How To Disappear Completely And Never Be Found (Currys)

Member Name: kfingleton

Product:	Currys
Date:	08/06/01 (150 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Helpful to anyone who looks like they can afford to buy their products

Disadvantages: Small selection and crap sales staff

...By Currys Sales Staff.

Many people are very sceptical about shopping online, due to fears of Credit Card fraud (despite the fact that they would readily give their credit card details over the phone). But after my experiences with Curry’s I’m certainly going online to buy my electronic goods.

When I decided I couldn’t be without Sky Sports and Champions League football, I set off for Glasgow city centre on the Clockwork Orange (that’s the underground, people) and to the Curry’s store in Buchanan Galleries. I went straight to the digital TV stand and had a look at the On Digital package. This was a weekday in October and so the shop had about eight customers, but about ten members off staff jotted about the place.

In most shops you expect these people to be in your face before you get your second foot in the door, but they were too busy talking too themselves to care about me. After about ten minutes I looked round to see most of the spare staff had disappeared while the rest were happily advising the rest of the customers (many of whom had come in after me). All of them were considerably older than myself. Could it have been that they didn’t expect someone of my age was serious about forking out for electrical products?

After about 20 minutes of waiting I approached a member of staff for help. "I’ll be with you in a minute," he was there in five, ready to dish out dodgy advice. Having looked around the On Digital box and a few of the posters, he was able to gather up a bit of information (less than I knew about the packages). He then went away again for a minute, for some unknown reason.

When he came back I had a very serious question about whether I needed a Scart connection to be able to connect my set-top box. The answer was yes. As I had a TV card for my TV and not a conventional TV, I had no choice, no Digital TV for me, no sail for Mr. Salesman.

I
was still unsure, but could no longer be bothered to receive advice from imbeciles, so I decided to go along to Dixons on Sauchiehall Street, where the salesman informed me that I could in fact use the box without a Scart port, so he had a sale and one very satisfied customer.

Obviously this is an isolated case, but with the ample time I had to look around the Curry’s store that day, there wasn’t much choice in terms of brands there. Places like Jungle.com and Dabs.com offer an excellent service with a wide range of products at competitive prices. In the real world Dixons and PC World seem to generally have much better customer services.

My experience with Curry’s did offend me. It was obvious that they thought an impoverished student was just wasting his time dreaming of wide screen TVs and wouldn’t offer them a sale. Even when I was serviced, the information I was given was incorrect. I don’t generally write negative reviews, but exceptions must prove the rule.

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