Another one bites the dust!

Ploddles said:
Surely a little knowledge is better than none.
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You mean like the salesman in a Glasgow camera shop that told me that the (just released) Nikon D300 was now discontinued and had been replaced by the Canon 400D?
 
I knew jessops were a shop to avoid for camera advice, and this was backed up by there recruitment advert in our local paper " applicant must have a good background in selling direct to the public and some interest in photography would be preferred but not essential" it seemed the wrong way around to me :shrug:
 
Flash In The Pan said:
You mean like the salesman in a Glasgow camera shop that told me that the (just released) Nikon D300 was now discontinued and had been replaced by the Canon 400D?
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But surely the Nikon D300 is an obsolete camera and far inferior to the Canon 400D :lol::lol:

Steve
 
Rob L said:
My point was, you can't blame a small indy for being more expensive than Amazon when they obviously don't have the ability to buy in the same kind of quantities as a large online retailer.
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Not to mention that being purely mail order means Amazon can structure itself to avoid paying tax:

The latest 2010 accounts for Amazon EU Sarl show the Luxembourg office employed just 134 people, but generated turnover of €7.5bn (£6.5bn). In the same year, the UK operation employed 2,265 people and reported a turnover of just £147m.
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I've not looked much at Jessops' prices, but they were competitive on the Tamron 28-300mm I bought when starting with my D90, and seem to be about the cheapest UK operation for the Nikkor TC17E-II teleconverter. (Which still hasn't sent itself to me :)
 
I do remember back in the early eighties, making special trips (from the Lincolnshire coast) to the Leicester warehouse style shop with friends - it was like an Alladin's cave to us.

Nowadays the local shop seems to have different staff in it every month and every time I go in actually wanting to buy something (doesn't happen often), they either don't sell it or have to order it, giving me lead times and costs worse than online shopping.

I occasionally pop my head in to the local independant shop and recently overheard the assistant telling a couple wanting to buy a Canon Powershot with a viewfinder that Canon no longer make them with a viewfinder. After the couple had gone, I queried this with the assistant, mentioning the G12 - to which she replied that they can't get them from Canon because Canon reserve their stock for Jessops :thinking:
 
I used Comley's when I used to live in Grimsby. In York we've got York Camera Mart who try and match the interwebs as much as they can. I prefer to use them when I can although they aren't a Nikon Pro dealer so I hop on the train to Leeds and buy from Dale Photographic if I need something in the NPS range.

Jessops in York have just relocated to a larger floorspace unit but have laid it out to favour P&S cameras in their displays so you have to lie on the floor to look at lenses as they are at ankle level. I've bought a few things from them in the last 6 months but I won't be patronising their new store in a hurry.

And Jacobs owes me 13 quid which I might not get back because they went down the chute in between me placing my mail order and the goods arriving.
 
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The Jessops in hull isn't great as they don't keep anything above entry level DSLR's in stock and the staff just aren't interested unless you want a point and shoot or want to print something. I bought my last camera (brand new) from Jacobs in hull which is now sadly closed. The staff in that shop where very friendly, knew a great deal about all of the photography equipment on their shelves and what they could order in etc, plus could even tell me the differences between things like tripods, bags and filters (between the brands and price barriers) in terms of quality and value for money.

They only had a few staff (compared to jessops) but knew vastly more information per staff member lol. Shame they are gone!
 
I went into Jessops' Islington branch the other day fro some Ilfotol wetting agent. They tried to convince me I wanted some Ilford film - which they had - then some developer - which they did not. What was really depressing was that they plainly had no idea at all what a wetting agent is. Part of me thinks it's unreasonable that I might expect people under the age of 30 to know anything about film. And a bigger part of me thinks that as (i) they're the largest photography-related store in the country and (ii) they hold themselves out as offering this sort of service, they are lamentable.
 
I popped into a jessops in Merry Hill a few months ago to look at bags, they had nothing that interested me.I was the only customer in there and the sales guy was not really interested in helping me find what I wanted.
 
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