As if their recent marketing campaigns didn’t give you enough reason to hate Microsoft, here’s another – the launch of Windows 7 is been credited with helping to reverse the fortunes of DSGi. When we say “reverse”, we mean that the owner of Currys and and PC World lost less money than they expected to – they still aren’t making any.

The retailer had predicted to lose between £23 million and £35 million in the six months to mid-October, which in itself is the sort of catastrophically inaccurate prediction that is easily capable of sinking companies without trace – only a £12 million margin of error, you say? Anyway, DSGi made pre-tax loss of £17.6 million, which is good news if you squint and forget the meaning of the word million.

The group is putting the success down to new megastores in the likes of Norway and Sweden, and tinkering with the formats of its UK stores, such as the new combined two-in-one PC World and Currys galactostores. No mention of the money saved by hacking the guts of technical support for customers, strangely – they must have forgotten to put that bit in. There was also a lift in sales in the last eight weeks of the period, which the company believes was due to sales of Windows 7.

Don’t break out the caramel bites from Sainsbury’s just yet, though – the outlook for 2010 “remains uncertain”. Now there’s one prediction we can all agree on, since Best Buy are about to launch and try sticking a pitchfork through DSGi’s face.

DSGi would rarely top anyone’s list as a source of free-thinking humanitarians, but you’d be surprised. In September we revealed what PC World and Currys staff really thought of their customers by reporting on a Facebook group of over 3,000 members, including many current employees. The media caught hold of our coverage,  several dozen employees shat their pants, and the group sank without trace into the digital mire.

Now there’s an attempt to ressurect the group, although this time they’re going about it in a very different manner:

“THOSE WHO PUBLICLY INSULT CUSTOMERS WILL BE BANNED – ITS NOT THE POINT OF THIS GROUP”

The group is called Disgruntled DSGi Employees, and was originally set up by a member of staff and two former employee. Unsurprisingly, given the title and intentions of the group, the staff member involved has disappeared from the group in the past 24 hours, along with all their posts, after “someone threatened him with dismissal from the company if he did not leave the group”. This upset one of the other founders – seemingly a former employee with a whole lot less to lose – has decided what DSGi really need to consider is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Hence a yawningly long post describing how exactly man’s right to free speech intersects with a teenager’s considered opinion on selling dishwashers:

“In conclusion, the UDoHR is far more important than some contract that says you will not use social media to bad mouth the company which is apparently “legally binding”. Well here’s one for you, if you enforce this and dismiss/discipline people for speaking their mind, you have JUST broken international law!!”

If only the universal Declaration of Human Rights paid your wages, eh? Fortunately it seems that most members of staff have wised up to the fact that they’re very much entitled to their opinion, but publishing it for the world to read is what really pisses off the people who employ them. The group currently has nine members.

We’re not sure what the Manadrin language might sound like, but then we’re hardly well-travelled citizens of Planet Earth – unlike the global ambassadors working at EuroTalk and PC World:

It never instills confidence when a product claiming to teach a complex foreign language can’t spell the name correctly. Thanks to Bitterwallet reader Mark for sending it in. More stuff and nonsense please, to the usual address – bitterwallet@gmail.com.

A few people, largely those purporting to work at the likes of PC World and Currys, seem to have missed the point of our exposé of DSGI staff on Facebook; there is absolutely no doubt that some customers are unreasonable, abrasive pains in the backside – absolutely anybody working in retail would agree with that. If you want to piss and moan about them though, you should do it in the staff room or the pub, or even a private Facebook group. You don’t create a public forum and post comments under your own name. That’s just dickish.

Having said all of that, we did note there are some perks to the job when it comes to face-to-face dealings with customers:

Dozens of staff claiming to work at PC World and Currys are using Facebook to launch fierce attacks on their own customers, with some employees branding them “retards” and “twats”.

British Airways, Primark and other high-profile companies have all been caught out by staff posting comments on Facebook that criticised customers and working conditions. Bitterwallet has been reading through a Facebook group called DSGi Employees, where dozens of the 3,000-strong membership discuss working for the company and dealing with the shoppers.

Topics cover internal policies and training, but criticism of customers proves consistently popular, with discussions ranging from “The sale of goods act (as amended by customers)”, “why are customers often surprised when we try to sell them add-ons/essentials?” and “Chatting up customers….” to “Arsehole customers!”, “Really Stupid Customers!” and Some customers are really really stupid…..”. Most contributors use their real names and reveal their location and store number in another discussion called “Which branch?”.

