Does anyone still shop at HMV?

Play have explicitly said it's because the Jersey loophole got shut last year is why they're giving up. To be generous to them, it's not them avoiding corporate tax or anything like that which was ever the issue, it was exploiting the legislation to avoid VAT on the items.

Is avoiding one tax better than avoiding another?

They would argue (and I'm not saying for a second I agree with them) that they were passing on the lack of VAT directly to the customer so they weren't benefiting from it, apart from increased sales due to lower prices.

I suppose the point I was making is that it's not the same thing as Jimmy Carr at all.

No, and it's open and clear what they're doing but ultimately their business benefited from taking money out of the Treasury. The net result is still either me paying more tax or more services closing. Lots of people have lost high street jobs/business over the years because they couldn't compete against Play's VAT free prices as they were obliged to chip in for hospitals and wars and pensions and w/e else.

Absolutely.

And knowing it was going on stopped us all from using them, obviously.

Well if I'm going to pay their tax for them I want a cheap CD for it :)

Wonder if it would be a good time to flog that pile of unwanted CDs to HMV

Blue Cross sale starts Saturday - 25% off marked prices.

I was in HMV in Saturday and noticed they were putting blue crosses on EVERYTHING, when I asked one of the assistants about it he was not exactly enthusiastic about telling me what they were for - he's probably walking around with a big blue cross on his forehead too

"Will work for 25% less than I'm getting here"

Sale was fucking shit too

i thought they were going to get rich by selling headphones?

Turns out there's a limit on how many gullible kids will pay £££s for Beats. Also even gullible kids have twigged that they're cheaper elsewhere.

what a crazy unpredictable world we live in

Administrators taking over tomorrow according to latest rumours.

It looks like it's happening. Deloitte named as administrators. Every time I've walked by these last few years I've thought "Oh, just put it out of its misery, I can't bear it". But it's terrible for the people losing their jobs.

Sad. I prefer to buy music from independents but I like HMV for DVDs and such - always do my Christmas shopping there.

I was amazed how little space was given over to CDs in my local HMV. It is, er was, all DVDs and Games. I knew there wouldn't be as many as formerly, but there was barely two racks.

i know it was shit and all, but this probably means *gulp* no more record shops on the high street amirite? that's really sad i think

Already no record shops on my high street, the HMV closed down about 2 years ago. The only independent shop was fucking terrible and finally gave up the ghost around the same time.

sure, i realise that they were a thing of the past for a lot of places already

I'm full of admiration for what Rough Trade has done, launching the Brick Lane store in a difficult climate and making it a roaring success, but I'm not sure what a high street retailer could have learned from that. I don't buy the idea that HMV could have survived if it had stuck to focussing on music.

I went back to my uni town recently and not a single record shop had survived, not even the branch of HMV. I remember being able to visit half a dozen in a row and now there's this vast student population without any physical music retailers at all. Do the kids feel that loss? I doubt it, but I do.

Our HMV closed last year and I can't say I noticed its loss but I wonder what's going to happen to Fopp now?

Fewer than 1000 indie bookshops left as well. All the shops I actually liked shopping in - music, cameras, books - all vanishing.

xpost and slightly off topic - does anyone know what happened to Rough Trade Brooklyn? It was supposed to open in Autumn 2012.

Sad to see HMV go, though admittedly I hadn't bought anything from there for a couple of years (usually, go in, walk around, realise everything was too expensive and it was too noisy, walk out). It was good to know that there was somewhere to go for that emergency CD/DVD.

Fopp looked doomed as well, or at least the Glasgow branches, based on a visit this afternoon - the blue cross sale was in effect there too. The crazy thing is, even with 25% discount, a lot of the stock is still no cheaper than Amazon.

All the stock in the smaller of the two HMVs in Glasgow had now been stickered up, so I can't imagine there'll be much to pass on to any potential buyer. My guess is that the discounting will continue over the next few days.

The sadness I feel is tempered by the fact that, when I worked in the mega-HMV in Oxford Street a few years ago, there were far too many arsehole middle-management types who knew fuck all about music OR business. It was extremely corporate, but in a kind of amateurish way - the worst of all worlds. So while I'm sure HMV's demise was ultimately inevitable, the people running the company have only hastened that demise.

whither now Gennaro Castaldo, the public face of HMV?

business report in the guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/jan/14/hmv-prepares-call-administrators

Despite its troubled position, the retailer still sells 27% of all DVDs and Blu-Ray discs and 38% of the physical music market.

possibly 38% of bugger all compared to the old days, but that still seems like a hefty chunk of slack to be taken up by other retailers.

makes me think they've pissed money away on other stuff, like headphones

Their business model just has to be fucked beyond belief to not be able to work on that.

Anyone passing Glasgow Fopp tomorrow - can you tell me if they're still taking vouchers please? I have some birthday present to spend and will take a wee run up after work to do so if I can.

Cheers!

good call, I hadn't made that connection - my gf got Fopp vouchers for Christmas, think she still has them

can someone add "not anymore" to the thread title?

Haven't seen anything re: vouchers, the kids both got some for xmas

Martin Lewis the money saving expert dude was tweeting last night that he doesn't expect they'll take them today. Once into administration they're under no obligation to take them.

that's what happened with borders in aus—once the administer took over, vouchers were redeemable at reduced (half?) value for a few days, then nullified altogether

I daresay they won't be accepted at shop opening today, maybe an announcement later.

There was an announcement this morning I saw on Twitter saying vouchers no longer accepted today.

how is that even legal?

BBC Breakfast supposedly have just said if vouchers were bought on a credit or debit card you may be able to get a refund.

See, when Comet went down, they got as far as re-instating their vouchers before final closure.

I know that's the one case in a bunch of "never going to happen" but still..

This is a stupid question, I'm sure, but I'm not really sure how bankruptcy/administration works - are the shops closed effective immediately?

They are not closed.

If the form runs as previously, they may well be "cash only"...

some points of view : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21023602

Walked past the Oxford Street branch just now on my way into work, lots of camera crews filming, wonder when it'll shut, and will there be an apocalyptic closing-down sale.

Companies in administration are still trading to try and recoup some of the monies owed, so it stands to reason that the administrators will not let stock go in exchange for money they've already received (already-paid vouchers), they'll be wanting actual new money in for the stock.

Money *they* owe to other people, I mean. Not owed to them.

I dunno about "stands to reason" but.

In administration, the normal rules don't apply and the administrators get to do whatever they need to do within reason to to get money in and stop money going out.

(note: my understanding of administration is only gleaned from reading stuff when Rangers went bust)

Yeah Ailsa's right - the point of administration is it's a period when the obligation on a company to honour its debts is suspended. That includes £millions owed to Universal or whoever, and £few owed to punters in the form of vouchers.

That doesn't mean it doesn't suck, of course, and hopefully HMV will emerge from this in some form and will want to encourage the positive feelings towards it by honouring vouchers already sold.