Small business woes

[andygates]

Our town is being menaced by the faceless horror of Tesco.  That's what the local small businesses would like you to think ,at least - big business putting the plucky small trader out of work unfairly.

In the last few days I've turned up with a fistful of shinies to two of these local shops and had my money turned away.  At the phone shop, I was turned away because I was dealing with the other salesman, and he's not in today - and the rural simpleton behind the desk presumably couldn't split the commission so he'd rather turn away a sale.  And I've been told by the electrical goods shop that they will give me a price for a storage heater if I give them a product number.  I'll just go to another shop and get it then, shall I?

Straw-chewing knuckle-dragging subprime gibbons, the lot of them.  Using "we're small businesses, love us!" to defend this sort of feeble service is weak, weak, weak. 

Small businesses can be great.  The personal service, working relationship and deep knowledge from years in the trade are well worth the modest premium you may pay over big-box retailers.  But "small" is not and never should be an excuse for "lazy".  Lazy businesses deserve to go under.

At least there'll be room for a Starbuck's.

Comments

[n-decisive.livejournal.com]

We have the same problem here. I want desperately to use local businesses, but the majority of them haven't a clue about how to treat customers. They used to, but now, it's like they're doing YOU a favor by existing, and if you can get them to stop chatting with their friends long enough to assist you, there's always a problem that they can't find a way around without you doing a lot of work or waiting a week for the item in question. A lot of them aren't even in their stores during their posted hours.

So, when they go out of business and blame the big chains, I can't feel sorry for them. When clerks at a big place are that way, I can complain and generally, it's taken seriously. Often, I get special coupons or gift cards because I let them know, too.

It's not big box retailers that kill the homegrown ones, it's entitlement issues.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Exactly: it's that "we are small so you are obliged to use us or you'll live in a desolate ghost town and it'll be all your fault, so stand there like a dork while we yak about nothing to our elderly mums" attitude.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

We're getting - uh, I think it's a Sainsburys - over the road, and what I'm mostly thinking is, oh good, somewhere to scuttle to for emergency bread or eggs or whatever where the food available won't all be a week past it's sell-by date and/or stored in chill cabinets that look like they were installed during the Napoleonic War. And I can pay by Switch without them trying to pull the 'We'd charge £1.70 to use the cash-machine at the end, and it's the same card, innit, so pay up' line.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Exactly. I for one welcome our superstore overlords. Well, except for Starbuck's. They're still evil.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

Apparently they're colonising that place in Broadmead opposite Debenhams that used to be a suit shop. It'd actually be kinder as well as more entertaining if they just blindfolded their franchisees and made them mud-wrestle.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Do you think franchisees get a choice? I imagine there being a creepy, enthusiastically corporate and faux-relaxed weekend bash for new "partners", in which the culmination has coffee-bean pinatas smashes with title deeds inside. Enthusiastic thirtysomethings may be seen falling to their knees as they get allocated something in Ring Road Hell.

[despaer.livejournal.com]

We have a Tesco's over our garden wall. They do some good things, like not quibbling when you take stuff back that is defective or mouldy, they just refund your money. They also have, as a company in the past, done a lot do deflate unreasonably expensive goods such as jeans, books, CDs. I know you can argue that a good proportion of jeans in Tescos are made in sweatshops and you are right, but so are all the expensive designer clothes as well.

On the minus side they are not content with having a large supermarket right in the middle of a residential area only 5 mins walk from the high street, they now want to enlarge the store, treble the parking and frankly wreck this end of Wells in the name of making a little more money.

Tesco, if you read this, those dirty great sotres like the one you are planning for Princes road are generally called out of town for a reason. Principally that the infrastructure in the town is not designed to handle them. There are at least 2 large sites less than half a mile away that are on the edge of Wells so go build your store there

[erlf.livejournal.com]

As everyone has mentioned above there are some advantages to supermarkets, and they aren't necessarily inherently evil. For most people the opening hours alone are a major help with a busy lifestyle. The real problem is that most councils have not got the balls to stand up to the big chains when their plans do more harm than good to the local area. Even when Tesco's exceeded their square footage by a significant amount on one site, they still got retrospective planning permission. I think they should have been made to tear it down. If one of us mere mortals had done the same with an extension I doubt we would have got off so lightly.