Supermarkets and Retail

My local had a sign up for Scan and Go a while back, ‘see
staff member to process transaction’. I had a feeling people had been abusing the system?

I stopped using it as everyone I used it I managed to flag the system so it would force me to have to scan 5 items with the attendant so it wasn’t any quicker. I don’t see how using the new trolley system would stop theft compared to the original scan and go. I would have liked to see a system like the Amazon Go stores here in Australia but it ended up being a bit of a scam with humans in India checking and processing transactions.

I don’t have a problem with third party sellers being involved and shipping items directly to the consumer, but if the major retailer wants to list these products, they should be listed with the same terms as ones sold directly by the major retailer. Not this guff with special shipping/returns policies and palming off of after-sales service to the third party reseller.

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According to today’s Herald Sun, booklovers are invited to lend a hand next Thursday (July 10) at 10.30am to form a human chain to pass on the books from 86 Bourke Street to 32 Bourke Street. The old bookshop space will be turned into a Chinese restaurant.

That’s one good thing about Amazon I have never have had them offload me to a third party seller as far as returns go. I recently purchased something that was sold from Harris Technology a refurbished computer small form factor that came with a laptop like power supply however the one HT provided was faulty.i purchased a replacement for $21 from Amazon so iI called HT the following day request a partial refund for the replacement power supply or a new one sent to me. If u went to a store it would have been dealt with on the spot, online orders should be no different.
They said email customer support with the Amazon order number. I was expecting a reply later that day two days later still didn’t got one so contacted Amazon support and after they wanted to see a video of it failing which wasn’t easy to do as I already had it set up using the replacement power supply they still issued me with a refund anyway.

I would not recommend you purchase anything from HT. The fact is Kogan and My Deal etc need to have just as good support as Amazon in order to succeed in my view. Yes it’s hard for them to compete but they have to they don’t have a chance with Amazon as their competitor. If MyDeal had better after sales support they probably would have succeeded.

I guess that’s the power of the Amazon brand. For any third party sellers wishing to sell via them you need to abide by our rules, be it returns, refunds or postage. They are such a powerhouse that these sellers simply can’t afford to not be apart of the Amazon journey.

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The only problem is that Amazon need competition or without it they will be as bad as Harris Technology . Replying to messages timely or not being as tight when items are returned cannot be that expensive. They may need to use AI but as long as it us a reasonable experience it’s fine but not answering phones and making people wait days is not OK this day and age. In times to come HT may go out of business and blame Amazon for it. In my view it was the failure of HT meeting customer standards is what caused it nothing to do with Amazon.

Harris Technology’s still around? I thought Officeworks swallowed them up?

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Wesfarmers sold it off in 2014 - the current company bought it in 2016

Yes they were owned by Coles Myer and West farmers but not anymore.

In Victoria branches will close in Ballarat Central, Bannockburn, Malop Street in Geelong, Korumburra, South Melbourne and Yarram.

In Queensland branches will close in Malanda and Tully North and in Tasmania Kings Meadows and Queenstown.

Mecca’s Bourke Street Mall flagship store will open on August 8.

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My Sister works in a Bank. They had three banks
in her regional area the other year now they have one, and traffic is still declining. She said customer base is largely baby boomers and prior, mainly people who are not confident with doing anything online, or don’t ’believe in online’. She often goes on about how many bank customers of today are just time wasters and the whole branch model is pretty much dead.

A lot of the transactions you would need to go to a branch for are not necessarily anymore. When I brought my first car in 2005 I went to the bank and paid via bank cheque when I brought a car about a year or so ago I paid via EFT.
Personally with the amount of fraud going on getting a bank cheque for big purchases makes a lot of sense.

A few banks have indicated that’s where these cost savings are closures are going to, fraud departments which have ever increasing budgets as banks try to bolster people’s data.

Some media keep pushing the line that the closures are all about boosting profits yada yada. Fraud departments are very costly and this is a cost that is continuing to increase. I’ve had two instances in prior times in which funds have been taken from my account and thanks to the work from the said bank, all was recovered. Cycle back in time and that process was much more troublesome, if you would even get your funds back at all.

I refuse to bank with anyone who doesn’t have physical branches. the times when i need a branch, i need a branch. i can’t sit on the phone for hours.

one example is changing my name and gender on my accounts. With my current bank all i needed to do was take a gender recognition certificate to the bank and it was done in 10 mins. for my electricity i had to go to a JP, get a certified copy and post it in, it can take upwards of a month to be processed.

having someone to talk to just makes things that much easier

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Kmart at Broadmeadows Central recently had a renovation and installed gates at the entrance/exit, similar to Coles. While moving the checkouts to the front of the store by the looks of the image.

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Oh those gates at the door look awful.

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Doesn’t look like the most welcoming entrance to a store.