Carphone Warehouse closes all standalone stores

[V8mate]

With the carriers themselves having such a strong direct sales presence in the High Street, I never really understood how 'middle men' earned a living.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51923295

[HTP99]

I've always found them to be cheaper than the specific carriers, I'd say it's more to do with how people buy their phones now as opposed to competition from the EE and Vodafone shop a few doors down.

Edited by HTP99 on Tuesday 17th March 07:59

[V8 Animal]

Unfortunately no surprise, and others will follow another nail in the high st coffin.

[Krupp88]

V8mate said:

With the carriers themselves having such a strong direct sales presence in the High Street, I never really understood how 'middle men' earned a living.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51923295

For quite sometime there was a good sized segment of people who were not drawn to dealing with the networks direct and CPW were responsible for adding significant numbers to the network bases. However over time and as the complexity of tariffs and hardware differentiation reduced this became less relevant, coupled with the market shifting away from the type of agreements that CPW were contracted to sell its become unsustainable.

[sjg]

V8mate said:

With the carriers themselves having such a strong direct sales presence in the High Street, I never really understood how 'middle men' earned a living.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51923295

Not just carriers, a big chunk of iPhone buyers go direct to Apple, and there are lots of direct sales on the Android side of things too. The ease of number porting means plenty of people are happy to just buy a phone (often direct) and take out whichever SIM plan works out best for them at the time.

Phone tech has also stagnated - fewer people feel the need for a new phone every year (or even two), the older stuff is quick enough, has a good enough camera and does everything people want to do.

[V8mate]

sjg said:

Not just carriers, a big chunk of iPhone buyers go direct to Apple, and there are lots of direct sales on the Android side of things too. The ease of number porting means plenty of people are happy to just buy a phone (often direct) and take out whichever SIM plan works out best for them at the time.

Phone tech has also stagnated - fewer people feel the need for a new phone every year (or even two), the older stuff is quick enough, has a good enough camera and does everything people want to do.

All good points.

[98elise]

HTP99 said:

I've always found them to be cheaper than the specific carriers, I'd say it's more to do with how people buy their phones now as opposed to competition from the EE and Vodafone shop a few doors down.

Edited by HTP99 on Tuesday 17th March 07:59

Agreed, we've bought loads of phones through CPW because they were cheaper than the service providers.

[Podie]

V8mate said:

With the carriers themselves having such a strong direct sales presence in the High Street, I never really understood how 'middle men' earned a living.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51923295

In the early days they were great because you could compare the costs of tariffs from all the providers - in one place.

That said, not used them since the days of Nokia 5110s and Orange Everyday 50...

[Challo]

My friend works for ID Mobile and was on the con call this morning with the Carphone Warehouse management. He reckons around 3000 redundancies, but some staff will be moved into the Carphone Warehouse outlets located inside Curry's existing stores.

Its been loss making for a while, and Covid 19 has meant they decided to cut losses and close the stores. He quite a few people upset on con call as you can imagine.

[anonymous-user]

Doesn't Carphone Warehouse own Mobiles.co.uk so they are effectively competing against themselves anyway?

[TPSA7514]

They have been ste for years and its no great loss

[Challo]

TPSA7514 said:

They have been ste for years and its no great loss

Say that to all the people that will lose their jobs. Not exactly a great time to be finding out your job is gone, and little hope of finding a new one in the current climate.

[Gecko1978]

Challo said:

TPSA7514 said:

They have been ste for years and its no great loss

Say that to all the people that will lose their jobs. Not exactly a great time to be finding out your job is gone, and little hope of finding a new one in the current climate.

Yeah 2900 people its a fking great loss to them, their families etc. While the store itself i.could care less about the people who work their did not want to.wake up to this.

[Countdown]

Challo said:

My friend works for ID Mobile and was on the con call this morning with the Carphone Warehouse management. He reckons around 3000 redundancies, but some staff will be moved into the Carphone Warehouse outlets located inside Curry's existing stores.

Its been loss making for a while, and Covid 19 has meant they decided to cut losses and close the stores. He quite a few people upset on con call as you can imagine.

I think the quarterly rent payments being due next week may also have had an impact.