Companies That You Expect to Disappear Soon

[Darandio]

Paid a visit to Stockton on saturday (mainly because our son is at Teeside university and he'd noticed a comic shop in Stockton on his travels) - I found it very pleasant walking round in the sunshine BUT, one thing I noticed was that W H Smith were having an "everything must go, closing down sale" that also gave the date they would actually cease trading. On the board is also said, in very large letters, that the Post Office within that WHS would not be relocating and would cease trading the same day as WHS

I thought that high street WHS with a Post Office were being retained and rebranded by the new owners??

That closure was already planned before the recent sale.

 

[eyebrook1961]

That closure was already planned before the recent sale.

Ah, okay thanks

 

[duffield]

The big Currys (formerly PC World if I remember rightly) in the centre of Nottingham has closed. I used to buy my IT bits and pieces there, mice, USB sticks, that sort of thing (when I didn't want to wait for delivery). Is this part of a wider closure program or a one-off? Is Currys as a whole on its way out, or are they just going entirely out of town or something? This particular store always seemed moderately busy.

It's pretty shocking how many major shops are still closing now, after all we're a long way past covid. Marks and Spencer in Leicester has gone recently; you'd think a fairly large city like Leicester could support one M&S - there's not even an M&S food shop at the station or something. And then there's the pubs...

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Marks and Spencer in Leicester has gone recently; you'd think a fairly large city like Leicester could support one M&S - there's not even an M&S food shop at the station or something.

The M&S on Gallowtree Gate closed last August, yes? The outlets at Fosse Park Shopping Centre and Oadby (Simply Food) now seem to be the nearest. But they're not exactly the City Centre of Leicester. Both about three miles away? Having said that, I don't see M&S as being a company that I expect to disappear soon.

 

[duffield]

The M&S on Gallowtree Gate closed last August, yes? The outlets at Fosse Park Shopping Centre and Oadby (Simply Food) now seem to be the nearest. But they're not exactly the City Centre of Leicester. Both about three miles away? Having said that, I don't see M&S as being a company that I expect to disappear soon.

No I'm not expecting M&S to totally disappear, and as you say the particular circumstances with Fosse park probably tipped the balance for Leicester. But I travel around a lot and in many of the large towns I visit there's a closed M&S.

 

[Peter Sarf]

The big Currys (formerly PC World if I remember rightly) in the centre of Nottingham has closed. I used to buy my IT bits and pieces there, mice, USB sticks, that sort of thing (when I didn't want to wait for delivery). Is this part of a wider closure program or a one-off? Is Currys as a whole on its way out, or are they just going entirely out of town or something? This particular store always seemed moderately busy.

It's pretty shocking how many major shops are still closing now, after all we're a long way past covid. Marks and Spencer in Leicester has gone recently; you'd think a fairly large city like Leicester could support one M&S - there's not even an M&S food shop at the station or something. And then there's the pubs...

I think a lot of the high street PCworld shops might have gone, Croydons went over a year ago. Most of them were of course "Dixons" going back at least a decade, others were Currys.

DSG own(ed ?) Dixons, they eventually created PCworld and years/decades later bought Currys. At that point the Dixons got renamed as Currys iirc.
Meanwhile out of town the (probably all DSG created) Currys eventually got merged with any neighbouring out of town PCworld being absorbed into Currys. I think that was maybe the end of PCworld.

 

[jon0844]

Dixons was kept at airports for a while but I think they've either gone or been renamed.

Currys is now pushing online sales more (with more competitive prices I've found), as well as click and collect (which works best at large outlets) and given Amazon gets worse every day, I think some people might be returning to buying from Currys and even Argos (which does very cheap same day delivery).

 

[BingMan]

No I'm not expecting M&S to totally disappear, and as you say the particular circumstances with Fosse park probably tipped the balance for Leicester. But I travel around a lot and in many of the large towns I visit there's a closed M&S.

And in many nearby towns M&S now only sell food.
I have to make a forty mile (64km) round trip to buy pants and socks.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

And in many nearby towns M&S now only sell food.

Presume that's where the primary focus is for them, nowadays, as they increasingly shift away from selling clothing and similar.

 

[jon0844]

And in many nearby towns M&S now only sell food.
I have to make a forty mile (64km) round trip to buy pants and socks.

That's a key reason that M&S closed its Welwyn Garden City store. The sales of clothes was tiny and the food hall too small and not easily accessible by those needing trolleys.

