Jack of all trades but master on none (WH Smith)

Member Name: mjc121

Product:	WH Smith
Date:	13/06/09 (87 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: clean shops and good service

Disadvantages: prices can be higher than some other shops, gift cards expire

WH Smith is one of those iconic high street names which seem to have been around for ever and a day. Well not surprising as it was founded in 1792 when it was set up as a newspaper vendor. Well it has been along time since then and now it is a well recognised brand all over the UK.

However, to me they seem to be a jack of all trades but master of none. This can be a dangerous set up as the same could have been said of Woolworths. Smiths sell a wide range of good including Newspapers, stationary, books, music and DVDs. When I was a child this was one of my favourite shops mainly as I received many Smiths' tokens for Christmas and birthdays and I was able to go and buy videos and LPs etc (god showing my age there)

My local store is fairly large and is well laid out on the two levels and like every Smiths store I have been into is always clean and tidy and the shelves well laid out and everything has been easy to find. However, in the past few years I have noticed that the range of CDs and DVDs has fallen as they have made way for the Post Office which is now in the store - as it is in other Smiths stores. The staff are in general polite and friendly and will help you to find the things you want and take pre-orders for yet to be releaced DVDs. They also have a good website where you can shop from home if you don't want to go into town. The website can actually be cheaper than in store which I have found is fairly common for many high street stores. As stores cost money, buy from the web and it is dispatched directly from the warehouse hence it cuts out the 'middle man' of the store.

My local store also has a Costa coffee place. This has proved to be popular with shoppers at times but as there are other Costa places only a short walk away from the store I have often wondered if this was really needed. The Coffee shop has, however, come at a cost of reducing the area for stock hence some of the aisles can be quite narrow and there is only really room for one person to walk down them.

The prices can be higher than other shops in the area and they rarely have special offers on things other than books or a 3 for 2 of packs of paper etc. They do have an 'old stock sale' now and then which normally consists of CDs which have been out of the charts for one or two years. Whilst they have now phased out the club card which like other loyalty schemes meant you could save up points then treat yourself they have replaced this with the 'privilege club' here they will e-mail you tokens for things. Unfortunately they are yet to send me a token for something I want. I still think that the club card was a better idea and I was annoyed that as a club card holder I was not informed that they had stopped the scheme and that my points would expire by a certain date. I only found this out by seeing one notice in my local store in quite small writing. Hence I spent my points that day.

One of the main things which I have against Smiths are their gift cards which like most stores have replaced the old paper gift token. Smiths' cards will expire if they go for 24 months without being used. That means that all the money on them is then lost so don't save them up for ages. They will still however accept the old paper tokens as they never set an expiry date on these.

Summary: Good service, good selection of goods, a name that is trusted