I often pop into the local jessops store, just to see if they have anything decent in stock. today I got to see what the canon 100-400 feels like in the hand when on the 350D, (will be along time before I can own it though, and i won't buy it from jessops).

You must be their favourite customer. :) I tend to leave a nose print on a high street shop, and buy online.

LOL - This explains Jessops high prices due to the window cleaner bills :D

Hi

I wouldn't use Jessops if you paid me (well, perhaps not<g>) - I always found Jessops kind of analogous to using PC World - staff often well-meaning but not very knowledgeable although I am sure I generalise here.

However, once I discovered Park Cameras about two years ago (www.parkcameras.co.uk) in the South East of England (Burgess Hill and Haywards Heath), I haven't looked back. It is run *and* staffed by professionals, many of them are pro photographers in their spare time who work at Park to supplement their income. This means they know what they talk about. And if you get to know them, they are very loyal and you get loads of discount and get invited as a VIP to various events they attend during the year where you get to play with gear!

Just my twopenneth
Didi

I am soooo angry!!!!
I went into my local Jessops to talk to them about a D80 about 3 days ago, I asked about price matching, they they do not price match, so I informed them that the price on their website was £20.00 cheaper (using sale20 voucher) The guy in the store said if I printed the page off the web he could do it for the same price.
So I printed the page last night (Fri 26th Jan) and went to the store today (Sat 27th) I asked to buy the D80, They went into their store room and came back with new D80 boxed (although the box did look a bit tatty) They then rung up the price which was £20.00 more than my print out, I then showed them the web printout (to the same guy I saw 3 days before) but he said that was a web offer and could not match, I explained that it was him that told me to get web print out and come back to get the £20.00 off, but he kept telling me that offer was web only. At this stage I was getting a little angry explaining to him that I was saving his company postage if I bought the D80 from him now in store, (free delivery if bought off the INTERNET from Jessups) but He would not budge and kept telling me he could not sell me the D80 for the same price as their website.We now had a shop full of customers who could not believe what they were hearing!! when asked if he would rather loose a sale than do a deal he said he could not match his own company website price and that was that!!! So up till now Iv'e held back judgement on Jessups, well not now, I still find it hard to believe that they let me walk out of the shop without selling me the D80 I even had my credit card out ready to pay.They have lost a sale and a future customer as I will not be going back there again (see " customers" photo in my gallery)
They did not loose me seconds, It was about 10 minuets :)

LOL - you can't say that we did not warn you. It's just crazy.

I Know now Rob, But unless it happed to me I would never have believed it:D
So now i don't have a D80 to play with tomorrow:(

Guess that's another "bad vote" Lello eh? I'm wondering if in fact they are doing a new show for Jeremy Beadle..doing lots of filming..you actually thinks that some guy's going to come in and take his disguise off and everyone's going to have a laugh at your expense..wouldn't be so bad if that was the case..
Al.

Lello,
As someone who works in a Jessops branch, your story horrifies me !!!!!!

To ask you to get a print out for us to use as a 'voucher' for that sale I feel is an inconvenience for any customer. BUT, to ask that of you, only to refuse you after you've been and got that printout is absolutely f***ing appalling! What are they playing about at???!
I would never EVER even dream of asking a customer to come back with a printout for that voucher sale unless I was absolutely sure I could honour what I was asking the customer to do. I would also apologise to the customer for asking for the printout in the first place (but that's another story)..even if the customer DOESN'T have a printout, it's an expensive and valuable sale, so I would probably still ask the shop manager to authorise that deal for you!



Lello,
IF you still want that D80, and you still want to use Jessops to get it, try this number;

Jessops customer liason (head office in Leicester) 0116 232 6111

Explain what happened to you, what a dissapointment it was, and that you went in to buy that D80 but was refused ;)


Incidentally, one of the things the folks at the branch should have done for you is to phone their regional manager to make that deal for you (depending on the branch, but some store managers don't have the powers they use to)....I'm sure their regional manager would NOT be happy to hear what happened to you. We should be looking for reasons to sell to customers, not reasons to get them out of the store empty handed!

