Page 1 of DIXONS:thanks for nothing

On a recent trip to dixons i spotted a Grundig dvd system complete with avi 5.1 amp and full surround speakers(4 sats 1 centre and sub all for the incredible price of £99.98.This was on thursday evening.On the friday morning i rang dixons(BEXLEYHEATH BRANCH)at 9.00 am and asked them to put one a side for me as i would collect it at lunch time.No problem said the guy on the end of the phone.Lunch time came and just before i left to collect the player i thought i`d better give them a ring to make sure that they had`nt sold it already."Year its still here "said the guy on the phone,"but i`ve got to tell you that its gone up in price to £169.00.I questioned the guy about the price and the fact that that i had rung first thing that morning to reserve it to which he pointed out that the price the night before was at 50% off but the price today was only 20% off and also that when i rang in the morning that i did`nt quote the price as being £99.98 and the fact that they could sell their goods at whatever price they wanted and that they urge people to buy things the same day as prices can go up or down daily.I think the way that dixons treat thier customers is pretty low ,needless to say that they did,nt get my custom after all and wont do in the future.When you ring to reserve something over the phone you would expect that the staff would have the decentcy to inform you of any price hikes there and then or honour the fact that you was`nt told and give the item to you at the lower price.So thanks for nothing DIXONS keep treating your customers like s*** and hopefully you`ll go out of buisiness in the not too distant future.I`m not usally the type of person to feel compelled enough to slag off a company on a forum but this really got my back up.Sorry.

***This is only from my own experiece. To many other customers Dixions may be a wonderful and great service***

My experience Dixions have been less than satisfactory. I bought my laptop from them (stupidly probably) in the summer. I got it home to find there was a fault with the battery in the fact it didn`t work AND it was obviously an ex display model. Someone called `John` had created themselves as a Windows user!

Anyway I took it back as they didn`t have any laptops AT ALL in stock, were very sorry and would get me one in 2 days time. Did they have one in 2 days? Did they ****! Anyway they did agree to give me a more expensive model for the proce I paid a few days later. Bad service.

Also when bought my 1st DVD player from there they were unable to answer an of my questions and when I did ask what features each player had they read from the little cards stuck to the player. I CAN READ YOU KNOW! I`M NOT BLIND.

Then they had the cheek to try to get me to buy there 2 or 3 year cover for about £100. Incase the machine breaks. Riceher Sounds do a similar cover - theres cost £20 and if you don`t make use of it you get your money back. And in Richer they tend to know about the products they sell.

My mum bought a camcorder from Dixions as well recently it was sold as having colour scanning. What did she find when she got it home? It was in black&white.

Oscar - I can understand how annoyed you must have been, but as far as the law goes, they were well within their rights to do what they did. (Don`t get me wrong, I most certainly am not sticking up for this bunch of muppets).

For a contract to be binding, the consumer has to agree to buy the product but more importantly, the vendor has to be willing to sell it at the price stated. This is the legislation that protects the vendor from making pricing blunders on a price ticket, or on the Internet. Despite popular belief, they are under no obligation to sell something to you because it is wrongly priced.

Naturally, the whole argument about whether they should have honoured the original price, is one that we all feel strongly about. This is pretty much where "goodwill" comes into it. Never in all my years of dealing with the DSG outlets (Dixons, Currys, The Link and PC World for those that weren`t aware) have they offered "goodwill" to me when they`ve cocked up. Quite frankly the way they hold such an overwhelming monopoly on the High Street stinks, and the fact that they can afford to treat customers in some very appalling ways (eg leaving someone elses details on a PC and then selling it as new - tantamount to fraud, in my book), just goes to show that the majority will always win thru at the end of the day.

Oscar, do as I do - boycott them. I sometimes go in there for a wind-up, pretend to be interested in buying their most expensive PC and watch them squirm as I ask complicated questions that they have absolutely no idea about (and then say to them thanks very much but I think I`m sticking to my favourite independent North London PC manufacturers, Best Price !). I will also act as a pseudo customer advisor if I overhear some rubbish being told to an unsuspecting punter, I`ll butt in and tell the truth ! It makes me feel better anyway...

Companies that have come thru on the goodwill score in my opinion are Buy.com (£65 for a Hewlett Packard 970cxi printer - nice), HMV (for admittedly offerring the X Files Box set for £30, but realising that putting 20 copies on a national website was a bit short-sighted, and subsequently giving everone who complained a free £10 voucher - nice), dabs, who reportedly sold a Samsung printer for a penny due to a pricing cock up.

