Iteration the Twelfth: Rotten Currys

I had to take a camera back the other week.

It happens. Things go wrong. This was a cheap camera; an Advent MP82, value about £50, that had been a gift and which I used to demonstrate to students that even the cheapest camera can produce decent pictures. It was a brilliant little machine, and I simply wanted it fixed or replaced.

So, back to Currys, Bath. 40 minutes later, feeling great empathy towards Vlad the Impaler (Can you do that with a camera? Even a small one with smooth edges and the lens retracted? My, how I longed to find out) I was on my way to the Royal United Hospital (of which more later).

Consider Currys. They have been around for as long as I can remember, offering decent electricals at reasonable prices - and actually go back to one Henry Curry who started building bicycles in his Leicester shed in the 1880s - though it seems that they, now part of Dixons Store Group International, may soon be back in a shed, given their current troubles.

They have suffered store closures, redundancies and are fighting a tax row that could cost them millions. They saw like-for-like sales drop 10% over the vital Christmas trading period, and, despite announcements of store refurbishments and cost-slashing measures, shares as I write this have dropped yet another 5%, now standing at a miserable 20.5p. (On the 2nd of March 2007 DSGI shares closed at 170.0p - 8 ½ time higher.)

And I know why. His name is... well, better not name him, as he was pretty determined that he was not going to give me his full name, even though it appeared clearly on the receipt he gave me. You may say that this suggests something or other about the level of management intelligence at Currys. Of course I couldn't possibly comment.

If you were the manager of a business in danger of the scrap-heap, is it possible that you would want to ensure that you did everything in your power to ensure that customers were kept happy? To, you know, try to make the customer think, hmmm, nice helpful bloke running Currys, Bath. I'll shop there again.

Or would you first try to say that a receipt was necessary for returns (do YOU give out receipts when you give gifts?), which it isn't; claim that the item has been off the shelves for two years (so what?); accuse the customer of damaging the box (damaging the box forsooth!); suggest that the fault may be that the customer doesn't know how to use a camera (I know far more about cameras and their care than he does); and do all of this in a sneering, sarcastic, rude, offensive, deprecating, demeaning manner that had I, at any time during the fifteen years I spent in senior retail management, seen any member of my staff behave thusly towards a customer, would have dished out some pretty swift disciplinary action.

Should we be shocked at such an uncouth, unhelpful, uncaring, unprofessional behaviour? Not at this store, according to Which? magazine:


(http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/246182/dixons-stores-panned-in-best-shops-survey.html Thursday 29th January 2009)

a customer service survey conducted by consumer watchdog Which? makes uncomfortable reading for the troubled Dixons Stores Group (DSGi). Currys Digital, Currys and PC World - all owned by DSGi - occupy the bottom three slots among electrical retailers, with all three scoring a score of below 50%.The survey of more than 14,000 Which? readers asked respondents to rate shops on "everything from products to price".
The Which? readers certainly weren't afraid to offer their opinion on the Dixons' stores. Currys Digital staff are described as "unhelpful and unknowledgeable", while one person described the store "as big, brash and impersonal".
The one bright note for Dixons is that Currys online store did "substantially better than its high-street shops".
The Dixons Stores Group announced earlier this month that computing sales slumped by 12% in the normally busy Christmas period

In their First Half Trading Statement (Released 23rd October 2008), DSGI say that they have put

10,000 colleagues through the first stage of the new in-store service programme

which presumably entails gathering them together at a nice country hotel and explaining that being nice to customers is a jolly good idea, all things considered. Shame they did not have room for the 10,001st `colleague`.

And so I left the store, clutching Service Docket 406741, Mr No Name having, with great and rudely stated reluctance, agreed to send the camera for assessment. And I went to the Hospital.

Let me make absolutely clear that my trip to the Royal United was in no way connected with the conduct of Currys' staff, but this is germane.

It's a big, sprawling place, the RUH, much of it lashed together during the Second World War, and a navigational nightmare. In danger of being late for my MRI brain scan (I may have a screw loose, it seems), I asked a bustling nurse for a steer to the X-ray dept. She was, it transpired, bustling off for a coffee break. She spent, and are you listening, Mr No Name? 10 minutes of her break personally guiding me to the right place, offering a potted history of the hospital at no extra charge on the way.

It's called `service.` I recommend it. It works.

Jon Ryan

SOME DAYS LATER: It took a good further few hours of work on my part, more emails and phone calls, but in the end Currys sent a voucher for the value of the camera. I had a call from a senior staffer, who offered a good apology and said that the matter was being thoroughly investigated, and I believe him.

He also said that I would have a written statement from the company about its conduct. I have not had this.

Oh yes - the brain scan people tell me I have an empty sella. Whatever that means.