Amongst the comments:

• a continuous barrage of insults towards customers – one employee refers to a shopper as a “retard” while another suggests any customer asking for discount should “go fuck yourself you hardfisted, smallwalleted, annoying, iggnorant [sic] tightfisted fucktard.”

• staff state that some customers deserve a “back hand” or a “punch”; one person asks other employees whether they should be “legally allowed to cattle prod this [sic] arseholes!!!!”

• a member of staff boasts of sexual liaisons with a customer after using details from a sale to add her as a friend on MySpace – we’re reasonably sure that falls well outside the Data Protection Act

What makes this even more astonishing is that according to group members, senior management are apparently aware of the Facebook group’s existence and read through the comments on a regular basis; one member of staff claims to have been disciplined for offering poor sales advice through the group to another employee: “Watch your backs,” he warns, “big brother / head office is watching.”

Everybody’s entitled to an opinion, but airing them in a public forum for your customers to read is unbelievable behaviour:

Worried about the recession putting you out on the street and the high street out of business? Don’t be! Everything is ok and there’s absolutely no need to panic whatsoever. Says who? John Browett, chief executive of DSGI – that’s who! After the release of DSGI’s latest trading statement, Browett told The Times that DSGI is “seeing some evidence that, in fact, it’s not going to be quite as bad as some of the more pessimistic economic scenarios” and that consumers were displaying renewed confidence by “trading up” to mid-priced ranges:

“Given the challenging environment, this is an encouraging start to the year… we remain cautious about the economic outlook.  However, we are making good progress on our renewal and transformation plan to deliver an unbeatable combination of value, choice and service for our customers.”

So good news, there – PC World and Currys are perfectly positioned to ride out the recession, and any reports of savage cost-cutting and restructuring behind the scenes is all coincidental. So what did DSGI’s trading statement say that has restored so much confidence and fighting spirit? Just take a look at those numbers:

• a 6% fall in like-for-like sales in the four months to August 22, excluding the cost of new stores

• growth of sales of electricals in the UK and Ireland down 14%

• growth of sales of computers in the UK and Ireland down by 15%

• DSGI disposed of its business in Poland for €1: “The Polish market should have been a great market for us. We would probably have had to open 50 stores. That scale of investment wasn’t possible.”

That’s the sort of good news you just can’t buy, although if you could you’d also have to buy a set of gold-plated scart leads passed to you with both hands by a DSGI employee.

[The Times]

Wow. DSGi are really, really keen on their FIVES training. If you’re one of the three Bitterwallet readers that doen’t work for PC World or Currys, then you’re missing out on the curious world of rooms, positive body language and NLP – the DSGi sales training known as FIVES, which we explained in detail several months ago.

Obviously every retail business needs to ensure their staff can sell, and sales training isn’t unusual – we’re not suggesting it is. The comments on our previous article were many and varied; some readers thought FIVES was a reasonable and valid training programme, others thought it went too far:

“It is one thing to provide customer service training but mimicing body language and attitude is manipulative and to me objectionable.”

What also came through from the comments was that current staff (plenty of comments were from readers claiming to work for DSGi) viewed FIVES as a structured guide rather than a strict policy that must be followed to the letter:

“Do you really use it word for word? We certainly don’t – there has to be some individuality or else you take away the service element…. if you’re hitting all the targets and not using FIVES, you’ll probably be fine.”

“Yes, Fives works. Yes, Fives gives a structure and guidance. However, it should be there as a tool at the salespersons expense. NOT a requirement.”

It seems DSGi disagree. Not following FIVES to the letter is to be treated as gross misconduct, according to an email sent to store managers and passed onto Bitterwallet. Any member of staffed who is reported as not sticking to the gameplan by a mystery shopper isn’t going to have a happy time of it:

“If they have been in the business for over 6 months and are fives trained then it should be a straight-to-invite disciplinary. This invite can be for bringing the company into disrepute, or failure to follow a reasonable request, or negligence depending upon how poor the shop score was and their attitude when the investigation takes place.

“So for example; bringing the company into disrepute is gross misconduct and its likely outcome would be final written. This would only happen if the score was very poor i.e. 30 or less, and upon investigation the individual said that they “didn’t use or believe in fives as their own method works better for them”. We have heard this from colleagues before.

“If the score was 40+ and the individual just didn’t introduce certain parts of the process, but understood that they should have done at the investigation, then this would be a failure to follow a reasonable request or negligence which would be a written warning and verbal depending on their length of service and seniority in the business.”

