Disappearing shopsops

gillT57 I bought a pair of joggers from Matalan online which looked lovely on their model and cost £10 with postage £4.99 when they arrived they were baggy in the wrong places and didn’t look good on me, no fault of the product or the model The postage for sending them back was £4.99 making the two postages as much as the product itself and not a viable way to shop If you have a pretty average figure and spare dish it’s probably a great way to shop and I do shop online for other things but for clothes it’s just not viable If I could have gone into the store and tried them on (with a dozen other things) I could have rejected them for nothing
lin52 I m sorry you live in such an awful town, I ve never been in a smelly changing room
Yes turn them into housing and have more people with no shops to buy stuff from calandergirl ??? I actually am pretty sure that’s what will happen to our town centres sadly

But people arent buying that's why they are closing. It's a fairly standard regeneration model for many councils, mixture of leisure and housing.

I don’t believe that’s the only reason they are closing galaxy it is part of the reason, which is a circular problem as shops close there is less to buy, so less shopping, more shops close but also here we have high parking fees, high shop rates and too many cars clogging up the roads
So sad to see them die They were far more than shops to buy in, they were a social hub a place to meet friends and look and touch and enjoy now it’s all moving towards a more insular society sitting in your sitting room glaring at a screen

I made a few purchases online for things I needed, but not been happy with any. The returns postage made me put up and shut up. Companies offering free returns make me feel I’m paying for that possibility already. I need shoes desperately now we can get out more, but have lost the desire to shop.

I think we also forget to calculate the cost of shopping in real life shops, I live in a village away from a town centre. Petrol and car park charges would cost me £20. I would use an out of town with no parking charges rather than a town centre. If people are shopping online surely that frees up some of the road clogging traffic.

Very true galaxy.

£20 ? Gosh! However when I tried to do a big shop, as I would when going to a shopping centre, the postage charged was beginning to mount up and then if I needed to return some things again it would be adding up. I spend longer online trying to shop end up not buying anything feel exasperated and sometimes exhausted. at least my coffee and cake break in my own little kitchen, does not cost extra. I did try paying for delivery for the year with one company but it only just worked out as I felt I needed to buy from them alone again felt restricted and not so happy with items, but returns were already paid for.

Good and bad online and in shops.

My idea of shops being used for housing is because ‘they’ seem to think that is how our town centres will evolve, cafes, bars, coffee shops, just places for meeting and socialising, not shopping.

The people will just buy online I suppose.

This is the problem of malls in the US - failing like crazy as they follow an old business model.

Google "Rhode island providence mall converted to housing" - it is a wonderful mall converted to small apartments

With a few exceptions, in my book many of those closing were overrated and overpriced, with latterly quite poor customer service. They did not move with the times, embrace new shopping trends/habits, and they really did take their customers for granted.