Jessops resume price matching - sort of

[pjmeade]

After stopping price matching at the end of 2006, Jessops' continuing

difficulties seem to have lead them to start price matching again. In their

advert in Digital Photo magazine, they undertake to match any price in the

magazine, providing the advert is presented.

The intersting thing is, they haven't put prices in the advert for anything but

Jessops own brand.

[andrew booth]

The problem with Jessops is that they're stuck in the very worst kind of English small-mindedness when it comes to doing business.

 

I've bought things from them over the years under various price match schemes. Invariably Jessops would be more expensive to start out, and they'd then try and play their price match game.

 

'No, we won't match with the internet'

'No, we don't match with Tottenham court road'

'The shop we match with has to be within 7 miles and have stock'

 

Why should the customer play along with this silliness? Either Jessops are going to take the money I offer and sell at what I percieve to be the correct price - or NO DEAL. Their price-match rules aren't holy writ; either they cut the customer the deal they want or they make no sale.

 

They're the UK's biggest photo retailer, so they should be getting the lowest prices from manufacturers - if they're offering anything other than the lowest price to the customer then something's going wrong.

 

Over a period of years, their high sticker price and argumentative price match game has successfully taught the customer that they can't be trusted. Add poor salesperson training to the equation and you get a chain with poor prices and no redeeming features of customer service.

[david_henderson]

Price -matching isn't as honest as being competitive to start with. What its really saying is that they're quite prepared to rip off anyone who hasn't done their homework or is prepared to be put off by variable "exclusions". That aside I agree with Andrew's points.

 

I passed a store of theirs near London on Thursday. Everywhere round seemed busy. A staff member of Jessops was standing outside the front door smoking and chatting to one of his mates. Which I guess speaks volumes for the amount of trade they were doing, and IMO marks them as a yesterday's business.

[kelly_flanigan1]

Photographers who charge too much can "price match" too; and thus knuckle down to the prices that your dumbest competitor charges. This will help consumers from being ripped off. Photographers can then work at other jobs to support themselves; drop their prices and meet all competitors low ball quotes. Photographers have been ripping the public off for decades. Since digital is more common; they can shoot images cheaper and reduce their prices to the public since making a profit is immoral and evil.:) :) :) <BR><BR><BR><BR>A brick and moral photo store has to live with the real costs of the weekend warrior; folks who try out the gooberflex dslr; return it on Monday for a full refund; then mailorder from another shop to "save money". This jackassery of taking back items has a real cost; its passed on to you thru higher prices. The mail order internet store often doesnt do the return gambit; or answer endless dumb questions on how to load film, orhow to use the new dslr you bought over the internet; or what a pixel or dpi is. <BR><BR><b>Go call up a super low cost internet camera outlet on their toll free order line and get them to discuss what a memory card is; what fine fart paper is best for sunsets; what is a pixel; or how to use a camera that you didnt buy from them. Tell them that they are ripping off the public. See how many seconds they will talk to you for free.</b><BR><BR>If you are reasonable and not a weekend warrior a local brick and mortar camera store can meet internet prices. They cannot do this on all transactions because they have a much higher overhead; dealing with the endless goofy questions about cameras they never sold; handholding; wanting free advice; searching for the latest inkjet cartridge or battery or memory card that came out a week ago.<BR><BR>Folks here should work in a brick and mortar camera store for a week and experience the constant morass of the publics goofy questions; on items your store never sold. A local camera store has to stay afloat by actual profits, not time wasting endless questions on the menu functions of your camera you bought over the internet. <BR><BR>The real jackassery is often not the local camera store; but the immoral ways of the weekend warriors, folks who dump returns to local stores on items they bought over the internet.

[andrew booth]

Nice rant Kelly. It's a shame you've never been to a Jessops store and don't know what

you're talking about.

 

I'd be happy to support more local honest photo stores answering precisely the sort of

questions you state. The problem is that in the UK, Jessops bought up hundreds of that

type of store, replacing them with dumbed down identikit stores filled with low quality

own-brand products and expensive prices.

 

Your photographer analogy falls down, because unlike a photographer who earns their

rate through the added value they give - Jessops just isn't delivering a better experience

than online. And that's not only about prices, it's about information, choice and honesty

too.

