Rip off Merchants (HMV)

Member Name: Burning_Darkness

Product:	HMV
Date:	29/07/09 (41 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Friendly and helpful staff, reasonable item range, a few cheap dvds/cds

Disadvantages: Generally ludicrously expensive, shops tend to play irritating loud music

HMV sell games, dvds and cds, and though they stock a reasonable range of items, their prices are frequently astronomically high. Although they do often have a few dvds on sale for as little as £3 or £4 (loss leaders I believe these are called) as well as some 2 for £10 cd offers that can be useful for filling gaps in your collection, much of their cd stock is priced between £13 and £17, which is especially ridiculous considering you can usually buy the same items for around half that price from online retailers such as Amazon or Play.

The staff tend to be friendly and helpful, although its a very soulless shopping experience overall, like the music shop equivalent of a Wetherspoons 'pub', with none of the enjoyment of browsing a real, independent music shop. HMV's outlets tend to be pretty well laid out, with seperate sections for metal, jazz, classical, pop, dance and so on, whilst the dvd titles are organised alphabetically in different sections such as films, television, comedy, and music dvds, but unfortunately it seems to be shop policy play tedious chart-music bilge at full volume, which is immensely distracting and infuriating and is normally enough to drive me out of the shop very quickly. HMV have an online service as well, but again this tends to be expensive and better deals are nearly always available elsewhere.

Save yourself some money and buy online from the likes of Amazon or Play instead, or even better, buy from your local independent record shop, if you're lucky enough to still have one.

Summary: A very depressing and expensive shopping experience