Well, if my town can hold onto a GAME store I'm reasonably confident it can sustain a HMV. I hope so anyway, for all those I know who work there.
didn't game go bankrupt? and there's still two of them in the middle of plymouth. so who knows whether hmv will disappear or not.
A couple of years ago they had five within about 10 miles of me. One was only open for Christmas though. I always felt HMV was overly priced compared to some of the other shops but at the same time I think it's a shame if it does end up going completely.
This is sad news for me as I have several friends working in HMV who are going to lose their jobs. Having had the company for which I worked go into administration last year, I know how they must feel.
I feel for the employees and their families. I'll be sad to see our local HMV closed, though to be honest it's been poorly stocked for the past few years. At least, it often didn't stock what my husband or I were looking for. I wonder if the need to diversify into console games and such took away too much space from the music and DVDs, keeping the selections limited. What bites, though, is that while stores are still open, gift vouchers/cards will not be honoured. I'm surprised that's legal.
As has been said, administration doesn't mean they'll go out of business. GAME is proof of that, as is Peacocks where my niece works. They'll just strip out the less profitable stores. As for vouchers, they were saying earlier that it'd been the same with another big store, but after a while they relented and accepted them, so hopefully they'll do the same here.
Amazon's EU operation is based in Luxembourg, all they have in Ireland is a data-centre type of operation. Amazon's service in Ireland is actually quite poor compared to the UK's; don't offer free shipping, longer delivery times, unable to purchase MP3s or apps... but it's still cheaper and more convenient than HMV. If HMV can't compete with a second-rate service, it's not hard to see why they're going out of business.
As I understand it, it is because you are not a customer (if you were, you would be covered by all sorts of consumer protecting legislation), you are the holder of a promissory note and therefore a creditor. In insolvencies, the assets are sold off and the proceeds distributed between the creditors. Some categories of creditors get priority. Holders of gift cards come way down the pecking order, so often get nothing back.
Yeah I would have exepcted them to be one of the first to the wall, I'm amazed they didn't go under even when everyone else was doing reasonably well. I can't remember the last time I rented anything from there, or even went in the shop, and everyone I know who rents uses netflix/Lovefilm etc.
The only times I seemed to go in there was when on holiday and buying used dvds. Still, they lasted a lot longer than any of the local rental places near us.
I managed to get season one of the next generation on blu-ray in HMV this afternoon for £46 because they were marking X's on things that have 25% off so should of been £62.
Yeah, I got the hint something was up some weeks previously when they withdrew all advanced ordering of anime titles. I still have some advanced orders with them later than March, so I wonder if they will honour them. It's a pity that pretty soon Amazon might have a near monopoly.
I too had been wondering about that as lately, everything I seemed to look at on their site was a marketplace item.