[mark u]

Andrew is right: Jessops originated as a family owned business which became the "B&H" of the UK - they stocked just about everything at prices that were the best safe deal you could get. The family built up the business some more opening mostly large branches on the same lines but then sold out to financiers and the business was publicly floated a couple of years ago. The new management used the proceeds of the flotation and other financing to buy up other small chains and individual businesses. The new management "streamlined" the stores, cutting many, many lines (you can't even order most prime lenses any more through them as just one example). It's no longer realistic to think of Jessops as a "bricks and mortar" showroom for the benefit of internet purchasers or otherwise. They also got rid of many of the experienced staff, replacing them with cheap to employ but unknowledgeable teenagers. Jessops actually own at least four web brands (Jessops, Cameras2u, Tecno and Shopping4cameras), but they don't really seem to have a clear handle as to how these fit in with the main business. As part of the announcement of poor trading results that caused their share price to collapse to about 10% of the flotation price, it was confirmed that the Commercial Director (who was presumably responsible for many of these policies) has resigned. This was discussed in this recent thread:

 

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00KXp2

 

Perhaps the closest US counterpart is the Ritz Camera chain.

 

Meantime there are still some good stores left in the UK, but they are becoming rather more spread out geographically. Incidentally, I think it is much more common in the US to play the game of returns - many US stores have dedicated returns counters - something which is almost unknown in the UK.

[philg]

Whoa. I was going to delete this for being (1) not interesting, (2) about shopping rather than photography, but you guys seem so passionate about this Jessops place....

[bobatkins]

In the US we aren't blessed by their presence. I agree the nearest thing we have is Ritz camera, though maybe if you think of it as a Radio Shack that sells cameras it might be closer! The level of technical knowledge of the counter staff may be similar...

[pjmeade]

Philip, before we can take our photos, we must first buy our camera equipment, so the subject of camera shops and pricing is wholly germane to photography. Not interesting? Do you mean outside your experience? A nice display of cultural arrogance.

[mike_stemberg]

With all the gripes we have about Jessops and mismanagement and lack of purpose or direction in pricing policy etc... I have to feel for a lot of their staff. I have been given both seasoned sensible advice from staff with a wealth of expertise, as well as gushy emotive and quite enthusiastic quickie reponses from the 'younger staff'. However the staff seem to stop just short of whispering under their breath ~ "You'd be better off really to buy your equipment from somewhere else".<br />The staff are keen to make their jobs work, but get no support from above ~ and the sadddest thing is that they know that the public know about Jessops travails ...and they are as quite as helpless about it as us discussing it here...

[alec_myers]

My only recent experience at Jessops was positive. The manager of the shop held a very helpful discussion with me about ways to stabilise a camera, and I was happy to go back a week later to buy a ball head at his store. I don't know about the rest of his staff, but he, at least, knew exactly what he was talking about.

[simon p barlow]

My local Jessops store used to be part of a family chain of three stores (mom & pop operation I think you call it in the US) At weekends, it was busy with joe public asking the usual 1001 questions and not buying much. Through the week though, I could always drop in for a chat, pass the time of day and get good advice either from the owner or the staff. The owner always encouraged the staff to go out there and take photos and get to know the equipment.

 

They seemed to make a good living from it and I guess that is what the ?powers at be/accountants? at Jessops picked up on it and added it to their collection.

 

Now, it's know better than a high priced warehouse, just interested in box shifting. The last time I was in there ( I needed a couple of spare lens caps ? don't ask!) I was listening to a conversation between a customer who was in to pick up several rolls of film he had shot from a family christening and had red marks across all his prints (light leak on the camera back) being told to ?google for an answer for red marks across photos on the internet? by one of the assistance. When asked if there was anyone else in the store who could help him he was told ? I'm the film expert in the store, the others just do digital?

 

With this, I couldn't contain myself and stepped in to help the guy. It turned out that he had dropped his camera out of it's case as he was getting out of the car at the christening. A cup of coffee later at a local Starbucks ( I needed the WiFi internet connection), and I had found a local camera repair shop that could take a look at his camera for him. He paid for the coffee and thanked me.

 

A couple of weeks later, I got an email to say that his camera was fixed and working fine.

 

Mine was a lucky guess, I could have been wrong, but surly anyone working in a photo shop should have basic photographic knowledge to be able to make the same guess or at leas point the customer in the right direction.

 

I now use Calumet as my main store.

 

Not quite the usual Photo.Net forum stuff Philip, but it's part of the photographic experience.

[b._cairns]

I was told earlier this week that they price-match to any local store, the online prices of any store with a local branch, and also some particular online retailers like WarehouseExpress.com. I was interested in a Curry's online price that was £40 ($79) less than Jessops in-store for a Nikon D40 w/ 18-55mm lens kit. I'm not sure whether their price-matching policy applies just to DSLRs or to anything.

 

<p>Regarding the other discussion here, it makes a big difference as to which branch you visit. At the Clifton (Bristol) branch, the salesman I spoke to was much more knowledgeable and professional than I had expected. Another day I stopped in at the branch in the Centre, about 25 mins walk from the Clifton store. A cardboard cutout would have been more articulate and helpful than their salesman there (and the store was small and poorly stocked).

