I found that HMV was reasonably priced. XCom went down to about £25 within about a month of release. On the website I admit the prices were sometimes a lot but in store I found they were fine, especially for CDs. The 2 for £10 deal they have on loads of CDs is basically what made my collection of CDs, I don't know where I'll get them from now. Apart from charity shops obviously.
The Closure of HMV
- Thread starter Tom_green_day
- Start date
Now that is way more interesting and pertinent that all this "Blame the internet" horse shit since it's been fairly obvious for a while that the music industry has it's head up it's arse and that rates and rent on retail space are out of hand. A retailer i used to work for in the early 2000s was paying half a million in rent a year for it's out of the way London shop.PieBrotherTB said:
Reading these comments, I've learnt alot. didn't actually realise that HMV went beyond the UK. And to those talking about that grandfather that robbed HMV of 3 games because they wouldn't accept his voucher, did you know what the games were?
Euro Truck Simulator 2
Rail Simulator
Sims 3 Town Life
Well I guess he doesn't really love his little grandchild anyway.
Euro Truck Simulator 2
Rail Simulator
Sims 3 Town Life
Well I guess he doesn't really love his little grandchild anyway.
Hardly surprising, i'[m actually surprised it didn't happen earlier they overcharge for everything.
It's a shame! HMV is pretty class, but I'm willing to bet a lot of it's down to the increasing online market.
I found that books lacking an RRP written on them can be overpriced. I found a textbook with no RRP priced £50. Amazon priced the book at £34 which I would say was accurate for the RRP in my experience of buying these sorts of textbooks.PieBrotherTB said:
My main concern with the pricing systems is the lack of competitiveness when you look at compare them to online retailers. I have to admit that I have little knowledge of the laws surrounding the publisher's pricing rights and how ultimately a price is decided upon. But how is it that supermarkets can charge less than RRP on release day for certain books?
In addition Digital downloads provide the means to I can buy a book for less than half the price and have it on my e-reader in under a minute without having to visit a store. But if it was the same/similar price I am more than willing to pay for a hard copy.
Books are different to other forms of entertainment and that is one of the reasons I would find it a great loss if Waterstones closed down due to the educational aspect. The area I live in has an average literacy age for adults, of an 8 year old level and any retail outlet that promotes an interest in reading is a great loss.
The closure may not mean much for avid readers, as they would purchase the books online via their own established means. However, for those with no great interest in reading having a giant reminder on their local high street is a good thing.
Damn. Mind you, even before this collapse into administration, the HMV stores in my city consolidated into their smallest store so I have suspected something was up for a little while.
I really liked HMV, but in the last few years I have bought nothing except for the odd DVD there. I am not a fan of digitally downloading music (I have found the reformatting and compression to make a perceptible difference to the sound quality), but I could rarely find anything I liked in store. The Metal sections were poor-at-best, particularly as I was into some quite obscure Scandinavian bands; and in the last few years I have got into the EBM and Industrial scene - of which I found HMV carried absolutely jack-all, even on their website. In terms of DVDs, they were great for small one-off films but any type of anime (another recent discovery for me) and boxed-sets could be absurdly over-priced (Elfen Lied non-collectors edition for £50, each individual series of Stargate for £60), that was if they had what I wanted in stock at all - it took me forever to get a hold of NCIS, as they only ever seemed to have Series 4 in stock. So, Amazon it has had to be, and the once-great store (a good few years ago the Metal sections were awesome) has died off, as it seems my experiences are not unique and must have driven away customers.
That doesn't mean that I am not sad to see the chain go, with the terrible state of the economy and high-street shopping in general it looks like we could have far more boring towns with far fewer job opportunities.
I really liked HMV, but in the last few years I have bought nothing except for the odd DVD there. I am not a fan of digitally downloading music (I have found the reformatting and compression to make a perceptible difference to the sound quality), but I could rarely find anything I liked in store. The Metal sections were poor-at-best, particularly as I was into some quite obscure Scandinavian bands; and in the last few years I have got into the EBM and Industrial scene - of which I found HMV carried absolutely jack-all, even on their website. In terms of DVDs, they were great for small one-off films but any type of anime (another recent discovery for me) and boxed-sets could be absurdly over-priced (Elfen Lied non-collectors edition for £50, each individual series of Stargate for £60), that was if they had what I wanted in stock at all - it took me forever to get a hold of NCIS, as they only ever seemed to have Series 4 in stock. So, Amazon it has had to be, and the once-great store (a good few years ago the Metal sections were awesome) has died off, as it seems my experiences are not unique and must have driven away customers.
That doesn't mean that I am not sad to see the chain go, with the terrible state of the economy and high-street shopping in general it looks like we could have far more boring towns with far fewer job opportunities.
The HMV on our high street is going to be a new Pound shop. That will make 5 quid shops on one high street.
