No1 For Prices (Comet)

Member Name: bhayanid

Product:	Comet
Date:	07/12/08 (417 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Competitive Prices, Good Service

Disadvantages: Returns Is Not Great, Delivery

As a former employee of Comet I feel that I can do a very fair review on the Comet and the good and bad things about the company as well as what it is like to work there.


Comet is an electrical store and the second largest retail electrical store in the UK. There are not just branches in his country but also several other European countries and they are looking to expand towards America in the near future. There are hundreds of branches across the country and expect to find one in your local town center of high street. The branches vary in size but the stores are the big town centers naturally have the biggest branches where the majority of items are all our on display.


At Comet you will find a large variety of different items, bare in mind they are mostly electrical items as it is an electrical store, but there are other slightly different products like A4 paper and golf clubs and more random items that you may find at a Comet store. The store is mostly known for its electrical items though and these consist of Televisions, Dishwashers, Hoovers, Computer, Laptops and many more. You think of an electrical item and the chances are that Comet sells it. It seems the ideal place for you to buy an essential item for your household or even to find gifts for friends and family and around Christmas time this place really does get packed with everyone rushing and doing their last minute shopping.


Contrary to what a lot of other people have said in their reviews Comet actually do have the lowest prices. They are very competitive in comparison to the other similar stories like John Lewis, Currys, Dixons and PC World. On the odd occasion that Comet's prices are beaten they offer the excellent price matching service that not many other stores offer at all. The way it works is that if you see an item that costs less elsewhere then Comet will match the value of the item and knock of 10% off the difference. So if you are looking for a laptop and it is priced £1000 at PC World and £1100 at Comet, then definitely go to Comet as they will match the £1000 prices and knock off £10 as that is 10% of the £100 difference so the laptop would only cost £990. You can't ask for much fairer then that. It seems like the perfect store and buying wise it seems to be as their prices are great and I can vouch for the quality of their goods with my laptop being purchased from their over three years ago and still going strong. Of course this is not really to do with Comet as they just sell the item and more to do with the manufacturer of the laptop. Below I will talk about my experience working at Comet as a sales advisor/customer assistant and this is when I really got to understand how Comet works and how reliable the firm really was as Comet became an everyday part of my life at that stage.


I was very lucky to get this job as a sales and customer advisor at Comet, as at the time I was having huge financial problems, due to university and my negligence towards my bank balance and this job really did save me and I am ever grateful. However I will not let that affect my judgement on Comet and my review so far has been completely unbiased and will continue to be so. They were paying £6.45 which is a fairly decent wage, considering minimum wage is £5.35 so there is no complaints in this department and I was just happy to be earning some money and chipping away at my overdraft. Please do not leave comments saying that I am not talking enough about the stores products as this is a review for Comet as a whole and that can include my experience of working there. I was recruited just on the spur of the moment when enquiring at the store if they have any jobs and the manager simply said that I could have a quick interview now and it passed and then I started the next day as I was desperate for someone to help out at customer services. So I took over by myself on customer services with no training at all and only the experience from my previous jobs. The manager explained that I would get training when they are less busy in a few weeks and to be honest it did not bother me as I just wanted to be working. The first few days were pretty hard but the other sales assistants seemed pretty friendly and whenever I came across a problem, which was pretty often as I had no idea how to use the machine, they helped out. What I found though was that there are a few individuals who put themselves first which is fair enough but they took it to the next level. Let me explain, there was one middle aged man who was obsessed with selling and wanted to be top sales every week, even though commission had been abandoned although there is performance pay which gives you that bit extra but not a lot. He would steal people's sales and was a complete backstabber, I did not mind him and he seemed like a friendly guy but I swiftly found out during the first week that none of my colleagues liked him due to his behaviour making sales. After a while I became sceptical of him as well as he did not help me out at all and constantly was asking favours of me and there are people like this in any form of work. Generally the sales assistants at Comet are friendly, but I am sure that everyone who has been to a store like Comet has experienced a sales assistant who does not seem that interested in helping out and tries to get rid of you. The simple answer for this is that they only want to make the big sales as they want to make that little bit extra money from the performance pay. I am different and what to help out anyone and everyone and know what it is like to be clueless and just want some friendly advice. The good thing about Comet is they on the whole do provide this and they are a friendly bunch of people, just watch out for the odd exception. If you have ever seen the movie 40 year old virgin or the television series Chuck then the environment at Comet is very similar to in those two and it is a fun place to work.


Working at customer services I could see how smoothly the company ran, well in particular this branch, and the answer is that they do not run smoothly as perceived from the customer's side. The staff are left quite clueless into whether items have been discontinued and the specific discounts which change on a daily basis. The one thing I did not like is that customer's who have repairs for their items under warrants are practically lied to and as an employee they made me cover up the situation. Actually lie is quite a strong word but lets say mislead. For example if a customer comes in to get their laptop repaired they are told they will hear back within twenty eight days and the customer at this points always complains saying this is a long time. Then I have to say 'don't worry this is the worst case scenario and many of the items are back quicker', and then the customer generally seems a lot more satisfied and goes away happy. In actual fact a lot of the items do take closer to twenty eight days and there are many times that the items are not back within this time limit and the customer comes into the store to ask about their item with their receipt signed by them and me. Then I have to make up rubbish like the twenty eight days is actually twenty eight working days which adds on like an extra seven days to get the item back. A lot of the time the item also is not even repaired at all so the customer goes away happy and then come back later on in the day or the next day and starts complaining and due to the customer policy we have to take the item away again for another twenty eight 'working days'. On a serious note this happened three times in a row once so the poor customer had to wait three times to get their item back and that was the day I left Comet so I can not tell you whether the customer's item worked or not, but I highly doubt it.