 

<p>On price I think they are OK (but on the high end) for major items, but way overpriced on accessories like memory cards. They're having a half price sale at the moment on memory cards -- the laugh is that their full price is about FIVE (5) times what you would pay from a cheap online retailer or eBay.

 

<p>That said, I'd buy from them again (at the Clifton branch) if they had stock of something and would price-match it.

[arimus]

The new pro-centre shop they've just opened in Cardiff is a really good example of how good Jessops can be when they do it right.

 

The ground floor has the usual consumer stuff with the staff to match and upstairs they've got all the pro/pro-sumer SLR stuff together with studio lighting, decent printers (IE A3+ and the 3880) and even stock and give good advice on calibration kit for monitors and printers.

 

The sales team upstairs are very knowledgeable and not afraid to admit when they don't know something - in my book admitting when you don't know something is a sign of a good salesman :)

 

Price wise same as every other store, stock wise better than most.

[woolly1]

... my experience of Jessies with the singular exception of the manager of the Norwich branch (Canon man) was as others have found - assistants in near complete ignorance of photography.

 

The real pity with all this is that the rise of Jessops has wiped previously excellent, interested and knowledgeable photography shopowners off the face of the High St and the only thing they will have left behind is a swathe of empty premises. These were the kind of alladin's cave where you could spend an hour picking (as opposed to just queueing in Jessops) through shelves and corners of cabinets finding all sorts of interesting trophies to take home. No blister-packs there!

 

Today Jessops have produced an army of professional non-specific shop assistant foot soldiers who will next year be trying to belittle you in Halfords or Dixons.

 

Cameras may now be digital but all the rest is still unchanged .... pods, heads, lenses, filters, etc Where did the old shop staff disappear to?

[mark u]

Jessops have now called in the accountants:

 

http://www.gaapweb.com/news/151-PwC-called-in-to-aid-Jessops-recovery.html

[stephen churchman]

not sure if this thread is still looked at? I used to work for Jessops wayyyy back in the 90's before digital was anything near it's 'real' release. Back then it was owned by the 'Jessops' themselves and their goal was simple, to sell photographic equipment and sell it properly. We were trained at their head office, were surrounded by like minded types (we were total geeks) and we had a great time. It was always busy.

I agree with Kelly somewhat but this is a different era now - the internet has put paid to a lot of high street sales, you visit the store to look at the item, then buy it online instead with little or no homework.

 

I bought my first DSLR from them recently and although they wouldn't price match, it was the keenest price compared to a lot of other re-sellers but they discounted a bunch of accessories instead. So far so good.

 

Jessops as it is now is indeed a hollow of what it once was, very anodine and lacking in their sense of purpose - to sell cameras! and keep their life blood happy - their Customers!! the people that matter.

 

I'm going to try an ask them to discount a lens this weekend - so wish me luck there.

There is still something to be said for walking into a shop and walking out with what you came for - at the right price of course!

 

I'll let you know if I get what I want. :-)

[sasha_neal]

I used to work for jessops. I am now 19 years old so yeah im classed as the young student type. But i wasn't a student and when i first started i wasn't really into photography but off of my own back i learnt about it so i could give advice. The staff have many targets to meet, they have no help from head office or any training. The wages aren't the greatest and if we didn't make targets we would have lots of extra stress. I worked hard, i did't push people to buy things if we didn't have something to suit a customer i would tell them, not try to sell them somethign they didn't want. I have read lots about jessops and the fact that some of the staff don't know about cameras, the lack of motivation and high prices. I agree with all of this, however it's not the case for all staff. Everyday we used to get many customers coming in wanting free advice and to play with the cameras. Then they would go home and buy it off of the net. It was frustrating, in that time a customer that genuinly wanted to buy soemthing and genuinly needed help could of been ignored. I have to admit it took me a while to learn everything about cameras but i got there, and now i have my own DSLR and equpiment. As for the prices, the staff don't make the prices, and i know personaly if i could i would of put the prices down. But, that is not in our control. The final thing is pointless questions, you can tell a timewaster a mile away, i tried to answer all questions, if i din't knwo i wouldn't guess i would ask someone else or find out! So you cna understand that it is frustrating when they say "thanks for your help" and walk out when you have spent half an hour answering there questions. So, next time you go into jessops and they can't change the price, they don't have the item in stock or they don't know all of the questions don't take it out on them! They try their best, ok soem are just lazy. But they are making the most out of what they have! they don't make the rules or order stock or price items! And as for customer service I worked hard to ensure that every customer was treated personally i know that some of them don't but some of us do! Oh and the last things is repairs! We do not actually fix cameras, they get sent out back to the manufacturer, it takes 6- weeks because of them not jessops! The extended warranties are infact a very good thing to buy, no excess you can clain as many times as you wish or you can just get your camera cleaned! They don't try and sell it for no reason! Ok rant over sorry but i hope now you understand why the staff are why they are.