Jessops bad attitude

I find when you complain and don't get any satisfaction find out their press or communications office. These have way more power than cs or call centre staff.

I had reason to complain about some facilities and the handling of my complaint.

They met be on site asked me for my suggestions. Next year they emailed be telling me why they had done and asked me to tell them how they did. It was amazing. Everything I said had been implemented by them.

http://www.connectotel.com/marcus/ceoemail.html

Usually gets handled by the Executive Team, but way better than complaining to call centres/press office etc. The only time it has ever failed was with Jessops.

As an example, I have a direct e-mail/phone to a BT broadband engineer after e-mailing the CEO following repeat problems. It still goes wrong, but gets fixed within 24 hours instead of having to go through the whole call centre experience.

Back in the late Seventies (yes I'm an old git!) we used to take trade exams to prove our worth in the retail photographic industry, this included producing a sealed film photo shoot to be marked,a written paper on photographic theory and a interview examination down in London on current technology.

I'm pleased to say I passed. Sadly the pay was so bad I had to go get a real (boring) job at The Post Office!

Sadly staff in (camera) shops receive little training nowadays,are rarely photographers themsleves and are almost certainly on minimum wage! Sad times all round and retail staff still get treated poorly so hardly surprising what we get back!

Thing is, that i.e. Canon/Nikon has "representatives" that look after number of shops, they visit them, bring "propaganda" materials, "educate" staff (especially that part of them that are just part time, seasonal workers without any real knowledge on the subject) in what is the "best" brand, etc.
I knew someone who worked for Jessops (London), I heard interesting stories about managers filling shops with part time students and cheap workforce without any photo knowledge, etc. She left Jessops to work for Nikon and work as such "representative", I remember her saying "now I will have to convince shop staff that Nikon does good compacts - it will be tough ".
Pentax hasn't got that (apart of some guys sometimes visiting Pro dealers - like SRS - although to be honest the one I spoke to at SRS some time ago, Steve I think, didn't help me, he was only promising, so not a good experience for me anyway), so not a surprise Pentax brand has no real force in these big shops.
This is not to say there are no knowledgeable staff at Jessops, you can still find them there.

Times have changed,

We freely sold Pentax,Olympus,Ricoh (odd things those),Konica,Minolta,Practica (more my budget then),Chinon,Nikon,Yashica and more AND were expected to 'learn' each model as it came into stock. Mind you three or four years was a good model life then and old ones kept on shelves as alternatives. We were only pushed to sell as much value to customers rather than any make or model.

The only rep I knew was the Leica one who would drop the latest model round my neck as he came breezing into the shop before going off for a whiskey with the manager! 'Here lad, have a play with that'. Never sold one of them! Plenty of Pentaxes though.

In my opinion Jessops is to photography as PC World is to computing.

However, the odd store does stand out above the others; Jessops of Islington gave me impartial advice (certainly confirmed my belief the K-x was a great camera), sold me a K-x, then later sold me a lens at their online price despite me being unable to reserve it using their standard online procedure.

At the opposite end of the spectrum are Jessops Swindon (my local store); "Pentax? Wha...? Do they even still make cameras? No I don't think we do them".

I generally avoid Jessops but they can be handy when I simply must have something the same day

I think Jessops is uber corporate and thatin general terms is a very bad thing- if possible we should support small independants- to be fair I think they are fantastically competitive.

All Jessops have in their favour is high street presence and the occasional over stocked bargain- prices there generally are not attractive and the staff in general are typical retail workers- underpaid, overworked and unhappy.

I've only ever bought lens wipes from them.

Actually I have always gotten pretty good customer service at PC World. The Jessops staff I have encountered, OTOH, don't even seem to know what either of the words 'customer' or 'service' mean.

...Or at least they have their own definitions of these terms. Something along the lines of:

'Customers' = annoying people who hang around the shop and keep trying to interrupt my chit-chat with my colleagues about what we got up to on the weekend.

'Service' = Chit-chat with my colleagues about what we got up to on the weekend and ignore these pesky 'customers' until they give up and go away.

Same store, same lens, same experiance. Only I paid in £10 vouchers and he had to scan them individually - he was very professional throught out restored my faith in Jessops. Shame most of their stores don't have the same employment standards.

I have to say that my local branch of Jessops (Inverness, round trip of 252 miles) is both blessed and cursed with
it's staff.
Yes, they do have their fair share of numpties and the staff turnover of these appears to be very high.rarely have I seen the same young face twice within a year. And they do seem to favour a particular brand each month.
Their blessing comes in the guise of a gentleman of older years whom I believe is called Dave/David.
He is very knowledgeable, extremely courteous and very patient, especially with those new to the world of photography. I have heard him on a number of occassions ask a customer intelligent questions to help ascertain
exactly what this customer would be better off purchasing. Rather than pushing them towards what the company
are promoting that week.
He is a great asset to Jessops both in the Inverness branch and the corporate whole.
It will be a very sad day when this gentlemen no longer works there.
By the way I have been told admiringly by other members of the branch staff "......well he used to be a professional photographer. So he knows loads and loads about the technical stuff"

I rest my case.