Internet sales probably did for them.
Fewer people will venture into the High Streets whilst the local authorities are driving useful businesses out with extortionate rates and driving shoppers away with predatory wardens and punitive parking fines.
Sod-all left, except Cash Convertors, betting shops, fast food holes and charity shops. The butcher, baker and green-grocer cleared out long ago.
That'll swell Luxembourg's VAT take nicely ...
When I lived in :London I found I could get to Cambridge in less time than I could get to Brixton..
So what? put VAT and customs duty on it.
not unless the total tax take over here was more than Luxembourg's.
They would move over here instead.
Itsd the uiseual socialist backwarfd thinking. Lets tax people in work a LOT to give to the poor peoiple who havent got jobs.
Oh dear. Now all the jobs have moved to china and even MORE people are out of work.
are driving useful businesses out with extortionate rates and driving shoppers away with predatory wardens and punitive parking fines.
charity shops. The butcher, baker and green-grocer cleared out long ago.
i.e. Brighton who are only second to London for parking charge profits.
Their standard VAT rate is the lowest in Europe at 15%, their corporation tax is higher than I thought (higher than ours it seems) so why are Amazon et. al. all based there?
A bit of the story here:
There's an independent camera shop in Sheffield (Harrison Cameras).
Custard in a blender.
On Wednesday 09 January 2013 17:38 Jethro_uk wrote in uk.d-i-y:
Sutton?
Max Spielmann and similar shops do them - as we discovered when we first needed a passport for a two month old baby and the ridiclulous rules state that no part of you, including your hand supporting their head, can appear in the photo. Only way is with them lying on their back or reclining, hence the need for a hand-held camera instead of a booth.
SteveW
Ah yes, the one that had a Mothercare and a Clarkes that sold kids shoes, but only had three parent and child parking spaces and around twenty-five disabled spaces!
SteveW
Unfortunately on-line still has its problems too.
One is the numerous "failed" deliveries and sorting office opening times that mean I can only get there to pick the item up by taking time off work, bumping prices up by about £40.
Another is out of stock items. During the "summer" our tumble dryer failed and with continual rain and three kids needing fresh uniform each day, we needed a replacement fast. I ordered the one we'd chosen on-line, for next-day delivery (on my wife's day off), only to be called at 10 pm to say they'd gone to put it on the wagon, but it was damaged and they didn't have another one and wouldn't have for a fortnight. I phoned the next day to cancel, only to be told they did have a number in stock. Re-arranged order (not very convenient as no-one would be in for the next few days, so we'd have to arrange transport from where we had it delivered instead). Received a text during the night - delivery had been cancelled. Called the next morning and they told me they were out of stock! Put through to cancellations, they insisted they were in stock. Cancelled anyway, refund would take up to a week. Ordered another from Boots, got a confirmation text, it looked familiar - turned out Boots (B&Q and others) use the same crap, lying company under another name! Cancelled again! At that point £500 in refunds outstanding and I had to drive to Comet and pay £295 where at least I could take it away there and then!
SteveW
In message , Brian Gaff writes
Went in on saturday to get passport photos - lucky that I went back yesterday to get them redone because the PO wouldn't accept them (glasses obscuring my eyes)
cheap ???
£9.50 for 6 !!
Remeber, if you try to use one of the automatic recognition passport gates, they won't recognise you with your glasses on ...
Bit sad given that they, like Comet, have such a long history only to be brought down by social change and the money men.
I bought my digital camera from Jessops Hounslow before I emigrated. Some here will think my attitude old-fashioned but I would have regarded it as unethical to go in the shop and take 10+ minutes of an assistant's time looking at and playing with my first choice only then to walk out and buy it online at a cheaper price. But any problem here will sort itself out in time: if enough people don't actually buy stuff from shops, they won't be around for much longer.
solve that by getting it delivered to your place of work
As compared to my Dixons experience some years back with a DVD/VHS recorder. VHS stopped working after 6 weeks 'we only replace in first month, leave it here we will repair it'
6 weeks later 'it hadn't come back. Checking fine print we discovered that if they failed to repair it in 3 months we were entitled to a new one or money back more or less. 3 months and one day, in the store."Oh is that yours..it seems never to have been sent for repair ...."Much blue language and a replacement was given to us. Sheesh. NEVER had that level of problem online.
ON a similar note if you ever get burgled, and the stolen goods are partially recovered, for christ's sake only identify just enough to get the bastards sent down. 18 months later the bastards finally got refused appeal and I had to drive 120 miles to get my stuff back, aftertheinsurance company refused to pay up in the grounds that 'I hadn't lost it'
The only saving grace was that I was in Boston USA on business and was able to replace my CD collection for more or less half the cost I had claimed on the insurance.
Round here Amazon will deliver to most local newsagents, or their own "lockers" in places like the CoOp. Works well and free during Jan
WHS.
I very rarely visit my local town due to the arrangement for and level of parking fees. The greedy council has the 'guess how long you're going to be and pay upfront' system, which means unless you feed the machine with gold, you're always looking at your watch[1]. Even worse, having driven people away in this manner, the LA has just announced an increase in parking fees! The council person justified it in terms that suggested she saw the council as a business, rather than an organisation that supports local people and businesses. I even had to pay for parking on Christmas Day; most authorities try to encourage visitors by having a couple of weekends free parking at that time.
Like many, I shop online for all the reasons mentioned; it's been a decade or so since our first 'Amazon Christmas', and we've never looked back.
If I need to visit a town, I go to the smaller one slightly further away, where you pay for parking on exit - it takes the pressure off shopping.
[1] There is a 'shoppers car park', which is free for a massive 40 minutes, but it's small and always full so isn't worth chancing it. Local businesses lose out, and so does the short-sighted council.HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.