throw new ArgumentException (String, String, Exception)
I'm going to tell a story, that I figured I shouldn't but it might help illustrate.
My company did some work for someone, I made a bad call, I knew that had problems but thought the worst might have been over. Things took a turn for the worse. The owner of the other firm said to me politely that he didn't not know what to do, my bill was going to push him over the edge, he simply didn't have the cash flow. I was able to see from a simple land registry search he had sold his house already to provide capital. In the end I decided to take one on the chin. I took about 10% of the money owed and wrote down the loss, thankfully software sometimes has high margins. That 10% would have been more than I would ever have received if I had forced matters. He could also have easily turned round and said go fish, wait your place in turn. HMRC would have been waaay ahead. Instead he gave me what would have covered my core expenses almost, whilst allowing him one more payroll. The company of course did not survive much longer.
Things going bad, are always bad. Sometimes someone despirately clinging on to hope is nothing more than human nature. They are not criminals.
Some people who've no experience in business, often it appears the real world love to be a loud mouthed "anti-corperationist". Singling out Gift Vouchers makes this understandable to the average man on the street. They however will likely bear the costs in other ways.
throw new ArgumentException (String, String, Exception)
part of the problem is perhaps most retail workers are pretty much unskilled workers. they may be experienced in retail, but with comet and jessops going very recently on top of hmv, and on top of the other closures in the past few months like woolworths etc, literally thousands of retail workers losing jobs at once is going to make it hard for them to get other suitable jobs. of course the same can also happen for skilled workers. close down a mine and lots of skilled workers have nowhere else to go as mines don't just open up often
and it's taxpayers pockets that have to cover a lot of the costs of these closures, from lack of rates to local governments to unemployment benefits and even redundancy payments if the company can't pay. that side of things puts issues of "overpriced" goods and bad customer service into perspective
well there really is a lot of reasons why they've ended up in trouble, from hit by piracy and internet sales and VAT loopholes, corporation tax loopholes and then everything else on top. with that double or triple blow it's understandable to some degree that they would struggle to manage it. without knowing a lot more about internal management it's hard to comment accurately on it. i'm sure like many companies they will have made mistakes but also tried their best at the same time
Irrelevant, people paid for a cash-equivalent token only usable in their stores, and did so in good faith. HMV just ignored their value despite having not been redeemed, and so cheated people out of their money. Nevermind that most of them would have been included in Christmas cards and whatnot as gifts, so they ruined many a person's Christmas on top of theft.
throw new ArgumentException (String, String, Exception)
People were suggesting very early on, before Amazon was the behemoth it is now, that they should go into online sales. The management wilfully ignored them, as they 'knew best'. That's arrogance to me. If you look at the comments on the article, lots of staff are saying they also suggested online presence, and were rebuffed. HMV were in a position to be the online supplier of CDs, DVDs and video games, already being the biggest bricks and mortar supplier. They sat on their 'arrises, assuming that they could maintain the status quo. They were wrong. They were on the gravy train and thought it would last forever.
Can't see either of these coming to pass, what I think we might see is places with PCW and Currys stores losing one or the other to save retail space costs.
No if I had to point at future closures then I'm going to nominate GAME, Waterstones or Thorntons.
Bought mine from Rombouts UK - don't like the output of these Nespresso machines as any I've tried always seem to have a plasticy after taste. Just wished there was a common format pod that lots of coffee manufacturer would use. (Yes, I know, I'm naive)
There is - ESE. It's like a teabag, but for coffee. There's a 3rd fitting that goes in the handle thing, so you get single, double or ESE. Easy as.
http://www.gallacoffee.co.uk/coffee-...offee-pod.html
No it isn't. It is in administration. Very unlikely but in theory it could come out the other side. However you are right in that the company that is/was HMV aren't calling the shots any more so it is unfair to slag them off for not honouring the vouchers - that is up to the the administrators to decide.
i don't know myself why they didn't do something bigger sooner, and i don't mean the download market, but the online one. they were so late to the game in setting up an online store, i'm not sure when it started, but around the turn of the millenium for example you had cdwow, play and amazon offering cd's and dvd's way cheaper than hmv. at the same time p2p was picking up with napster and earlier pre torrent programs. of course in the UK broadband wasn't commonplace back then, and even pc's in homes weren't that common. so at the time you had a few early adopters that got into p2p and started downloading for free, and stopped buying cds at least, and those who did want to buy as p2p took too long or they didn't have computers at home to do so, would buy online. and back in the early days you could place orders by phone to play. so hmv were hit by both sides. itunes wasn't out for another couple of years so there was no legal download market. even when itunes started, it would have been difficult for hmv to try and compete as they didn't have the same type of capital and power as apple, and perhaps record companies would have wanted to stick with one download service to find out how it went first. as itunes took off, home pc's took off and i heard a number of people in the early to mid 00's saying they bought pc's and got broadband simply to download music for free. a £200 computer let them do that and about £20 a month ISP. cheaper than buying cd's. by that time hmv was a dead man walking. i'm surprised they managed for so long.
to some degree the record companies, which are now not really really companies but huge global corporations that are an umbrella to many different things from hardware to movies and television and music, were late to the game too, and let piracy get a huge grip as there were no legal alternatives, it was easy to do, no-one was getting caught, and with tens or hundreds of millions of people doing it, it must have been alright surely? so by the time legal options were available, people were used to not paying and many stuck to it
but then think back 120 years ago. no record industry. musicians played music and got paid directly. no middle men making money, no retailers, distributers, managers. maybe one day it will go back to something like that with artists selling music direct via some ebay/itunes option. but then how are you going to find out about new artists? who is going to pay for music videos? maybe instead of a few artists making millions you will have millions of artists making thousands
And the next company to go on the High Street is....drum Roll please!
Blockbuster!!!
Old puter - still good enuff till I save some pennies!
I know a lot of people are blaming the internet but I think the Government has to take the blame here as well, you give people less money to spend while prices are still going up and of course people are going to be spending less, I know its not a luxury but just look at the places closing down, electrical shops, entertainment and dvd rental, all of them those little extra things you may buy yourself.
Jon
throw new ArgumentException (String, String, Exception)
Saracen (19-01-2013)
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)