The Next Sale! (Next)

Member Name: emmakate06

Product:	Next
Date:	21/07/09 (31 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Bargains to be found

Disadvantages: Regular pricing quite high

I have occasionally shopped at next in the past, particularly for baby and younger childrens clothes as I used to find these very good value, until George became very competitive with their similar designs and character tops and I must admit that over the past couple of years I have strayed over the the George line and have been shopping at Next more and more infrequently. I have never purchased my own clothes from here as I do find the adult clothing quite overpriced for my liking. Anyway, I was driving to Bangor on Saturday when I spotted a large Next store advertising their end of season sale. I wasnt in any particular hurry to get into town so thought I would stop and take a look.

On entry to the store, there were a couple of store assistants stood either side of the door with plastic bags for you to use to carry your purchases around with you. They were very friendly and welcomed me to the store. I asked where the childrens section was and they directed me quite cherrily over to that area. Now fortunately, I have been to a Next sale before so I was quite prepared for the crammed bustle of people all trying to find their ultimate clothing bargain. There were numerous people who were struggling with their mountains of bags yet still managing to maintain their multi tasking skill of still being able to shop through hoards of clothes at the same time. There were also a few with that devilish look in their eye who you could tell would clearly take no prisoners if it came to fighting over a must have garment. This was at midday as well so I would have hated to have been there any earlier as it would have been even more busier, although I have been tempted in the past to pop along at 5am when the sale starts just to see how many people actually turn up at this ridiculously early hour.

I found as with previous sales, that there is no specific sections for ages, so you cant just go to one rack to find all the 2-3 year old clothing for example, no that would be too easy, instead you have to check through every single sale rack as there could quite easily be an aged 2-3 top next to a 12-13. Unfortunately for me, despite searching through the endless amounts of clothing, I only found three items of clothing that were nice which left me slightly disappointed as I was hoping for a bit more.

Another thing I noticed whilst at the store was that the changing room is not open during the sale, so you are unable to try any clothing on. I can see the reasoning behind this, though I can also see how this could be quite inconvenient for some customers, who when they get home, find that the item doesnt fit and then have to drive back to the store to get a refund.

Despite the amount of people in the store, there was no queue at checkout and I was able to purchase my items and leave the store very quickly. Overall it was an ok experience, but the clothing was not as good as previous purchases.

Summary: An ok store with some nice garments