UK retailing daftness

[sparrow11]

I don't know if Steve Jobs is impressed by any of the telecom network providers he has dealt with to date, but certainly my recent experiences with Apple's chosen partner in the UK - O2 and their favourite retailer - Carphone Warehouse leave much to be desired.

Bradford West Yorkshire (population 467,000+ doesn't have EDGE in the centre of the city - presumerably this is some kind of cunning strategy by O2 to avoid major dense urban population centres. My home town of Stockport is reasonably well covered...as is Leeds. Bradford though depends on The Cloud wi-fi hotspots, of which there are a few.

So far though I've not managed to demo the iPhones capabilities to any work colleagues, 'cos GPRS is outstandingly slow and there is no wi-fi network in the building.

Bradford does though have an O2 retail store in the shopping centre, and a Carphone Warehouse store immediatly outside. I thought I would check with them when Bradford would get EDGE.

Carphone Warehouse
Although selling iPhones and accessories none of the shop staff had heard of EDGE. No joy there then.

O2 shop
The pretty blond assistant (can I write that these PC days, ah, I didn't write "pretty blond young assistant" so that's ok) hadn't heard of EDGE, so referred to a senior member of staff. She hadn't heard of it either. The manager was in the back of the shop, and the assistant asked him/her/it. After a few minutes the answer came back "you have EDGE with The Cloud. It's wi-fi."

I tried to explain the difference between wi-fi and EDGE infrastructure, but the assistants eyes glazed over in seconds.

I guess both firms found training their staff in iPhone technology a bit too much of a burden.

An even more interesting past-time is watching Carphone Warehouse sales assistants demonstrating the iPhone - certainly on par with Dixons/PC World and Currys/Comet staff.

 

[alFR]

Really though, what did you expect? You pay peanuts etc.

 

[Daeve]

An even more interesting past-time is watching Carphone Warehouse sales assistants demonstrating the iPhone - certainly on par with Dixons/PC World and Currys/Comet staff.

The thing is you *could* train monkeys to do it better in most cases!
It's like buying anything techy in those stores - all the staff do is read back to you what it says on the label/tag when you ask them anything - as If I can't read it myself! It really annoys me when staff are not trained properly.

 

[20thebear]

I had just the same experience in Newcaslte.

I said to the "well built" CPW girl, "Do you have a map of the Edge coverage in the Newcastle area?"

She said "What's Edge?"

I said "It's like 3G, but a bit slower".

She said "What's 3G?"

I left.


So I tried another store. Again a girl tried to help.

This time it went.

I said "Do you have a map of the Edge coverage in the Newcastle area?"

She said "You get wi-fi everywhere".

"Do you know!" I replied.

I then asked her to demo the google maps traffic update system, knowing that it does not work in the UK. She kept hitting the traffic button on the route planner page. She said it must be broken, so got another handset.

"it's also broken on this one" she says. "You can download the manual online, but we don't have one. We are just told how to sell them."

A classic line i thought....

i left the store empty handed....

 

[CD3660]

Carphone Warehouse
Although selling iPhones and accessories none of the shop staff had heard of EDGE. No joy there then.

O2 shop
The pretty blond assistant (can I write that these PC days, ah, I didn't write "pretty blond young assistant" so that's ok) hadn't heard of EDGE, so referred to a senior member of staff. She hadn't heard of it either. The manager was in the back of the shop, and the assistant asked him/her/it. After a few minutes the answer came back "you have EDGE with The Cloud. It's wi-fi."

My instinctive response would be to say "INCREDIBLE!" but after recent experiences, I'm not at all surprised!