Woolies and MFI to call in administrators

lost-time

Well, Woolies seems to have gone downhill in the last few years....The ones near me always seem stuck in the 70s....poor layout and a bit tatty.
Poor for people that work for them.....

BlackSpur

I've never really understood the point of Woolies - always seems to sell a bit of everything but in poor vareity and more expensive than other places.

lost-time

Very true^ . Tried to be jack of all trades, but a master of none.

Where are my stabilisers?

Sadly all the things they sell are now available in supermarkets cheaper.

I used to love going into Woolies as a kid - toys, sweets CD's, shoe polish :shock:

.blitz

I blame the Internet. Go spend those Woolies gift tokens NOW.

stumpyjon

Seems to be a a strategy / mangement failure rather than staff as well. Everyone on the news seems to like them and my wife has rung up a different stores on a couple occaisions to check on stock availability or ask a question about something and she says the staff she's spoken to have bent over backwards to help her (unlike other high street stores).

tlw1

stumpyjon wrote:

Seems to be a a strategy / mangement failure rather than staff as well. Everyone on the news seems to like them and my wife has rung up a different stores on a couple occaisions to check on stock availability or ask a question about something and she says the staff she's spoken to have bent over backwards to help her (unlike other high street stores).

totaly agree - not 100% sure but wasn't it loaded with debt from Vulture Capital people?

There is one where I live in Market Drayton & its great for taking the kids & getting a DVD, etc, on a cold winters sunday & going home to a roaring fire - can't do that via the internet!

tlw1

stumpyjon wrote:

Seems to be a a strategy / mangement failure rather than staff as well. Everyone on the news seems to like them and my wife has rung up a different stores on a couple occaisions to check on stock availability or ask a question about something and she says the staff she's spoken to have bent over backwards to help her (unlike other high street stores).

totaly agree - not 100% sure but wasn't it loaded with debt from Vulture Capital people?

There is one where I live in Market Drayton & its great for taking the kids & getting a DVD, etc, on a cold winters sunday & going home to a roaring fire - can't do that via the internet!

mcbazza

Having previously worked for MFI (head office), and hated it, I can say that their collapse couldn't happen to a nicer bunch. Made sweeter by the fact that the management bought them out (from the administrators). Hope the management personally lost thousands. But, knowing how these things work, they probably all managed to leave with something - unlike their workers.

Feel sorry for the workers, though. They always had to put up with a lot of cr*p just to struggle to get a decent wedge. The timing (just pre-Christmas) is about as bad as it could be.

Oh, the stories I could tell about their SAP implementation haemorrhaging millions of pounds. If they hadn't botched that project, the company would probably still be going.

stumpyjon

SAP kills another company.

Was on a course at the Cranfield Management College, SAP implementation was mentionned and nearly everyone in the room groaned :shock: .

mcbazza

Of course, they'd never admit to it. But, when I parted with them (under very nasty circumstances, I hasten to add), I had documentary proof that at the time (5yrs ago) the SAP project (aka 'Atlas') had cost the company in excess of £154M. Needless to say, I was shocked. No doubt, that increased even after I had left. And the whole time, we were being told how the company had no money for this/that.

Oh how true that was, they'd spanked it all on consultants/experts, and then skimped on the programmers by flying a load in from India, putting them up in rented property and giving them cars.

I could even tell tales on my ex-boss, who once wasted £70K on a hosting deal with Energis without getting approval from above. That deal went nasty, and MFI ended up trying to sue them!! And my ex-boss then 'hid' the money by assigning it against training (and other things) over several months. I remember finding his spreadsheet on the network (the joys of being a sysadmin with 'access all areas') with our names on it, against courses we'd never attended.

I suppose I should look into how my 5yrs of pension contributions are now affected!! I'm not hopeful!