Conversely, shame shame shame on the following companies : Tesco (X Files), Jungle (the Se7en one-disc/two-disc fiasco), Britannia (for refusing to honour box set prices that appeared in error in their introductory offer), etc , etc....

Which companies do I go back to for repeat service ? Vote with your feet guys.

If high street stores are going to conduct business as if they were in a flea market then they will get the unprofessional reputation that they deserve. An interesting game to play when you enter a Dixons store is spot the non-spiv.
`Barrowboy` sales tactics are the main reason why most people in the know will seldom purchase electrical items from this group. The public mass is also beginning to become more clued into the wheeling-dealing style of Dixons.
I am quite sure that Dixons is the training ground for the car salesmaen of the future.

I have one question -

What are you doing buying stuff from Dixons in the first place?

Dixons is good when you know what you want and reserch the subject extensively to the point you can ignore any salesman. And only buy it from them if they have it the cheapest, or just buy simple stuff like blank VHS tapes.

If you ever have a complaint against this lot, the best thing to do is not complain to the shop, go straight to your trading standards lot.

2 years ago I bought a "Syquest" drive (bigger better then zip, bought by Iomega then dumped) from there Manchester shop, for £99.99p, when i got the box the seal was broken, but was told it was like that as they checked the contents, so i said "ok".

Got home all was fine sealed packs.. set it up, put in the storage disk, had 2 files, so opened them, had letters and porn pix from only 2 weeks before i bought it.

Phoned Dixons, "oh? err can you bring it back, we`ll give you a refund"
yea like i`m going to travel 30+ miles!

Went to trading standards, they came and looked at my "problem" and wrote a letter to head office, 3 days later a call from Manchester, asking what will be the best day and time to visit to sort my problem out.

When they came, I got a NEW Syquest, and a cheque for £99.99p

But why would they do that if they didn`t know before hand what was on the disk??? maybe a case of "one of our staff is to blame, he/she owned up"

Having worked in Dixons for a year before quitting, ill have to say it is seriously full of s**t. None of the other workers knew anything about products, there prices took the absolute p*ss, and our policies used to be complete rubbish. sometimes they used to push down a price for just a couple of hours, on a saturday evening, so that word would go round and then they would raise it by £50.

If you actually know anything about the hardware your buying dont go to dixons or currys.

This was however 2 years ago, so things may hav changed, and it might only have been my local dixons.

P.S. Argos is even worse, unles you know exactly what you want.

From my own experiences working for Currys there are two policies:

Don`t sell one item when you can persuade them to buy half a dozen.

If you don`t sell them insurance the sale is not profitable.

These are drummed into staff every morning before opening up. No matter what you sell staff are judged on what combinations of items they sell and with what added items. This can be simple things like spotting someone looking for a kettle and judging if they are new homeowners (therefore needing a hoover, washing machine, firdge freezer, TV etc) to persuading customers buying VCRs that they`ll need blank tapes and batteries. Isurance isn`t promoted by management as an option to offer customers but is stated as one half of the sale. Secure both halves and your sales targets remain the same. However, not making minumum figures for insurance means your daily sales targets get increased and so making it harder to make commission if you`re not selling insurance.

The whole deal of this for staff is that unless you are seen as a "prize" salesman/woman (one of the guys in my superstore won a new car each year for being the top grossing salesman in the UK - something like £50-60K a week sales) then you don`t get the opportunity for training in any particular area and so cannot feel confident in selling well in any area.

I tended to focus on the hi-fi area and home cinema as you can guess this is my area of knowledge. Despite having years of experience I still had to carry home entertainment and What Video and TV around as I got no updates from the Managers on new products and the little tickets had useless info on them which doesn`t really help salespeople when someone asks what the impedence of a speaker is or whether a turntable is MC or MM.

I really do pity the salespeople. Since I left I haven`t seen any improvements. I went in there today and one of the salespeople was wearing white trainers with their uniform (and he was on the floor not one of the warehouse guys).

I wouldent buy a blank video from these shower of bastards.

And that includes Currys and Pc world

Bastards


Xeno

hmmm....you know...i got hammered for saying this sort of thing about Dixons Group, earlier this year...

It`ll be interesting to see what sort of responses you lot get....

P.S. Dixons Group are scum and PC world?....incompetence is a pre-requisite for employment....(in my opinion ;)