I am responsible for the recent closure of high street shops...

barrooo

Thats what I like to see, never let a good debate get in the way of proper grammer and syntax:D


P.S Feel free to add punctuation, capital letters etc to this post as required

mattwallisuk

Nothing worse than supermarket clothes. I am the reason Debenhams is still in existance.

milliemonster

have not shopped on the high street for years really, mainly due to living rurally I have to make a special effort to go to the nearest town where it takes an eon to get through all the traffic and then extortionate prices to park the car. Plus a lot of the high street shops now are just chains that all sell the same garbage, there is nothing unique and interesting anymore, granted this is probably due to independent shops being driven out by greedy landlords setting high rents, plus the rise and rise of the supermarket.

I'm not a huge fan of the supermarkets but they have the market nailed really, parking is easy and free, prices are generally reasonable and everything is under one roof. What I can't get there I can get online

beecher

The reliance on cars is something that has lead to the downfall of the high street. Gone are the days when people would walk into town, or get the bus/train. Perfectly understandable, but a shame none the less. I have never owned a car and so still use the high street, but do use online shopping for much of what I buy now. Can't stand big supermarkets like Tesco and Asda so tend to avoid them

milliemonster

beecher wrote: »

The reliance on cars is something that has lead to the downfall of the high street. Gone are the days when people would walk into town, or get the bus/train. Perfectly understandable, but a shame none the less. I have never owned a car and so still use the high street, but do use online shopping for much of what I buy now. Can't stand big supermarkets like Tesco and Asda so tend to avoid them

Absolutely agree but when public transport is so infrequent and expensive when you live out in the sticks, despite the cost of running a car and parking, it still works out cheaper to drive the 20 miles to the nearest town from me than use public transport. Cheaper still to go to the supermarket. It is a shame

newlywed

I walked up our main shopping street yesterday and realised I don't even recognise half the shops there now. I don't work near the town center like I did before and can't stand busy saturday shopping with the step kids in tow (two boys - one of which is a 13 year old :rolleyes:)

For the last year I have only been to shop in town twice - and then my main shop was in Primark!

I now shop for clothes, shoes, and bags in charity shops or on ebay. My last shopping spree consisted of 2 pairs of worn once leather shoes, an evening skirt (Debenhams debut), a jacket, two jumpers, a smart wallis top and a velvet scarf - all for £18. I'm not going to give up those kind of bargains!

I used to have a Dorothy Perkins Platinum card, a Debenhams Gold card and shop in them EVERY WEEK!!! :eek:

I no longer buy over £30 of magazines a month from Smiths - instead I have one mag subscription which costs £28 a year and I don't even browse the magazine stands anymore.

pamaris

I used to love shopping- but now that I have kids I hate it. The reason is that now my time is very valuable, and when I go out shopping (especially for clothes or shoes), it is a rare opportunity and I must come back with what I went out for, as I may not have the opportunity later. I can't stand the ASDA experience because you can't really get everything you need from there. I can't anyway. For example ASDA shoes & clothes are not really even medium quality, and the housewares are very cheap (not in a good way).

Saying that, if Target (a US store) opened stores here I would absolutely love it. They have gone out of their way to actually relate to their market. For example, they have nice toiletries, nice clothes, nice shoes and nice housewares along with nice groceries. And it's even tidy. All this at Wal-mart prices... instead of just selling a bunch of crap like ASDA. Honestly even Wal-mart is 10 times better than ASDA. Even owned by the same company, the store is only as good as the customers' expectations. Americans expect more. I might shop at ASDA if it wasn't such a nightmare experience (I can only go at the weekend).

Edit: reading this again, I do come off as very negative. Sorry, I just wish standards were higher.

The only high street store I shop at these days is Boots. Maybe Zara. At least they actually have nice clothes there (Zara, not Boots). I am rambling... but anyway I wouldn't mind some of the dross disappearing from the high street. All the crap I have to sort through makes my shopping trips very inefficient.

As an American in the UK, I am constantly annoyed at the extremely low standards British consumers have. This manifests in every way- from the quality of the shops to the prices to the customer service and return policy (we did away with the 14 or 28 day limit 15 years ago!). I'm not having a go and I hope not to offend- but why why why don't we raise our standards a bit? Retailers are going to have to get with the program. Cut the crap, lower prices and improve service.

For example- another retailer- Urban Outfitters. Love the funky store. However here the prices are 2-3 times what they are for the exact same products as in the USA. Another example is downloads. For any given downloadable software, it will cost twice the price in £ sterling. For no reason... there are no extra production costs for downloading to the UK. So why do we settle for it?

Anyway like I said I hate shopping as it currently is in this country. I'd love for things to improve.

Broken_hearted

Our local town center like many others is dying, we very rarely go there since they introduced the parking charges. Yet they've put the parking charges up again.

newlywed

One of our town center car parks charges per quarter of an hour!!! Works out extremely expensive - over £9 just to park there for 3 hours for the theater in the evening!

mizzbiz

pamaris wrote: »

I used to love shopping- but now that I have kids I hate it. The reason is that now my time is very valuable, and when I go out shopping (especially for clothes or shoes), it is a rare opportunity and I must come back with what I went out for, as I may not have the opportunity later. I can't stand the ASDA experience because you can't really get everything you need from there. I can't anyway. For example ASDA shoes & clothes are not really even medium quality, and the housewares are very cheap (not in a good way).

Saying that, if Target (a US store) opened stores here I would absolutely love it. They have gone out of their way to actually relate to their market. For example, they have nice toiletries, nice clothes, nice shoes and nice housewares along with nice groceries. And it's even tidy. All this at Wal-mart prices... instead of just selling a bunch of crap like ASDA. Honestly even Wal-mart is 10 times better than ASDA. Even owned by the same company, the store is only as good as the customers' expectations. Americans expect more. I might shop at ASDA if it wasn't such a nightmare experience (I can only go at the weekend).

Edit: reading this again, I do come off as very negative. Sorry, I just wish standards were higher.

The only high street store I shop at these days is Boots. Maybe Zara. At least they actually have nice clothes there (Zara, not Boots). I am rambling... but anyway I wouldn't mind some of the dross disappearing from the high street. All the crap I have to sort through makes my shopping trips very inefficient.

As an American in the UK, I am constantly annoyed at the extremely low standards British consumers have. This manifests in every way- from the quality of the shops to the prices to the customer service and return policy (we did away with the 14 or 28 day limit 15 years ago!). I'm not having a go and I hope not to offend- but why why why don't we raise our standards a bit? Retailers are going to have to get with the program. Cut the crap, lower prices and improve service.

For example- another retailer- Urban Outfitters. Love the funky store. However here the prices are 2-3 times what they are for the exact same products as in the USA. Another example is downloads. For any given downloadable software, it will cost twice the price in £ sterling. For no reason... there are no extra production costs for downloading to the UK. So why do we settle for it?

Anyway like I said I hate shopping as it currently is in this country. I'd love for things to improve.

I'm not saying it explains all the price differentiation away, but some of this is down to currency exchange rates. For some time now it's been cheap for UK consumers to shop in America, but things are swinging the other way now.

About the standards and quality, I totally agree with you in principle although I have never been and probably never will go to America.