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John lewis

I used to work at the Sloane Square store.
It's how I got into Hifi (as oppose to recorded music. I had a copy of every Heifetz recording on LP by then).

They used to sell the Technics and lower cost Marantz items.

One day, a personal shopping department manager walked up to me on the shop floor and presented to me a list of hifi items that she wanted me to purchase.
I'd never heard of any of it; Audiolab amplifier, Celestion speakers, Sony ES Tuner and a couple of other things. Apparently these were for an overseas visitor setting up his new pad.
John Lewis didn't have an account for these so I had to obtain pro forma invoices from the manufactures and have the accounts department give me cheques to post. They weren't pleased.
I was able to go to the customers apartment and help him set it up.

It left me disappointed that JL had a very affluent customer base but was selling hifi amplifiers based on Watts/Channel.

So I left and joined a specialist store in Croydon, entering the Linn/Naim world.

Since then, I've always felt that John Lewis were going ever down market. So much of what they sell now is own label knock-offs.

I went to the Oxford Circus branch to buy a computer bag, just before the pandemic. I was budgeting for high end Samsonite. They only had the cheapest models and their own brand copies. And ditto the computer department, only the most basic Dell offerings.

Back in my day, the Sloane Square branch had two squash courts on the top floor. The Oxford Circus branch had a fully equipped theatre. Great places to work. But these have long gone.
 
I have no particular love for JL, since years ago they failed to honour the cheapest price pledge. It was only a few quid on washing up bowl and similar stuff. I checked the price at Woolworths (it was a while ago!), then went back to JL with Woolies prices. They went to check, came back and said "their kitchen department is closed for re-furb, and they have none of any of these in stock". I went back to Woolies, bought it all, then went back to JL and showed what I bought, and the receipt. "Thanks for bringing this to our attention" said the same woman who told me nothing was in stock. Strangely, a few weeks earlier, they knocked £50 off a telly without query!

They are just another shop now, and I still use them when convenient for my needs, but I don't rate them above any other shop really.

But having said that, I have just ordered a new phone from them, mainly as they have it in stock for collection tomorrow, and my 3 year old Motorola started playing up today.
 
The shared ownership model is just a gimmick really, ‘partners’ get annual bonuses but they are often pretty modest. Ultimately they are still employees who get made redundant.

Effective retailers have a sophisticated omni channel offer. Next are probably the leaders in this regard & were very forward thinking in this regard. JL have had a very good run though.
 
On one hand I feel sad that JL are in the red, and will eventually be wiped out because of the fundamental ethics they were built on..but the corporate managers basically destroyed JL with the huge reduction in customer service.

My recent experiences with with JL's customer service has been diabolically bad , meaning I now try to avoid shopping with them when before, they were my first ' go to' . Their extended warranties are also just as bad.

I will miss the price match though if I was ever to be tempted back to JL, especially with things like OLED tvs, my last major purchase with JL a few years ago, where I managed £1500 off by price matching retrospectively after purchase. But the TV I price matched before that was a nightmare as they just wouldn't grant it even with oodles of retailers selling it for less. It was a strange one.

As it takes employees to do the price matching, I imagine some factors will be reducing staffing costs, so I fear their poor business choices will be seen lower down in the ranks this year.

Their email was funny though, I highly doubt the £500million investment in their sinking ship will bring Costco prices and level of customer service. They wont be here in three years.
 
I bought an expensive, for me, pair of slippers at Christmas £25 they cost and are falling apart.

I really should return them for a refund but in all honesty I’m not going into the city centre to do that.
 
LecsonQuad said:
For JL to stay in business with lots of stores you need to visit them more often than a couple of times a year for a treat.
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I shopped with them a lot more than a couple of times a year both in store and on-line and many of my purchases were for expensive items. It's a real shame that the store has gone.
 
Just had hassles involving two long calls to J.L. insurance, who've covered me for 10 years at very reasonable cost and renewal premiums. First girl didn't know what 'all risks' meant, promised to phone back when she'd collected some info. and didn't. Second call, still long, got a proactive and more knowledgeable girl (both working from home)

Have always loved J.L and have bought many pricy bits there, but a few years ago their stocks and variety dwindled and they introduced a charge for online goods to be picked up in store ! Ridiculous; haven't been a customer since. A lot of stuff which wouldn't be covered by the 'never knowingly' guarantee because they couldn't be matched was/is overpriced anyway.

The writing has been on the wall for department stores for some time now.
 
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garyi said:
You have to love how they try and spin it as a positive though.
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Yes, just like when the National Lottery increased the playable numbers to 59. I thought how on earth can they spin this in a positive way, their response was “we’ve increased the numbers to give you more choice” as if that’s a f....n good thing in a Lottery draw! I chuckled about that for days:D.
 
I also received the same email from JL. I’ve been an ultra loyal, JL customer for decades, and simply wouldn’t consider shopping elsewhere for our household electrical items plus furniture and mattresses, etc. In recent years my rock solid faith in JL has been tested by their programme of store closures, the 100 year old Trewins store in Watford closed for good during the first National lockdown (a great shock when it came to light that JL part-owned the freehold and didn’t even pay any commercial rent to landlord Intu Watford). In more recent years admittedly more and more of our purchases have been made via the JL web site (greater consumer protection due to distance selling regs), but having the ability to try out, say a mattress or sofa in store, has been valuable.

In recent weeks, JL sent me a £10 discount voucher, redeemable if we spent £50 in a single shop in store at JL Westfield (White City, NW London). Considering that they closed our local store, why on earth would we want to travel an hour to Westfield (a £10+ Tube trip in itself, we don’t own a car), all for the opportunity of spending £50 in order to save a tenner?
 
Forgot to add that JL are looking to repurpose their old Watford Trewins store into build-to-let, residential flats (no doubt furnished with JL furniture)!
 
Only experience I’ve had of John Lewis (never been/shopped in a store) was using their broadband a year or so ago, think it was rebadged plusnet and it was crap, router and signal strength was abysmal so changed within a few weeks.
 
The distribution of reviews is very interesting. Never seen them so symmetrical, as many 1* as 5*. Some make very good reading, and you can see why they are where they are, and getting worse.

I need to contact them about some built in bedroom furniture, installed in 2014 with a 10 year guarantee. The some drawer fronts have a plastic covering finish, which covers the front and all sides in one piece (like a vacuum forming), which is coming off the edges. We'll see how that goes....
 
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