So they relocated the clothes and good to Stevenage and have now begun building (well, renovating an existed Next that closed) a food hall only location two miles up the road next to a Tesco Extra.

 

[adc82140]

Currys is now pushing online sales more (with more competitive prices I've found), as well as click and collect (which works best at large outlets) and given Amazon gets worse every day, I think some people might be returning to buying from Currys and even Argos (which does very cheap same day delivery).

Amazon remains fine in my area. It depends a lot on the quality of your local delivery person. My heart sinks when anyone sends anything via Evri though, it means I'm in for a lot of back and forth to ever see my package.

Going back to Currys, I ordered some printer ink on eBay recently, and was very surprised when it turned up with a Currys receipt, so they are obviously diversifying their business methods to compete.

 

[sor]

I think a lot of the high street PCworld shops might have gone, Croydons went over a year ago. Most of them were of course "Dixons" going back at least a decade, others were Currys.

DSG own(ed ?) Dixons, they eventually created PCworld and years/decades later bought Currys. At that point the Dixons got renamed as Currys iirc.
Meanwhile out of town the (probably all DSG created) Currys eventually got merged with any neighbouring out of town PCworld being absorbed into Currys. I think that was maybe the end of PCworld.

In places like Truro it was the in-town Currys (not strictly high street as it was a short walk away, though Truro had an actual high street Dixons too) that closed down and moved in with the out-of-town PC World. Then it became even more appliance focused than it already was, though the rot had set in years earlier. I remember when PC World actually sold copies of Linux and you could buy individual components...

And in many nearby towns M&S now only sell food.
I have to make a forty mile (64km) round trip to buy pants and socks.

I believe their food business has long been their profit centre, though my local M&S Food offers a click and collect service for the wider M&S range. Saves the trip if you know what you want, or can deal with the hassle of returning anything that doesn't fit

Amazon remains fine in my area. It depends a lot on the quality of your local delivery person. My heart sinks when anyone sends anything via Evri though, it means I'm in for a lot of back and forth to ever see my package.

Going back to Currys, I ordered some printer ink on eBay recently, and was very surprised when it turned up with a Currys receipt, so they are obviously diversifying their business methods to compete.

In line with this thread I'm surprised Evri are still going. They're not really that much cheaper but they seem to offer an objectively worse service. I don't have any particular issue with the local depot but stuff just sits around for days at a time. I'd gladly pay the extra quid or two and have it sent by someone else. Last week, I was pleasantly surprised to get a parcel in a mere four days.

Ebay itself has pivoted towards courting retailers and selling new goods so Currys' own move is not surprising. It perhaps makes more sense than the likes of B&Q and that marketplace nonsense (allowing third parties to sell on their website, even though anyone using B&Q's website probably wants to know if it's available for immediate purchase at a local store!)

 

[jon0844]

Amazon has not just begun to make deliveries worse through ever tighter deadlines but is messing suppliers around and mixing up items so it has been possible to get counterfeit items, because Amazon has picked the supposed same SKU but using stock imported by another fulfilled by Amazon supplier.

So far the examples seem to be in the US, but I am sure they do much the same globally. They're also making it harder to get refunds and, in the US at least, making it harder to return items you simply don't want. We have better consumer protections here so hopefully that doesn't change, but increasingly they expect you to go on a web chat to get things done.

They also don't seem to care about counterfeit or dangerous goods with little way of reporting them, and they remove reviews. And how they want me to pay £1.99 for deliveries that were once free for Prime customers.

So they seem set to treat their staff poorly, suppliers poorly and customers poorly. I'm not going to pretend I'm going to make a stand and boycott Amazon but I am actively trying to reduce the amount of things I order.

It is easier to do this when alternatives aren't massively more expensive, hence me having used Argos and Currys for some items that were the same price. Gradually, we might see Amazon become less dominant which can only be a good thing.

 

[Peter Sarf]

Amazon has not just begun to make deliveries worse through ever tighter deadlines but is messing suppliers around and mixing up items so it has been possible to get counterfeit items, because Amazon has picked the supposed same SKU but using stock imported by another fulfilled by Amazon supplier.

So far the examples seem to be in the US, but I am sure they do much the same globally. They're also making it harder to get refunds and, in the US at least, making it harder to return items you simply don't want. We have better consumer protections here so hopefully that doesn't change, but increasingly they expect you to go on a web chat to get things done.

They also don't seem to care about counterfeit or dangerous goods with little way of reporting them, and they remove reviews. And how they want me to pay £1.99 for deliveries that were once free for Prime customers.

