Does anyone still shop at HMV?

Wasn't "looking for it", but they had a Wedding Present (disambiguation: band) DVD, £18

Cambridge Circus Fopp a waste of time Blue Cross-wise: the most expensive CDs had the stickers (and in fact these were largely items I've never seen in the racks there before; either they'd been in storage or shipped in from HMV?).

HMV Piccadilly Circus a much better proposition. Pretty much everything discounted, inc. box sets - only new/recent releases and items already on sale or in 2-fer offers excluded. I bought the AR Kane singles collection for £7.50 (Amazon £10 currently) and the 2006 2CD reissue of Pretenders s/t for £9 (no longer available on Amazon).

Are Fopp honouring vouchers?

I didn't really appreciate the impact of administration on pre-paid goods; imagine pre-ordering a high-end camera from Jessops for £2k and then going to pick it up at the end of last week...

Fopp aren't honouring vouchers, no, or so someone says on Twitter at any rate.

Balls.

Put it this way: If Fopp were, they'd be saying so in news/twitter/etc..

Well, I'll find out for sure in about 20min.

Fopp a waste of time Blue Cross-wise: the most expensive CDs had the stickers (and in fact these were largely items I've never seen in the racks there before; either they'd been in storage or shipped in from HMV?).

same goes for Bristol Fopp ...

fuckers don't even know how to go out of business properly

if they had put a blue sticker on the 10cc boxset i'd have got it, but as it is, its £8 cheaper on amazon ..

What is odd is there seems to be no consistency in what is getting stickered. People on here have mentioned both the Slade and 10cc box sets not being stickered in their stores, but both were blue crossed in Cardiff.

I hear that no games are being stickered.

Why bother stickering anything? Everything (bar games and tech stuff) is being discounted, what you have now is stock that has stickers on.

It means "This stuff has got to go"..

yeah, i think they're being pretty random re the stickers.
i saw staff last week adding them, and they weren't following any lists ...
just walking around and putting them on ...

Not a lot of blue-crossed CDs as yet in Nottingham Fopp, and they're not doing at-till discounts on other stock. Blue-crossed CDs are racked separately in each genre section.

Will give Reading HMV a look tonight.

Fopp vouchers definitely not being accepted at the moment.

I bought a Blue Cross John Adams 2-CD comp for £6 anyway.

I'm not going to miss the hordes of teenagers queuing up outside the Glasgow Buchanan St branch at half seven in the morning to see Biffy Clyro or whoever

I object to Biffy Clyro as much as the next guy but it's sad that such closures make it harder for kids to meet their idols, especially when some venues don't let 14-18-year-olds into gigs.

http://a4.ec-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/116/1f4dbcfa54b7478e9bcfbb5aeb4e8e95/l.jpg

will probly be able to meet Biffy Clyro at Burger King soon enough

I think it's mainly because it made me feel old seeing them all lined up there (I'm not even that old)

^^^ also proving how excellent the current knockdown price of £10 per t-shirt is ..

unrelated i know but has anyone heard about PC World possibly going into administration, heard something about troubling sales figures on BBC News

Fopp's full price albums are usually as big a rip-off as HMV's, yet hardly anyone every seems to comment on this

Because the £3, £5, and £7 price point racks are usually so damn good.

xpost because no one goes to Fopp to buy full priced items?

Blockbuster's gone into admin I think. Holy smokes

Yeah, it's gone

wait a min whats this about pc world? that would mean Currys too then. Hell, theres gonna be nothing left in my town

Re Blockbuster: I think once South Park has based an episode around how your business model is a relic of a bygone age and your stores are completely empty then it shouldn't be a surprise when said model finally runs out of legs.

It was news to me it wasn't already gone. Didn't it go into administration before, a couple of years back?

Currys / PC World were predicting good business over Christmas due to demand for tablets and Comet going bust. I'd be a little surprised if they went under immediately.

Had a look in Reading branch, nothing to report...

I was in my local Blockbuster last Saturday at 6.30pm seeing if they had any blurays on special. One other guy in the a
store. I thought if this is how busy it is on a Saturday evening then the jig is up.

