Maplin meltdown

[Bob Eager]

Oh, I know about those. Most of those came later, I think, although not all. London is London.

[Bob Eager]

That's true. I tend to go where the parking is cheaper (or free). And the traffic isn't so bad.

[Huge]

[20 lines snipped]

The people responsible for that now work for Ikea.

[Huge]

[20 lines snipped]

Supermarkets close the loop between what's on the shelves and what's in the computer. Never seen a supermarket employee wandering round scanning the shelves and entering numbers on a hand-held device?

[Huge]

[alan_m]

Most seem to do regular shelf stock checks presumably to see if what the computer says they have hasn't been spirited away.

I was working for one of the Marconi companies when the design for the Texan Amplifier was published. The company stores lists claimed to have hundreds of the output transistors in stock :)

[whisky-dave]

I've always assumed that they used what the sell at the till points as that goes direct to the ordering sections, there's little need to count stolen stuff as that is a relatively small amount.

[alan_m]

Yep, empty (turkish) barbers shops seem to be the new boom and bust industry.

It appears that around my way that people are still remaining loyal to old established traditional barbers rather than migrating to the the new entrants who are charging less.

[The Natural Philosopher]

You think?

"Shoppers are stealing more than £1.6 billion worth of items from supermarkets every year as frustration with self service tills leads to theft, a survey found."

OK on the scale of what we pay the EU, thats not huge

But every little helps eh?

It's about 1% of total turnover.

[spuorgelgoog]

And also, I think, to make sure the shelf-edge price label is up-to-date and they don't display a false or misleading price indication getting them into hottish water with Trading Standards.

Owain

[alan_m]

Theft possibly depends on the product. I have seen people picking items off the shelves, eating it while still walking around the isles and then discarding the wrapper before getting to the tills. Giving kids a packet of sweets to eat whilst shopping seems to be common.

[Andrew Gabriel]

I remember sending off orders by post to Rayleigh (getting my Dad to write a cheque to go with it), and eagerly waiting for a week to get the goodies. They came with an order form and an envelope to send off your next order in, with a dot-matrix printed sticky label with your named and address and customer number stuck to the top.

The sad thing is I still remember my customer number, but last used it 20-25 years ago. When I used to quote it in the shops some years later, they always assumed I'd got it wrong as it had far fewer digits in it than they expected, but it worked when they put it in the computer.

[Steve Walker]

When our kids were younger, we would often give them something from the shelves on the way round, but we always picked up two and told the checkout operator to scan the second one twice.

SteveW

[spuorgelgoog]

Sometimes an order posted Mon would arrive by Friday home-from-school and sometimes on Saturday morning.

Me too. Must be the equivalent of an Army number for anyone who did National Service.

Owain

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I bought a box of indigestion tablets the other day. Meant to be 24 tablets - three packs of 8. Cardboard box not sealed. On opening it at home discovered a pack missing. So presumably stolen out of the packet? But how come the self service checkout didn't say the weight was wrong? It seems to do so for everything else...

[James Wilkinson Sword]

On Wed, 28 Feb 2018 10:59:05 -0000, John Smith wrote= :

I found them to be good for parts like an IEC plug, but actual products = they overpriced, like a USB cable for =A310? Get to f*ck.

Anyway, don't we all buy stuff on Ebay now?

-- =

Stupid laws, number 467: In America, it is illegal to put money in some= one else's parking meter.

[The Other Mike]

Ditto on the customer number. No idea when I last used it but late 80's early

90's might be about right. The only Maplin branded thing I've now got is an aerosol of white spray grease and that was for a job I did at least 15 years ago.

[The Other Mike]

But with self checkout the stock control can go mad and order a million quids worth of brocolli and yet the shelves of 80% chocolate, macadamia nuts and saffron will be empty.

[T i m]

Apparently, it wasn't just about getting electrical components:

Although for most here it would be more like:

;-)

Cheers, T i m

[John Rumm]

Sendz by the sounds of it...

Yup it was an odd arrangement. The main shop door not being used, and instead a side door that lead to a flight of steps that went upstairs... A fascinating window to look in, but quite hard to work out how you actually bought anything from the shop itself.

I recall a mate going in there for a NICAM decoder chip. He asks for it at the counter, and the chap behind has a rummage through some boxes of assorted complete PCBs, locates and de-solders said chip before handing it to him! ;-)