So they seem set to treat their staff poorly, suppliers poorly and customers poorly. I'm not going to pretend I'm going to make a stand and boycott Amazon but I am actively trying to reduce the amount of things I order.

It is easier to do this when alternatives aren't massively more expensive, hence me having used Argos and Currys for some items that were the same price. Gradually, we might see Amazon become less dominant which can only be a good thing.

Amazon. Something I have almost never used. I used eBay a lot more. But I try to buy face to face still so that is probably how I avoid Amazon - I actually find they are not cheap and it worries me that I risk buying a similar product rather than the same one.

M&S - for a while I have suspected that the Croydon branch is up for review. The reason is one of the two entrances in to the Whitgift shopping centre (the more convenient one) has been closed for years due to the roller shutter needing repairs. So I always thought they were spending as little as possible on the place. Surprise surprise on my last two visits the only other entrance into the Whitgift shopping centre has now also bitten the dust. This leaves just the entrance to North End - which is effectively Croydon's high street. It means there is no longer a convenient walk through from that end of the Whitgift shopping centre. So either M&S Croydon is really limiting the budget on repairs for a doomed branch OR M&S have turned their back on the Whitgift shopping centre - which is on its knees.

 

[johntea]

Amazon remains fine in my area. It depends a lot on the quality of your local delivery person. My heart sinks when anyone sends anything via Evri though, it means I'm in for a lot of back and forth to ever see my package.

Going back to Currys, I ordered some printer ink on eBay recently, and was very surprised when it turned up with a Currys receipt, so they are obviously diversifying their business methods to compete.

I sold some extremely old sealed HP printer toner cartridges on eBay recently (15-20 years old found in my garage during a clearout!) and some sort of reseller snapped them up and asked if I could ship them directly to the customers who I'm sure would have done a double take when they saw they still had a security seal on the boxes from 'Staples'

Currys is still popular enough and they sensibly just ditched most of the sub branding and merged it all into just Currys

 

[stuartl]

Amazon. Something I have almost never used. I used eBay a lot more. But I try to buy face to face still so that is probably how I avoid Amazon - I actually find they are not cheap and it worries me that I risk buying a similar product rather than the same one.

M&S - for a while I have suspected that the Croydon branch is up for review. The reason is one of the two entrances in to the Whitgift shopping centre (the more convenient one) has been closed for years due to the roller shutter needing repairs. So I always thought they were spending as little as possible on the place. Surprise surprise on my last two visits the only other entrance into the Whitgift shopping centre has now also bitten the dust. This leaves just the entrance to North End - which is effectively Croydon's high street. It means there is no longer a convenient walk through from that end of the Whitgift shopping centre. So either M&S Croydon is really limiting the budget on repairs for a doomed branch OR M&S have turned their back on the Whitgift shopping centre - which is on its knees.

This might have been for shoplifting prevention as the M&S in Sheffield fargate closed their back door some time ago. Same thing happened with the now closed John Lewis.

 

[BingMan]

Amazon remains fine in my area. It depends a lot on the quality of your local delivery person. My heart sinks when anyone sends anything via Evri though, it means I'm in for a lot of back and forth to ever see my package.

I have found Amazon to be nearly 10% reliable and they never quibble about refunds. My son, who used to work for them said that the mantra was "Better to loose out on a sale than to loose a customer"

I won't shop with any company that uses EVRI. They are notorious locally for delivering to wrong addresses (sometimes in the wrong town), putting parcels in wheely bins or just dumping them at the roadside.

Amazon. Something I have almost never used. I used eBay a lot more. But I try to buy face to face still so that is probably how I avoid Amazon - I actually find they are not cheap and it worries me that I risk buying a similar product rather than the same one.

Amazon are not particularly cheap. I but a lot of electronic components and Amazon are often two or three times the price of the wholesaler whom I usually use. And many things are sold in packs of ten or more rather than individually

 

[cactustwirly]

I have found Amazon to be nearly 10% reliable and they never quibble about refunds. My son, who used to work for them said that the mantra was "Better to loose out on a sale than to loose a customer"

I won't shop with any company that uses EVRI. They are notorious locally for delivering to wrong addresses (sometimes in the wrong town), putting parcels in wheely bins or just dumping them at the roadside.


Amazon are not particularly cheap. I but a lot of electronic components and Amazon are often two or three times the price of the wholesaler whom I usually use. And many things are sold in packs of ten or more rather than individually

I don't find Amazon that cheap anymore, eBay is the better place and most of their sellers use Royal Mail

 

[WibbleWobble]

For those referencing M&S, they have been focusing their non-Foodhall business onto out-of-town sites for a while now, which are usually more attractive due to better access and parking.