Coincidentally I was in HMV the same day using my voucher. If you've got shares in Sainsburys you may want to get rid of them.

blockbusters in my hometown (south wimbledon) closed before xmas, was amazed it lasted so long. i think there's one in crouch end that was open before xmas.

FOPP was a bit of a disapointment at Xnmas, went there thinking I'd be able to get cheap King Crimson & Peter Hammill cds since I think both had been in there for <£5 most trips I'd been in there. Only to find they were >£10.

Think all I bought this year was a couple of Rockabilly compis dedicated to individual labels and then a couple of books which came to £5 for the pair. Didn't get to spend much time in there as I was heading elsewhere or coming to the end of a trip into town and had less dosh than I'd had on previous trips. But definitely seemed to come across less bargains than I had.

Now need to catch the local HMV before it fully disappears, but bet I've missed most of the stuff I'd've been looking for. Not sure why I didn't hit there on Monday. Mind on other things I think.

thin pickings at the big hmv in glasgow, but i was in the mood to spend so i picked up

To Terrapin: Hartford '77 - Grateful Dead
Geechee Recollections/Sweet Earth Flying - Marion Brown
Taschen book about Jean Renoir
What a Carve up on DVD

all blue x'ed

HMV store in Limerick shut down today

Fopp staff in the branch i went to yesterday were pretty optimistic about someone coming along to pick the company up. Felt they had a decent core business in vinyl and well-priced CDs and that shifting so much room to tech / DVDs diluted that.

Still have no idea what the high street is going to look like in the future. Only so many slot machines and coffee shops the market can accommodate. It's mentioned upthread but the idea of places where people, particularly young people, can just hang out and browse without necessarily needing to make a purchase seems to be rapidly falling away. People have been going on about the corporatisation of public space and the problems with shopping-as-a-leisure-activity for decades but i'm not sure much thought has gone into what happens after that stops working.

Rent is the killer for most places. Those refurbished high streets and fancy malls cost money.

Not mine but:

Re-enact Dawn of the Dead but visiting a British shopping centre in a couple of years' time.

It has gotten shitter and shitter and quite correctly died in its directionlessnessless

I will always love it (in this case Hull, Whitefriargate) for supplying me with the following;

Ramones 'It's alive"- in about 1981 . When, I swear, even 5 ears later NOBODY liked the Ramones. This one was really VFM. All their hits and a double gatefold for £4.49

Unsafe at Any Speed - the smaller sister of This is Boston, Not La.

You kids have no idea.

And no, I don't too

5 ears and VFM. Wot a wanquer

Retail predictions for the next ten years are that the high street and shopping centres will see a major decline as e-commerce grows. Online shopping has recently picked up the title e-tail ( see what they did?) and will continue to grow until it becomes the dominant purchase channel. The fear mongers predict a high street full of bet freds, pound shops and proles hanging around looking for spare change and fag butts. The more positive retailers believe that in order to maintain a presence, stores must not only offer quality of stock and good price points but also a shopping "experience" The likes of The Apple Store, Hollister and Lush are the future. It's about being quirky, interesting and having an offer that makes people want to come to your location. I think that's quite exciting, retail is going to have to work harder for peoples money.
As far as HMV is concerned, I'm quite pleased it has finally collapsed (although not that folk have lost their jobs) I'm hoping that all the indie record shops that have been struggling over the last few years will come back to fruition now the giant has toppled over. Those record shops have that unique offer that match the predictions of retail nerds and market researchers across the land.

It looks like the Limerick branch of HMV which was closed today is having an occupation by its unpaid workers.
http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/hmv-staff-stage-limerick-sit-ins-581409.html

Quite looking forward to seeing some of the landlords who pushed rents up and up and up during the boom get shafted tbh.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-21027043

Employees have said that they are in talks with the company's receiver tonight - they are looking for assurances that all of their wages will be paid in full.

Statutory redundancy pay is capped at £430 a week so they wont lose out much if they get nothing from HMV. I have been at 3 failed companies in the last decade and every time we just robbed anything that wasn't fixed to the floor, went for a sesh and let off some steam about how shit the company was. They shouldn't be wasting their time demanding assurances/occupying. Just borrow a transit and load the mother up people.