Shops don’t want real shoppers any more

SO many mums will recognise the ritual: the start of the summer term, requiring a trip to the shops to buy a new school uniform — in this case, for my daughter.

I imagined popping up to the children’s department of Peter Jones, selecting a couple of dresses, paying and going home. In, out, 15 minutes max, job done. What a mad fool I was. Despite the fact that Peter Jones is the only stockist for my girl’s uniform, it transpires that they do not, in fact, stock it. at least, not in any meaningful sense of the term.

Instead, the assistant said, I could look at their samples — but I would have to order the actual thing itself online, to be delivered to my home or in-store. ‘But I’m here,’ I protested. ‘Can’t I just buy it now?’

apparently not. It seems that even Peter Jones — aka John Lewis, a group which used to be a byword for old-fashioned customer service — has succumbed to the tyranny of e-commerce.

They would much rather that people like me — rushed, skinflint parents and their smudgy brats — made their purchases at arms’ length, safely from the confines of their own sofas, with their High-Street stores becoming little more than giant showrooms to browse in before going home to buy online.

not, of course, that they would ever admit as much. For, as the assistant explained to me, the new system was in place for my ‘comfort and convenience’. now, in my experience, whenever someone tells you they are doing something for your own good, they usually mean they are doing it for their own good.

Let’s face it: John Lewis haven’t imposed their school uniform policy to improve my shopping experience; they’ve done it so that they can use the floor space to sell other, more lucrative items — while capturing invaluable data about my shopping habits by obliging me to set up an internet account with them.

Of course, they’re not alone. Every retailer and supermarket wants you to shop with them from home. It’s more convenient, you see — for them. Lower overheads, cheaper staff, less shop space required — with you, the customer, doing all the work.

Even when the stuff is eventually delivered, it’s either too big or too small or the wrong colour. That’s assuming you can actually get your hands on it. my postman seems to take great delight in waiting until I’ve gone to the loo before knocking very, very gently on the door, then shoving a ‘sorry you were out’ card through the letter box and legging it.

It’s not just the dominance of online shopping. From booking holidays to paying bills to sorting out an insurance quote, every service that might once have been provided by an actual human being in an actual shop or office (or at the very least at the end of a phone) has migrated online.

Take the DVLa’s new electronic tax disc. The only people benefiting from the new arrangement is the DVLa, whose employees now no longer have to wear out their fingers putting the paper licence in envelopes. Instead, they can devote all their resources to issuing fines when people get it wrong because they’ve failed to fill out the right form online.

TO ADD insult to injury, you can ring almost any helpline these days, and you will hear a recorded message urging you to go online for answers to your query — even if it’s you phoning to complain your internet service is down. (BT used to do this to me so often I was forced to give my money to mr Richard Branson’s Virgin instead.)

The best and most preposterous example of this is apple. The only way you can get an appointment to have your computer fixed at one of their stores is by booking online. But you can’t get online, of course, because your laptop is broken.

It’s the ultimate Catch 22. and as ever, it exists purely to serve the needs of the retailer, who cares only about keeping profits up and costs down.