The delivery is another aspect entirely with the items not often being delivered on time. This is not specifically our stores fault but the deliver people's fault and they need stricter procedures which make them work harder and not slack. Often they call up the customer service department at the store which is me and make me call up the customer to give them the bad news, which is not easy for me to do but it has to be done. So the delivery is not great but I have seen worse. The good thing in a way though is that the customer is always kept up to date and never left out of the loop even though the loop is delayed and the prices for delivery are reasonable so there can not be too many complaints here. Now onto the guarantee provided with the item. Most items have one year like the televisions and laptop and this only includes hardware problems so if the laptop stops powering or the internal speakers stop working. If you acquire a virus which ruins your whole laptop then there is nothing the store does for you. Here is another tip for customers about the sales assistants. When you go to buy your laptop they will try and flog you a two year guarantee on top of the one year guarantee already in place for another £200 or so and this new guarantee covers software problems and also accidental problems. Now the sales assistant will make it sound to you like it is possible to spill Pepsi on the laptop to ruin the processor and then bring it in and you will receive a brand new laptop with the same value of the ruined one a few years back, so in effect you will get a much more superior new laptop. In reality though I found out working at customers services that it is sent off on the twenty eight 'working days' system and I really do think the repair people try even harder to fix these as they do not want the customer getting a free laptop and the laptop usually does come back fully fixed. It is very amusing for me to see the reaction on the customer's faces when they come back after twenty eight days to see their old laptop working again when they probably woke up in the morning thinking they were going to get a new laptop. I implore anyone out there who is thinking of buying the two years extra guarantee not to do so as the sales assistants exaggerate it and really do make it sound like you get a new laptop. Also this guarantee conveniently does not cover theft so you can not pretend your laptop got stolen and then be given a brand new laptop. Comet really did cover their entire basis here and hammered the importance of selling guarantees to the customers as after all that is where the company makes their money from. They sell their items at great prices so that they can make a lot of money from the guarantee's and this is also how the performance pay is calculated for the employees. The way it works is that the employee is on £6.45 and depending on how many guarantees they sell every month their wage has a certain amount of pence added on to it. The best possible for a sales assistant to be earning through this performance pay is an extra £1.20 an hour so effectively £7.65 an hour which is great. However you would have to be the best sales assistant in the world to be earning that at Comet, the top sales assistant at the branch of Comet I was working at would have been making about an extra 60p an hour so £7.05 an hour which is still not bad for Comet. So the next time they are trying to sell the insurance to you, bare in mind they are just doing their job and are not really the annoying repetitive people they are appearing to be. What I recommend is that if you are looking to get good warranty for your product then buy your item from John Lewis as although their item might by slightly more expensive, you get two years warranty free with the product which is superior then Comet's one year warranty.


I realize that I mentioned a lot of flaws, however working at Comet was an enjoyable experience and on the whole their service is good and they have everything well laid out with clear headings on the ceilings so you can find the type of item you are looking for very quickly. Another positive aspect which is similar to the price matching I mentioned is that if you have bought an item and the price goes down within the next two weeks or you see it elsewhere cheaper within the next two weeks then you will be given the difference back and also 10% of the difference on top of that. That happened to me with my laptop when I purchased it three years ago and had no experience of working at the store before so I was very happy with the service. So I advise anyone who buys an item from Comet to still continue to look at prices for the item even after you have bought it and the most important thing to do is hold onto the receipt as you will not believe the amount of people that lose their receipts even for the very expensive items. The sales assistants should not necessarily be grouped all together like a lot of people have written in their reviews calling them unfriendly as each sales assistant is friendly. At the branch I was working at the majority of the employees would help customers take their items to their cars out of courtesy even if the need was not there to help the customer out. The next time you want to consider purchasing an item I would hope you get a friendly sales assistant and if they are not helpful ask to speak to somehow who has more knowledge about the item and I am sure they will oblige.


Overall I recommend Comet for the smaller items priced under £100 but for the high range items like televisions, fridges, laptops and items of this sort I would go to John Lewis as although you pay slightly more you get the extra warranty which is very important as if an item breaks down outside of a year and it was bought from Comet then they will not even look at it and that will be money down the drain. However if the guarantee is not a worry for you then I fully recommend Comet as they provide prices that can not be beaten by other high street electrical retail stores. There are plenty of negative reviews for Comet, but as is the trend in this country it seems they only recognize the flaws and yes Comet does have flaws but every firm has flaws and for every firm their seems to be more negative reviews then positives, so do not always take this as meaning the firm is useless.

Summary: Great For The Smaller Items and Decent For The Bigger Ones