High Street chain collapse sweepstake

[nidave]

Low Cost Travel has gone into Administration/Lowcostholidays.com
http://www.lowcosttravelgroup.com

[robschneider]

1987.

How can you remember 1987? You still think it's 1953.

Oh go fuck yourself.

[Pete]

1987.

How can you remember 1987? You still think it's 1953.

Oh go fuck yourself.

Alexia just because scneider is a cretin doesn't mean you have to derail threads by sniping at him with no provication. it clutters up the rtp queue and is annoying.

and don't even think about any sort of carswell style comeback schneider or you'll both suffer.

[robschneider]

Ha. Thanks, despite calling me a cretin. Happy to discuss your beef with me on PM, Alexia.

[gottago]

Bit late but WHSmith have been quietly closing a number of stores, especially over the last few months. My local tired but reasonably sized store shut in June and doing a Google suggests that a few others closed around the same time as well.

[dosxuk]

Are there any WH Smith's that aren't a bit tired?

[Martin Phillp]

Are there any WH Smith's that aren't a bit tired?

My local Smiths recently had a new carpet and shelving installed, yet no air-con, so staff are having to fan themselves. This is also in an area where at least four other stores have closed, which all don't have a post office.

Incidentally the post office upstairs was recently refitted to reduce the counter space to three, so they could have a private area for customers, yet has never been used and is being used to store equipment instead. Clueless.

[Andrew]

In my experience, if WHSmith have an excuse to close or downsize and relocate, they will do, but I haven't seen any occasions of them leaving some of their long established vast stores with no reason for it.

The Oxford Street branch in London has closed due to redevelopment and they don't seem to have opened a replacement.

[Martin Phillp]

BHS's flagship Oxford Street store closes today.

[Pete]

WH Smith closed their two floor city centre shop in Dundee a while back now. It's due to become a Frankie and Bennies on the ground floor, not sure whats happening upstairs. The railway station branch (in reality just a rather old fashioned counter style shop) closed when the original station entrance was demolished. Nothing has replaced it despite ample room at platform level.

This leaves the only WHS being the one in the hospital, with one person till and two self scans. The fridges were broken for three days at least, during which time all the perishable food was moved to the small working fridge but nothing else was rearranged. Hello room temperature oasis with no discount for it being shit.

The branch in back home has had a bit of a tart up, they've replaced the departmental POS boards that ran along the top panels of the walls. Previously these had been the old blue ones, but at one point were just removed leaving just blank metal, covered in old velcro and tape. They've been replaced with white ones which actually look quite nice. The new strips at the top of the shelving in the middle of the store have changed to a black background and a sans serif font (like a shit version of the new M&S London font). Again looking smarter.

[woah]

It's been a very long time since I've felt compelled to enter WH Smith though both local branches definitely still need a refurb last time I looked.

I wonder why anyone does bother really - there are better places to go for almost everything they do, but they do seem to do decent business. If they were less cluttered, cheaper, cut out the pointless rubbish that never sells (especially at service stations) and didn't give you 500 leaflets every time you buy a bottle of water I'm sure even more people would make a visit including me. For now I'll stick to Wilko or Waterstones!