Or at least so it seems...

5 separate incidents recently that require blog comment.

Firstly, had the car serviced at our local garage recently. Seemed a bit expensive but there you go. Got it home, 20 minutes later noticed that the price of the service seemed to include a free dent on the door! I went straight back to the garage and they took responsibility and were very apologetic, which was nice of them. Anyway it got fixed, but the bloke that delivered the car back had the attitude of “oh well these things happen”. Do they?! He seemed completely incapable of understanding that the next time the car needs servicing I might take it somewhere else for fear of it coming back damaged....

Then yesterday. Rach wanted some special shoes and a local shop sells them. We went in and, of course, they didn’t have her size. When she asked Madam Surly if they had any in the backroom the answer was a firm no. Excellent, no “Oh I’m terribly sorry, but if you give me your details we can order them for you and let you know when they are in?”. You would think that £50 for a pair of flipflops might be business worth fighting for, but that’s another sale we can chalk up to the internet.

Today, Debenhams. OK it was a Sunday and they seemed to employ only either students or OAPs. My brother wanted some jeans. We couldn’t see the size he wanted os we asked the kid who was stacking jeans on the shelves. A long shot we knew at the time. He had a cursory look, but no there were no jeans anywhere in the store. Apart from the two pairs that I found a minute later!! My brother then wanted a new suit jacket so whilst he faffed around I thought I’d try a new pair of work shoes. Except that the “assistant” was too busy serving someone else. Fair enough, but I at least would have expected some kind of acknowledgement - “sorry sir, I’m just dealing with these people and I’ll be straight with you as soon as I can”? or “just one moment sir, I’ll ask a colleague to come and help you...”. Another £85 lost to the internet....My brother finally bought his suit jacket and went to pay for it. Now today Debenhams were advertising £10 vouchers back if you spend more than £40, which he did. 5 minutes after paying we had to walk back to the checkout to ask for the vouchers that the student had forgotten to give him.

The point? Firstly, no wonder high street retailers are pushing their online businesses because the only point of having a store is for people to try on what they want and then go and buy it online from somewhere else or somewhere where you can get a response. Secondly, surely if any business needs to take advantage of every possible sales opportunity?! I ask our competitors to model themselves on Debenhams and our local Ford garage.