There’s no room for manoeuvre whatsoever – not if a member of staff wants to keep their job, and regardless of whether they can actually sell. If you’re a customer, do you rate service at PC World or Currys higher than other retailers? If you’re a member of staff, then welcome back and let us know what you think. Is FIVES too inflexible and does is it really about customer service? Can you sell without resorting to mimicking customers and sliding into NLP?

When it comes to rating computer purchase customer service satisfaction, 7,683 Which? magazine panel members have spoken, and guess who came out worst? Step forward PC World and get a slap across the cheek.

Yes, the DSGi brand that everyone hates to love fell horribly short, even though their name suggests they’d be just the kinds of places you’d love to go when you need to buy a computer. The survey gave them a small and twatty customer service score of just 42%.

PC World’s big cousin Currys fared little better, with a crappy 45% score in the survey. In case you were wondering and are one of those positive types who likes to celebrate winners instead of naming and shaming losers, Apple came top with a tidy 88%, with John Lewis just behind them on 73%

Surprised by any of this? Tell us why. Meanwhile, there should be a fresh dollop of DSGi sleaze to follow later in the day…

Next time you’re in a branch of PC World or Currys and you look into the sunken eyes of the sales assistant who sidles up to you and launches into the Fives script, spare a thought for the pressure they’re under to deliver a result for their scheming paymasters.

Because, if information leaked to us by a PC World employee is to be believed, all sales staff now have to try and secure add-on sales of as many as TEN different products with every major item they manage to flog to you or I.

Buy a TV and immediately your friendly assistant will panic and switch into sales mode, striving to persuade you to also take Sky HD, a bracket or desk, the PC Performance package (essential when you’ve just bought a, erm, telly) or a premium lead. Premium mind you, one of them nice gold ones we imagine, not one of the cheap, shitty ones (that are overpriced at DSGi stores to start with.)

Sadly, this is not the kind of Norton PC World want to flog you

Buy a PC or laptop and the hard sell will begin for the aforementioned PC Performance, the dreaded Norton Anti-Virus, Microsoft Office, a laptop bag, mobile broadband and tech attachments (it says here.)

For the poor sod who’s trying to flog you all this tat that you probably don’t want, there’s some pretty stringent percentage targets to be met, across all ten of the add-ons. Meet their target on an item and you’ve got themselves a ‘strike.’

As our mole explains: “8/10 strikes is considered good, 5-8 is amber whereas 4 and below is red and means the employee can face a performance review. That’s a six-week process, with reviews three times every two weeks in which, if strikes don’t improve, you will be dismissed.”

Hurrah! Way to engender a comfortable and positive thinking workforce DSGi! Shoppers, try not to be put off by the climate of fear next time you walk through the doors of your local branch of PC World or Currys. And if you’re feeling charitable towards your sales assistant, buy as many items from them as you can afford – if not, they’ll end up getting the boot and will probably be replaced by a robot that will physically squeeze you in the unmentionables unless you buy from their list of shame.

As ever, DSGi footsoldiers and customers, leave your thoughts in the box below…

Since DSGi stopped turning over their own businesses, closed their staff blog to prying eyes and waving goodbye to senior members of staff, we haven’t had much cause to mention your least-favourite retail park conglomerate.

But behind the scenes, there’s still all sorts of baloney going down, but this time it could really be a good deal for the customer. No, seriously. One of our moles has emailed to tell us the DSGi call centres based in Sheffield and Nottingham are being taken back into ownership after being outsourced to Capita for several years. We tried reading up about Capita’s success to date, but the link for their DSGi Sheffield centre case study no longer exists.

DSGi are expected to retain all staff that work across the two sites; some 2,000 people were employed in the call centres when Capita won the original contracts. DSGi Chief Executive John Browett has stated on his internal blog that having control of the call centres will enable the company to provide a better customer experience for the likes of PC World and Currys, in-line with their “customer at the heart” strategy.

But the really interesting development is that, according to our source, DSGi has also put together a crack-commando team called “Save The Customer” who will be called in to resolve any issue that takes over one hour to be resolved by the regular call centre staff. What exactly can they do in these situations? “They have the authority to do pretty much anything to ensure that the issue is fixed for the customer,” says our mole.

It’ll still be a thoroughly vexing situation if if takes over an hour on the phone to resolve a problem, but at least there’s a glimmer of hope that DSGi are acknowledging their flaws and attempting to fix them. How successful will they be? You’ll have to let us know.

Well, it’s not in the shops now actually, unless you’re somehow reading this last month, and that doesn’t even begin to make sense. Sent into us by Bitterwallet reader Ben, it’s a 4GB flash drive from PC World:

And at the thick end of £70 for just one, you’d hope it was at least reasonably dependable as stated, and hopefully seven times more dependable than the same product advertised online, which Ben found for under a tenner.

