How expensive do B & Q think they can get?

Yes Chopper you are quite right and I think we've already covered most of that in earlier posts on this thread. "But B&Q are handy if you desperately need something at 3.30pm on a Sunday."
It's usually best to go direct to specialised suppliers, every time. I need a washer for an outside tap.. and a roll of ptfe tape, but I'll be going to a plumbers' merchants tomorrow.

 

B and Q are expensive but they have a helluva range of products. I use the newfangled till service if there is a que at the till especially if I only need one or two items same thing same in Sainsburys...nice coffe shop there...self checkouts..they are here to stay.. Come on you old dears get with it. I am so lucky of my local DIY store not B and Q 'Charlies' good and helpful staff worth a lot and no self checkout. Who said I'm an old dear.

 

Whilst it may be convenient to use these self service check-outs for one or two items, you have to understand it's "just the thin end of the wedge" the psychology is to get the public more and more used to them. The major superstores will add more of them until eventually you'll be having to scan a full trolley of shopping yourself as the only alternative will be the "ten items or less" check-out.

Good business sense to get the customers to do the jobs of the check-out staff for nothing. I'm not sure if there's already plans in the pipeline to get the customers to fill the shelves too.

A pack of tap washers and a roll of ptfe tape in the plumbers' merchants came to a pound this morning. I bet it would have been nearer a fiver in B & Q. I'll check next time my wife drags me in there to look at lighting.

 

Self checkouts are fine if you are buying a couple of items only - the lunchtime crowd as an example. NOT if you are doing a weekly shop.

And why is that voice 'unexpected item in bagging area' so annoying?

 

If you got a discount for using self service tills, then fair enough. It is NOT right to expect customers to do the work of the staff free of charge.

 

Reminds me of a Gordon Lightfoot song.


If you could read my mind love,
what a tale my thoughts could tell.
Just like an old time movie
about an unexpected item in a bagging area.
In a castle dark or a fortress strong
with chains upon my feet.
You know that unexpected item in the bagging area is me
and I will never be set free
as long as I'm an item that you can see.

 

Digressing a bit....

I'm still amazed at how cheap are pvc products.
I've decided to put a gutter on the back of the roof of my tea-house (or Budweiser shed) as when the new fence went in twenty years ago, it was brought back a bit to be on our land and it's very close to the eaves and I want to stop the water running down the fence panels in heavy rain, which pretty much helped ruin the old ones. Still.. twenty years wasn't bad.

Four metres of guttering, two and a half of pipe, the end stops, the outlet, two off-set bends, a shoot and the brackets and clips came to only twenty quid at a plumbers' merchants. "Cheap as chips."

Now I wonder how much would that lot have cost in B & Q?

 

I buy online, and you can see why people do nowadays.

 

I do quite often, but you have to pick and choose. I found I needed something else for the gutter and drainpipe installation (I do occasionally find I'm short of something when I thought I'd bought all the kit, it's so irritating, as I feel I need to change out of my "scruff" before going out the front door. My wife says that in the garden and round the house, I look less well dressed than "that scarecrow in the garden centre").
It was another 90 degree bend for the downpipe. I looked up a plumbing supplier on line, just out of curiosity, it was priced at £2.99. (plus postage). I went back to the plumbers' merchants where I bought all the other stuff and it was £1.50.

 

Earlier, Ziggy mentioned he'd worked out how to get through a self-service check-out without paying if that was your intention. Believe me, you don't need a self-service check-out for that. My friend's son has just finished a part-time Uni holiday job at Homebase - he was there for 7 weeks working in the kitchen, bathroom and lighting departments. During those 7 weeks, from those 3 departments alone, they had stolen ... one display gas cooker hob worth about £150 (which was never going to work); a wall hung basin worth about £180; 3 different ceiling lights around £60 each, not to mention numerous shower screens, fitments, taps, etc., and ... get this - you know when you go for a new kitchen or bathroom, the designer sits you down at the computer and shows you how it will look? Well, someone actually ran off with the computer!!

Self-service check-outs? Never use them. The cost of staff wages is already factored into the price of the goods so I damned if I'm going to do the job of someone for whose wages I've already paid.

The only good thing I can see about them is that maybe these wretched supermarkets will get rid of their grammatically incorrect '10 Items or Less' signs, it's 'Fewer' damn it, 'Fewer'

 

As a retired superstore manager, I'm always a little concerned when I read that "shoplifting is a victimless crime." That's a complete nonsense!
Firstly, managers have lost their jobs where the shrinkage level has been more than their employers will accept.

Secondly, as has been said, we all pay for it in higher prices.

Just important to me, it could have affected my bonus! Fortunately, that never happened.

When I first went into this business in the early seventies, an acceptable level of loss was just over 1%. In those days and up until the nineties, staff were generally a lot more conscious of the need to control losses. Over the years because of the increase in violence towards shop staff many now just turn a blind eye to it and who can blame them? Consequently, shrinkage rates have risen dramatically. It has not been helped by an increase in incidences of theft by shop staff.

There's also little deterrent. Having worked on occasions in less salubrious parts of the country, in the seventies you could get away with giving a male shoplifter a good hiding if they resisted arrest and wanted to "take you on." Often the appearance of a few “lads” and the butcher in his white apron who just happened to have his meat cleaver in his hand, was enough for some to come quietly. We would also lock them in a store room until the police arrived. You wouldn't be able to do that now. That in itself which could take an hour as we’d tell the police “there’s no rush” was a considerable deterrent.

But I don't think a lot of stores help themselves now. They don't seem to be aware of potential losses, stores are often poorly laid out with areas where shoplifters can hide and secrete items. There's very little "management" seen on the shop floor. The store managers are mostly "invisible" often dressed in "gardening clothes" with a scruffy badge on their "bomber jacket" which just says "Tom" or whatever.
"In my day" (here we go!) I and my contemporaries wore "sharp suits" and would have a "presence" and if I weren't on the floor one of my deputies similarly dressed, would. This "presence" was enough to make small groups of young men do an immediate "about turn" when they saw you and leave the store.
But many store groups have stripped out whole levels of management, to save money.
The "buzz word" is "empowerment" This means getting people on low wages to take more responsibility for no extra cash. But in my observation standards have fallen, many stores can’t even get the ordering right as they often have now no control over it. I dissuaded all three of my kids from even contemplating going into retail, I could see the writing on the wall in the early eighties.