I do think the only real shops left on the high street will be clothes shops since trying them on there and then is so much easier then buying online and all that BS you will get with clothes.
Also not really relevant but i just wanna say The high street has 5 quid shops 7 cash for gold type shops and 4 betting shops. also the council is planning expanding the high street to attact more big name shops, thing is they are moving to out of town retail parks, they should really cut the business rates then they will come back.
I do think the only real shops left on the high street will be clothes shops since trying them on there and then is so much easier then buying online and all that BS you will get with clothes.
Also not really relevant but i just wanna say The high street has 5 quid shops 7 cash for gold type shops and 4 betting shops. also the council is planning expanding the high street to attact more big name shops, thing is they are moving to out of town retail parks, they should really cut the business rates then they will come back.
Effectively the company that sold the vouchers does not exist anymore. The administrators that are now in charge have no legal duty to honour vouchers issued by the old company. They are under a legal duty to get as much money for the creditors of the old company, including employes. Hence the not taking the vouchers.MetalDooley said:
Council don't set the business rate, that's done centrally. They may have control over the rentOmega500 said:
Which state are you from? When HMV existed in Australia they only had stores in Queensland, NSW and Victoria, if I remember correctly. The HMV name was bought out several years ago now and all the HMVs in Australia have either been converted into Sanitys or closed down.Vault101 said:
It was a real shame. I'm one of those weirdos who actually collects CDs and HMV always had the best range. Of course, the catch being that a CD that would cost $20 at JB Hi-Fi would cost as much as $32 at HMV, but at the time HMV would have a lot of stock that JB wouldn't. Lots of difficult to find imports and vinyl records and that kind of thing. But you can't keep charging $32 for a product that (probably) most people don't even pay for at all and stay in business forever.
I'm not sure about how it is in the UK though, I'll just have to go off of what other posters are saying. My biggest concern is whether or not it affects HMV Hong Kong, I shop with them online sometimes for fairly cheap and sometimes hard to find Japanese music and I'd hate to lose that.
HMV used to be a great shop, the one I shopped at had any film or album you dare imagine. I filled my DVD shelf using them. Then a couple of years back I was in the mood to hunt down a couple of 80's horror movies and HMV was charging £16 for one of them! No a special edition or anything, just £16 for the film on a bog standard disk. I walked on a few shops down and found it for £6 and haven't bought anything from there since. People can mourn the loss of the last big Music and DVD retailer but I won't be upset about them going.
Also can the talk about the 'death of the high street' end anytime soon? Yes people can now buy books and DVDs cheaper online but the high street won't ever be gone. People still need to try on clothes before buying, buy gifts to wrap and take children to excitedly buy new toys. Hell I regularly shop at CEX not because it's cheaper (it would still be cheaper to buy online usually) but because its the atmosphere HMV used to have. Nice staff, good music and a huge catalogue of choice.
Also can the talk about the 'death of the high street' end anytime soon? Yes people can now buy books and DVDs cheaper online but the high street won't ever be gone. People still need to try on clothes before buying, buy gifts to wrap and take children to excitedly buy new toys. Hell I regularly shop at CEX not because it's cheaper (it would still be cheaper to buy online usually) but because its the atmosphere HMV used to have. Nice staff, good music and a huge catalogue of choice.
I'm not really sorry to see HMV go, but I do sympathise with the folks who will lose their jobs. HMV was always overpriced, but saved themselves a bit with the odd decent sale. They could have been run better though, for instance in Nottingham there were three stores in the city centre before two of them shut down about a year or two later. One was an old Zavvi that was absorbed, but why would you have three stores so close together in a city that isn't all that big?
I used to like going in to music shops when they had those little headphone stations where you could listen to any album in stock to see whether it was good before buying. Maybe there are some stores that still have them but I certainly haven't been to one of them. These days I can get on to Youtube to check out new music then buy it moments later online, with it in my hands the next day for less than the bus fare needed to get to the shops.
I used to like going in to music shops when they had those little headphone stations where you could listen to any album in stock to see whether it was good before buying. Maybe there are some stores that still have them but I certainly haven't been to one of them. These days I can get on to Youtube to check out new music then buy it moments later online, with it in my hands the next day for less than the bus fare needed to get to the shops.
ShinyCharizard said:
Wait, you still have EB? We only have Gamestop, which bought them out here in America. Also, We don't have HMV, but a few of my preferred CD and DVD stores have gone out of business, so I feel for you. I got a bunch of CDs at Wherehouse Music one night, and it was way cheaper than most places. I liked Sam Goody as well, and they went out of business before my membership card expired...
My sentiments exactly. For the UK, it's unsurprising when they rarely price match with other big distributors such as amazon, play.com etc. It mostly has something to do with the retail market being the weakpoint. HMV should have made more of an effort to price-match; I know I would definitely have bought from them in the past, given the choice if the prices were equal.Andy Shandy said: