Never Knowingly Undersold (John Lewis)

Member Name: Fishbulb

Product:	John Lewis
Date:	12/04/02 (2409 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheaper than everywhere within 1 mile? or is it half a mile, Do sell top quality goods

Disadvantages: Can't order stuff without a credit card, Too many things to choose from - easily distracted! (well I am)

Tis always a little difficult to write about something that everyone probably knows about, but I shall give it a good ol’ bash anyway. I’ll start at the beginning cause it seems like the best place to start really.

John Lewis is a department store, in which you can expect to find a large specialised perfume & beauty department; luggage, bags and wallets; stationary, cards and wrapping paper; games; sports equipment; clothes; haberdashery (sewing & craft stuff); electrical appliances; crockery, gifts, glasses, artwork, carpets, several clothes concessions, kitchenware, nursery things and I think that’s about it (although I’m sure if I’ve missed something out you kind ol’ dooyooers will tell me) also, it’s fairly likely that your local JL store will have a little restaurant for you to pop your toes up, have a cuppa and relax after wandering around their huge store.

A little history

John Lewis is a part of John Lewis Partnership, with the partner being the subsidiary company Waitrose supermarkets. Last year, the annual turnover for JLP was a staggering over 4 billion with sales from the department stores accounting for £2138.0 million of that. A nice touch that the company has to make the employee feel important is not by addressing them as ‘employees’ but also as ‘partners’ and by the end of last year JLP had over 57,000 partners!

“Never Knowingly Undersold”

Now as a child I was always under the impression that JL was a bit posh. I also thought that as such it was screamingly expensive, how wrong could one person be? I’ll tell you. A friend of mine is a bit unlucky when it comes to washing machines, but like most people finding the money to replace a large item is sometimes a bit difficult. After purchasing two reconditioned machines (one after the other) and having them both stop working she decided to invest in a brand new one.
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br>After flicking through the Argos catalogue she settled on the machine she wanted and as her husband works in the distribution centre for JL they decided to check out the prices in JL as he is also entitled to a discount it may work out cheaper. Turns out that even before the discount he was entitled to the machine was already £80 cheaper than in Argos. I was shocked to hear that there was such a discrepancy in pricing and decided to check it out for myself. Comparing the prices in the Argos book to the prices on electrical products in JL, JL beat Argos every single time.

JL have a motto ‘never knowingly undersold’ this is their price guarantee. If you can find the same product you purchase in JL within a mile from the store at a cheaper price they will refund you the difference – this motto has been in use for over 75 years and well, they’re still in business aren’t they.

Obviously there are expensive things in JL, for example I personally have found some of their bed linen to be a tad on the expensive side – but it’s of a better quality than a cheaper version found in say, BHS.

Shopping for a Christmas present for my godparents a couple of years ago resulted in a purchase of some limited edition ‘millennium’ Wedgwood cups that were a good £3 cheaper than even the specialist chinaware shop in the centre. (The cups were £50 in the China place and £47 in JL a price reduction of 6% - I know, I am SO nerdy to even bother working this out)

I would always consider JL to be quite an ‘old fashioned’ store and it was certainly one of the last big department stores (to my knowledge) to accept credit cards but now they even offer their own storecard (no doubt with a whopping big apr, but nevertheless, they’ve caught up with the rest of the world it seems)

Ordering goods is simple, just go in, find a member of staff, tell them what you want and then giv
e them your details. They are particularly good at keeping to the time frame they set themselves – so if they say 3 weeks, they mean 3 weeks. Also, drawing from a personal experience here, I ordered a board game with JL a while ago and they called me (I took the call and promptly forgot all about it) and consequently I forgot to go and pick it up. I hadn’t paid for the game so they could have quite easily put it on display. It was a popular game and they could have re-sold it, but instead they waited a couple of weeks and called me to remind me. I felt a tad foolish, but this to me was great customer service. As I had been a bit of an idiot, yet they took into account that I may have forgotten and gave me the benefit of the doubt.

Traditionally JL do not open their stores on a Monday. Although no such luck for the office and administration staff who all work Mondays. Standard opening hours for our local branch are 9:30am – 8pm Tuesday to Friday; 9am – 6pm on a Saturday. But now of course with shops being opened on Sundays they also open from 11am – 5pm on a Sunday. JL were, however one of the later stores to succumb to opening on a Sunday.

By all means and accounts, JL also seems like quite a good place to work. You receive a monthly magazine with details of how the company’s doing along with the opportunity to purchase discounted tickets for the opera, Alton Towers, the theatre and general amusements (including Gullivers Land) The magazine is also used for adverts for villas any JLP staff might have to rent out – there’s even adverts for cars for sale. Although I have not looked at the magazine on a very regular basis, there has been on occasion special offers for certain hotels etc.

Another thing that it’s worth pointing out if potentially you are thinking about working for JLP is they run a clearance sale every so often although I’m more inclined to call it a ‘lu
cky dip’ basically there is a list of things that need to be removed from the warehouse, you pop your name next to anything you want to purchase and then names are pulled out of a hat. My friends bought a beautiful carpet for less than a fiver – a huge wall unit, again for less than a fiver and lots of other lovely things all dotted around their house.

Back to the consumers point of view, the one thing I would complain about is the inability to order goods from other branches. For example, if you wanted to buy a jumper and they didn’t have it in your size you could either order it using you JL storecard or a credit card, but if you pay in cash then for some reason the store cannot transfer goods from another store for a customer. So for those of you out there like me, who do not have a credit card and are not likely to be eligible for the JL storecard – if it’s not in stock then you can’t have it I’m afraid.

I did think that this system was a little old-fashioned, but I was surprised to see that JL are not alone with this stance as Debenhams operate using the same system.

It’s probably worth mentioning that you can find out all manner of company figures and more about the business ethics of JLP at http://www.john-lewis-partnership.co.uk or if you just want to shop then http://www.johnlewis.com or http://www.waitrose.com it really does make for an interesting read y’know (I warned you I was dull, LOL)

Happy Shopping (and don’t spend too much – nagh, I’m kidding, spend a fortune, you deserve it!)

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