I was so sorry to read your posting,
I hope you get your D80......they're cracking cameras

I'd also like to add, Lello.....quite frankly I'm LIVID for you! ........in theory you SHOULD have a D80 in front of you now, and have a jessops receipt with it!

I still just CANNOT believe what happened to you today!

Please let us know (or aleast PM me) if you ring the tel number I gave you...I'd like to know what happens

Joe thanks for your reply, There is a PM for you to read, I ordered the D80 on the Net Slightly more money but free delivery, It was not the money issue as most people on this site know I have harping on about getting the D80 since Christmas, I was at work this morning and all I could think about was getting to town at lunch time to buy the D80 and have the rest of today and all day Sunday to play with it. So when you walk into a shop to buy £500 + Cam (They did not even have to do a sales pitch on me ) and walk away without something that I had been dreaming about for months is somewhat frustrating to say the least.

Just a note following on about my visit to Jessops. The reason I went into the store last Wednesday was to look at a lens to compliment the D80 I was going to buy. I had been speaking to Don over the last week or so about lens's and between Don and me we came up with the Sigma 70-200f2.8 lens. So last Wednesday asked the guy in Jessops if he had the Sigma in stock for me to look at (to give me an idea of size/weight etc) he said they only had the Canon mount, so he got a new lens out of the box and attached to a Canon 400D for me to look at, I had a play it (very nice lens indeed) and at that point is when I asked him for a price for D80 body only and the sigma (which he said would have to be special order for the Nikon mount. The price was just over £1300.00 so when I showed up on Saturday and we had a disagreement about the price (at least £20.00) we did not as far as talking about the lens, I'm not saying I would have put an order in for the lens, but who knows, maybe if they would have been more customer focused!! the point is the guy knew that I was not a time waster when I showed on Saturday up to buy the d80, and even if I had not ordered the lens Yesterday
If I came out a happy shopper then I might have gone back for the lens at some point. So potentially they may have lost a sale of over £1300.00 (maybe they don't really want to make money?) And I might still phone the number that Joe gave me just to vent my frustration out on them. (I could have been out today taking photographs with my new cam :( )

I imagine that customers of Jessops ask advice and guidance before buying a DSLR. For you to walk in and say I want a ...... and a high spec lens I would have thought the sale assistance would be more than willing to snatch your credit card and debit £20 less. I remember when I purchased by Fuji S2 pro, i originally wanted a Nikon D100 but after two hours of playing in the shop (Jacobs) I arrived at the S2. The sales assistance was very patient and helpful. Afterall Its was a £1800 purchase after lens, bag and batteries!

Slightly different angle, for me its not all about cost its service, quality and warranty. I usually buy my lenses from Grays of Westminster, not the cheapest but they do offer a two year warranty on all purchases. I always insist on free carriage or pop-in in person if in London.

I hate paying carriage especially if I am paying £1000+ on equipment, least they can do is put it on a carrier for free.

It's obvious from this that the service does vary from one branch to another, or indeed one sales advisor to another.
Like most retail outlets we have what's known as a monthly 'gap busters'....a mystery shopper to everyone else. It's one of several ways head office can get a snapshot (pardon the pun) view of current staff training levels areas of strength and areas where something is needed....
It's clear something is needed here!

Lello, if you call that number , it doesn't just increase the chance of help for yourself, but it also quite effectively turns a spotlight on to that particular branch...head office will then ask the branch the 'whys' and 'whats' and 'wheres' of improvement.


In summary, the more customers who express unhappiness about Jessops service they've received DIRECT TO CUSTOMER LIASON at Jessops, the more likely something will change at Jessops.
I would actively encourage people to ring head office, customer liason 0116 232 6111

Unfortunately, I can only relay what's being said on here back as an employee.......believe it or not it has much more impact if the customers approach Jessops themselves with concerns, rather than post here.