This was a policy officially announced in 2022; only those better performing stores in major centres would be retained. For example, the stores in both Bournemouth and Poole town centres closed, with the only full-size store in the area being the store at the Castlepoint shopping park. Likewise Dorchester closed, Weymouth town centre will close in 2027 when the lease expires, and a new retail park site will open to replace it.

I won't shop with any company that uses EVRI. They are notorious locally for delivering to wrong addresses (sometimes in the wrong town), putting parcels in wheely bins or just dumping them at the roadside.

We don't have a problem with Evri - but I suppose it helps that we have a reliable, regular driver who knows what to do when we're not in.

DPD on the other hand..... their drivers cannot even find my wife's work place, despite their being a big sign on the road at the entrance and putting "opposite the fire station" on the delivery instructions! One parcel failed with three different drivers for the same reason, it ended up being sent to a pick-up point five miles away, despite there being one around the corner!

 

[SuspectUsual]

Why don’t parcels companies have a field for a what 3 words entry in the delivery address when ordering? Surely that would solve 99.9% of issues?

 

[Cambrian359]

Why don’t parcels companies have a field for a what 3 words entry in the delivery address when ordering? Surely that would solve 99.9% of issues?

Often wonder this myself, you could solve most delivery problems overnight!

 

[duffield]

This is why if at all possible I either have deliveries sent to a locker or, for some larger items, my local post office or corner shop. Those methods are almost 100% foolproof and much less stressful. No doorstep theft, no "left with some random neighbour", no "you were out" when you were in! But I'm lucky enough to have multiple lockers and other pickup locations within 5-10 minutes walk of my house.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

M&S - for a while I have suspected that the Croydon branch is up for review. The reason is one of the two entrances in to the Whitgift shopping centre (the more convenient one) has been closed for years due to the roller shutter needing repairs. So I always thought they were spending as little as possible on the place. Surprise surprise on my last two visits the only other entrance into the Whitgift shopping centre has now also bitten the dust. This leaves just the entrance to North End - which is effectively Croydon's high street. It means there is no longer a convenient walk through from that end of the Whitgift shopping centre. So either M&S Croydon is really limiting the budget on repairs for a doomed branch OR M&S have turned their back on the Whitgift shopping centre - which is on its knees.

I'm sure I read about a plan to completely re-develop the Whitgift very soon, so it may be that there's no point in carrying out any repairs as it might all be flattened soon?

 

[route101]

This is why if at all possible I either have deliveries sent to a locker or, for some larger items, my local post office or corner shop. Those methods are almost 100% foolproof and much less stressful. No doorstep theft, no "left with some random neighbour", no "you were out" when you were in! But I'm lucky enough to have multiple lockers and other pickup locations within 5-10 minutes walk of my house.

How do you get them to do deliver a parcel to a locker?

Amazon has lockers but that's for Amazon only and DPD I used to send to a shop via app but that was only once it was out for delivery.

 

[duffield]

How do you get them to do deliver a parcel to a locker?

Amazon has lockers but that's for Amazon only and DPD I used to send to a shop via app but that was only once it was out for delivery.

I was referring to Amazon and eBay deliveries (eBay have lockers too), sorry if that wasn't clear. I've seen other lockers but I'm not sure who they're for.

 

[GusB]

I find it rather amusing that Amazon has cropped up in this discussion. I really don't think it's in danger of disappearing any time soon, although I appreciate that it may be wishful thinking!

 

[Cross City]

Often wonder this myself, you could solve most delivery problems overnight!

What 3 Words is pretty useless in built up areas as it only works in 2 dimensions. Trying to pinpoint delivery places in tower blocks for example is impossible.

 

[Cambrian359]

What 3 Words is pretty useless in built up areas as it only works in 2 dimensions. Trying to pinpoint delivery places in tower blocks for example is impossible.

A fair point, I hadn’t considered tall buildings!

 

[jon0844]

What 3 Words is pretty useless in built up areas as it only works in 2 dimensions. Trying to pinpoint delivery places in tower blocks for example is impossible.

It might help ensure they start at the right building though, and the right entrance.

 

[52290]

I find it rather amusing that Amazon has cropped up in this discussion. I really don't think it's in danger of disappearing any time soon, although I appreciate that it may be wishful thinking!

Which will go first, the company or the river?