More pricepoint tomfoolery if you please, to bitterwallet@gmail.com

Profits at DSGi, parent company of PC World and Currys, have slumped by an alarming 78% in the year leading up to May 2nd. The group made a profit of just £50.5m compared to £225.6m in the previous year.

Chief executive John Browett said: “The difficult economic backdrop across Europe and subsequent impact on consumer spending, particularly on discretionary products, has been well publicised. The group expects these conditions to continue through the coming year in many of its markets.”

But there was better news from DSGi’s reformatted stores where they have reported a gross profit uplift of between 11% and 65% compared to the rest of the chain. The retailer will open 101 reformatted stores in the UK during the year, including four Megastores.

Are you a shopper at one of the Megastores or one of the reformatted shops? Noticed any difference? If you’re a DSGi staff member, maybe you could tell us how staff morale is in the wake of the profit drop.

[Retail Week]

Wow. The whole Bitterwallet office has spent an hour grouped around one screen, our jaws slack and our brains struggling to comprehend what we were reading. A branch of PC World are using a public blog to discuss incentives, sales figures, customer service and disciplinary action. Isn’t that sort of stuff, you know, private?

Apparently not. Thanks to Bitterwallet reader Billy Blanks, we have peered through a window into life at at PC World in Ipswich, although the view from that window was not unlike witnessing a speeding wagon of anthrax ploughing into a field of nuns. The staff and management have seemingly denounced the use of a private intranet, and have instead resorted to publishing sensitive financial information and personal bathroom habits on Blogspot.

The blog is at pcw0728.blogspot.com – although we dare say unless you’re quick off the mark, it’ll have been removed by the time you read this. Not to worry; you could have spent hours reading through the illiterate postings, but we’ve picked out a selection for your entertainment and disbelief:

[Note - Uusurprisingly, the blog has now been made private, but you can still enjoy our selection of posts below]

The staff of PC World are this week beginning to learn whether their fate lies with DSGi, or whether they’ll lose their jobs; around 400 staff are expected to be made redundant – half of that number is are likely to be Business Centre staff, half assistant managers.

For the survivors and those working at Currys and Currys.digital, they had the pleasure of a team briefing over the weekend, the “most important briefing” they had ever been involved in, and one that saw them forced to sign up to new, non-optional working practises.

For the staff, it meant unconditionally agreeing to new universal sales targets, 100% staff searches and flexible working hours. For the consumer, it’ll mean more infuriating unprompted conversations as staff try and sell additional products and services, and that discounts will be as rare as hen’s teeth.

A member of staff at DSGi who has remained anonymous passed on the briefing document to Bitterwallet. Throughout, DSGi called for support and buy-in from the staff concerning new aims and objectives, and encouraged participation throughout the briefing:

Except the briefing notes already told the store managers exactly what that input was, before the staff had been given the chance to provide it:

Much of the briefing highlighted the importance of the FIVES selling technique adopted by DSGi, so don’t expect to be left to browse at your own leisure; the document quotes Group Retail Director Keith Jones on the matter:

The point is pushed time and again because the document also includes agreed group KPIs, or sales targets that must be adhered to – the percentages relate to the proportion of customers that staff must sell additional products to, in order to meet their targets:

Finally, before having to electronically sign up to these new working conditions, staff were threatened should they resort to providing “unnecessary discounts”:

So if you’re visiting a DSGi store over the coming days and weeks, you know what to expect, and you know that the staff don’t always have a say in their conduct and choices when dealing with you.

Currys and PC World can breathe easy for a year longer – those hoping to see DSGi get kicked around the room by Best Buy will have to wait for a Harry Hill-esque fight. Best Buy Europe – a joint venture with the Carphone Warehouse – had planned to open in the UK this Summer; those plans have now been delayed until the beginning of 2010.

Is it a case of brown trousers in a declining market? Not according to the American behemoths; it’s reported they believe that a launch in the first quarter of next year will maximise the impact on customers and its struggling rivals. Having said that, those precious few months will allow DSGI more time to bed in and establish their new format galacto-stores – large warehouse-sized sites that will rival anything Best Buy will bring to the party.

Best Buy also believes better sites are becoming available during the downturn which, given the current economic forecasts, isn’t hard to believe. Still, the delay will be a blow to former DSGI employees looking for employment, and to consumers, who wanted a solid alternative to take their custom to.

[Independent]