Most of all.......enjoy your cameras, and hope you get some good shots

When there was just the Jessop on Hinkley Road Leicester it was great. Then they expanded to have shops all over the place and things can be a bit hit or miss. Camera repair appears to have been contracted out and I had a OM10 stuck shutter fixed only for it go wrong about a year later and I don't reckon I'd put more than 12 films though it.

OTOH I've had good mail-order service from them, and they can be knowledgeable (but probably not on a Saturday afternoon). I was rather disappointed by the Hinkley Road Branch when I popped in again after a, mumbly-mumbly number of years, not the same place as I recalled at all, totally different atmosphere. Oh well!

Hey guys, get off Eponas back, She has made a comment which I think is justified. Keep it friendly and no taking sides.

Alan

Jessops has just come in the top ten retailers, as published by 'which'.

How the hell did that happen?

I wonder who does Which's survey's, must be a real numpty ??

nirofo.

Depends which market sector you are aiming at. If your target market is Joe Public looking for a point and shoot consumer level digicam, then I can understand how Jessops come to be top of the pile. For this market sector, they are generally good. For people who don't want specialist equipment, and can't be bothered to do lots of research on their product first, Jessops are not bad.

If you are an enthusiast, looking for some of the more obscure stuff, and have done lots of market research first, then you may well know more than the bloke in the shop serving you (on that particular product). This is not surprising as not all staff can be expected to have the same depth of knowledge as you, having spent hours and hours researching. Under such circumstances, the unknowing member of the public will come out of the shop happy, the enthusiast will come out disappointed.

So true Ducan

Maybe they should change their discription from photographic retailer to just retailer because the product information is not much better than you would get from Argos.

Has Jessops Bubble burst ?

Share price drop after 3rd profit warning.

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2044778,00.html

Looks like you could bag yourself a load of photographic gear if you have a spare £15 million. :D

I think the profit warning is due to a drop in sales of DSLRs. I reckon the market is saturated, and all retailers will feel the pinch. I am sure Jessops will survive. After all, over the last decade or two they have been absorbing most of the independent photographic retailers, so a little rude awakening will not do them too much harm.

The drop in sales due to stock availablity of DSLR's is old news, which attributed the first drop in share price and appaered in the report just ofter Christmas.
In this third press release we've had from our boss at the shop, there's a few other details which do not seem to appear in this article, or one or two others I've also seen. One or two items seem quite up beat.
For example, despite all the doom and gloom this particular Newspaper article above indicates, Jessops market share in some areas actually went up.
Some of the numbers we've seen can logically be attributed to a bit of number crunching, and shuffling of those numbers.
As I posted previuosly on the other Jessop related thread, the introduction of the new style World Camera Centres, with the first opening at Cardiff, or the acquisition of a few more companies, including Tecno, are not the actions of a company that's so really hard up.
As an employee, it's far from me to comment my thoughts to the detail why's and to speculate the future too much. We have some pretty good reasons and ideas behind the headlines in our shop, as I'm sure other employees do in their shops......However....
now would be a VERY good time to buy quite a few Jessops shares! ;)

It does remind me of the days of working for 3M.....a few weeks before the first Gulf war we were 'encouraged' to think about company shares...a day into the war shares went through the roof, related all of course to the Drugs and Pharmaceutics product bases 3M had their fingers in.
Likewise, the 'explosion' of digital technology in the photographic market lead to many considering those growth margins to be the norm, when in fact realistically they had to come back down at some point...food for thought, perhaps?

They done good for me
 

I have just bought a Canon 24-105 f4 IS L from Jessops World Camera Centre in Birmingham and have to say they have have been very helpful, sorted me out a good deal and changed the lens with out question when I though it wan'st up to L series standard (see post 9 in this thread)

Credit where credit's due :)

Jessops Catalogue. Issue 1. 2007:
Page 13: Nikon Sb800; £299.99.
Page 29; Nikon Sb800; £287.99.
!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
Al.
:confused: :eek: :rolleyes:

Do you think they would price match in this instance? :)

Went in the local branch today, after posting the previous..guess what...SB800 was in the cabinet showing a price of £329.99!
Al.

not unless you got a printed out piece of evidence of the exact same flash. :p