Over the past few months they appear to have been cutting the number of customer facing staff (especially during the evening) creating a worse shopping experience in the process. Firstly they combined the customer service desk with the cigarette and lottery kiosk. The end result of this is that anyone who buys a console game (which despite being in security cases still require you to collect them from customer services) now has to queue with everyone buying cigarettes and lottery tickets. From personal experience this means that a wait of a few seconds to collect this disks is now a 5-10 minute wait and is not really acceptable. Also it means that you have to take you packed trolley of purchases back through the security gates into the store. I emailed the Tesco Comments address (after picking up one of their cards instore) and got a phone call basically telling me that the person dealing with my comment felt this was a bad move but the store management thought otherwise – probably thinking about getting a bigger bonus for reducing costs (hopefully the store will make less money and this particular manager will end up getting less).

In the run up to Christmas I needed to do some last minute shopping so chose a late (10pm) visit on 23rd December. This should of been a relatively quite period where shopping was easy. The store was unsurprising busier than usual but the amount of customers was reasonable. The staff though were busy restocking the shelves and seemed to think that providing obstacle courses for customers through their roller cages was sensible. It made shopping a truely annoying experience, especially when you also had to dodge (and try not to slip on) the plastic and cardboard everything came in. It is about time these staff where briefed on health and safety. Being untidy when the store is closed is one thing but when there are customers about it is unforgivable. Should anyone have slipped and hurt themselves on this rubbish, good look in suing Tesco.

Whilst shopping I also noticed a promotional bay with misleading pricing. Initially I only saw the shelf barker for John West Tuna proclaiming a less than half price offer. Being fairly good at maths I immediately noticed the problem. £5.39 reduced to £3.00 is considerably more than half price. After a run around finding one of the many staff members who could begrudgingly help, they just took the offending barker off the shelf. Later I noticed that they entire promotional end is headed with a ‘Half Price Christmas Specials’ point of sale card and there are numerous other shelf barkers proclaiming the same. The overall suggestion is everything on the promotional end is half price. After purchasing the few things I wanted I told another member of staff (who appeared to be management level) who although saying thank you for letting them know did absolutely nothing.

Yesterday (27th December) I went back into the store and whilst shopping I took the photograph on the left (apologies for the quality – it is taken discreetly from my mobile). This quite clearly shows the main end point of sale card still claiming ‘Half Price Christmas Specials’ along with the one shelf barker claiming the same – immediately above the same Tuna with the same less than half price offer. In fact of the 5 shelves on this end bay only one is half price and one is a buy one get one free (technically half price if you want two of them). The remaining offers are all more than half price.

Despite again emailing the Tesco Comments address (before Christmas) I am still waiting for a reply but get the feeling I will again get the same kind of response as last time – the operator agrees with me but the local store management are going to do nothing to sort anything out. In future I will probably take pictures and report the store to Trading Standards (for misleading pricing point of sale) or Health and Safety (for when the shelf stacker’s are providing an unsafe shopping experience).

Also Tesco recently made a big deal of reducing their fuel prices, with many websites claiming the move (along with the Adsa price reductions) will cause a price war. Well I am still waiting for this to happen in Evesham. Yes Tesco reduced their prices to 109.9p for a litre of diesel but this just took their prices down to the same as Morrisons and Esso. Hardly a price war when Tesco were one of the most expensive in the area. It seems that Tesco just announced the 1p per litre price reduction to the press and they took it at face value without any investigations to find the real truth.

Personally I would love to be able to shop elsewhere, but despite having five different supermarkets in Evesham (Aldi, Co-Op, Lidl, Morrisons and Tesco) Tesco provides the best range. Morrisons has never been the same since it was changed from a Safeway (oddly since most Morrisons prior to the Safeway takeover where very good). The remaining are all small stores with limited product ranges. Perhaps it is because of this that Tesco feels they can treat the customers from Evesham so badly.

I wish everyone affected all the best in the search for new, and better employment. Although it might not seem like it now, this will be a good thing for you all eventually.

The rumours first started in June when 4 of the 5 directors quit the firm leaving only co-founder Richard Austin at the helm. He then put the for sale sign up on the business, confirming that he was in talks with 3 parties. Unfortunately for Evesham staff and customers he appears to have chosen the TimeUK founder Tahir Mohsan. Many will know how Time operated and how they shafted there own staff when they went bust, only to resurect as TimeUK shortly after. Rumour also has it that Evesham had been transfering assets to a new company – Geemore Technologies – which will take over from Evesham.

As a former employee of Evesham, everything started to go wrong when the company took on a new MD to replace Richard (who bacame chairman). This changed the ethos of the company, introducing redundancies which occured at least once a year and removing the companies focus on customer service. This same customer service focus was the one that kept Evesham as a leading provider with loyal customers. At one time the company had high 7 day DOA rates on new PC’s but the support of telephone and on-site technical support still pushed the company high up the ratings. It also earned the company high repeat business rates. By the time I left the company in 2003, customers support roles were seen (to me at least) as drains on the company finances and something the comapny had to have but wished they could get rid of. At this time the company also became more corporate and less friendly. Working there had always been like working at a family firm. The company relied on staff goodwill and turning it corporate led to this gradually evaporating for many.

I feel very sad for former colleagues who now face a very uncertain future at the hands of either the administrators and government (for those made redundant on Friday) or RA and TH (for those who have kept their jobs for the moment at least). I will, as always, keep an eye out for jobs that they may be able to do, and will always recommend them to my current employers if suitable jobs come up.

R.I.P. Evesham Technology (aka Evesham Micros, Evesham.com & LowestOnWeb)

Over time I will add more content here – on a truly random time frame. So don’t expect to see something new every few hours/days/weeks. Do call back again soon though.