He was at Tesco.com dude, not Tesco. Dixons Group are the Krusty Burger of Electronics retail..
Krusty Burger, nice....
There are two strands to my visceral hatred of DSGi (dixons store group international, their trading name).
One of the hatreds is historic and doesnt really apply now, but it is an insight into their corporate mentality. Pre internet DSGi had what was as close to a monopoly on the British High street as you could get. If a product couldnt get itself into Dixons, it couldnt succeed in the UK and wouldnt be launched. Simple as. They essentially pick and chose the goods that we Brits could buy.
They ruthlessly exploited price maintenance and colluded with manufacturers and suppliers.
A manufacturer that allowed their goods to be sold to a discount electrical chain would be cut out of the Dixons money tree.
What did that mean? It meant that no matter which shop you visited, every single set of goods cost the same price to the same penny in every shop.
This iron grip on the high street began to crumble around the late nineties with the onset of the internet and government regulation outlawing price maintenance.
Why do i dislike DSGi now?
Judge a store by how they would treat an uninformed customer. Your old mum, for example. If your mum went into PC World to buy a new computer, with a budget of £350.
This is what she would come out with. A new computer that costs £399, an unnecessary security product that cost another £50, an unnecessary office home edition £50, and an extended warranty that includes a 'whatever happens' guarantee, this is an open ended agreement in which she pays £15 a month from the day she purchases the machine until she cancels/dies.
The thing is, even with resistance their high pressure technique on the extras makes it very difficult for people to say no.
