adverts. I remembered ordering by phone around 6-7PM and was completely surprised when the goods arrived the next morning.

    Then when they went online I liked them just as much. Their system of filtering was and is still one of the best in the industry. We take it for granted now but they were the first company I used to have it.

    I still use them as long the prices are about right. But they are not as good as they were. Firstly they dont have the best prices anymore. They also dont have the stock.

    So over the last 18 month I probably I only placed around £5k worth of buisness with them. I can cope with ok pricing but when you can get the goods , you shop elsewhere.

    I still wish them well and hope they bounce back.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    New Logo !!!!! New Stationary!!!!!!New Identity!!!!!!!!

    Once BT took them over I decided not to use them unless unavoidable.

    I remember (as with other comments) the staff being fine and a little surprised that my response to "We are now part of BT" (rising terminal) was met with a long silence as my head dropped.

    When will the "Re-branding" "New Logo" "Corporate Identity" pedlars work out that when a name like "BT" is used by every slippery VoIP salesman/woman or incompetent local franchised company then there is a large chance that its not a "Value-add yah".

    Nice bonuses at top level no doubt and probably a re-branding to sort it out, new stationary, new logo.

  10. Danny 14

    Echoing other people

    We gave up on dabs (circa 20k per year) and moved to drop shifter probrand instead.

This topic is closed for new posts.