Mary Portas: My 10 worst customer service crimes

Mary Portas – Telegraph shopping columnist and star of BBC Two’s Mary Queen of Shops – is taking on the high-street chains. As she says in typically straight-talking style: “The so-called service industry has become a faceless couldn’t-give-a-monkey’s business.” Her new series for Channel 4, Secret Shopper, sees her tackling shoddy service by big retail brands. Here, she names the 10 most irritating things about retailers.

1 Keeping too few tills open

“So many stores are guilty of this. The worst is Tesco Metro when they ring the bell to get someone from out the back and leave their finger on it, so it’s just Bzzzz. You’re in the queue thinking, ‘That bloody bell.’ I can’t bear it.”

2 Mute cashiers

“Till workers don’t even say the price. They’ve lost basic communication. You’re supposed to spot the price popping up on the screen, then they grumpily shove the Chip and PIN machine at you. Even worse is when they dump the receipt and the change into your hand in one ungainly lump. You have to faff around un-crumpling the receipt and fiddling the change into your purse. Horrible.”

3 Plugging inappropriate offers

“At WHSmith, you go to the counter to buy a newspaper and they offer you a £1 Galaxy bar. A massive slab of chocolate at 7.30 in the morning at Paddington station? Are you having a laugh? Yeah, you’re really understanding the mindset of the commuter there. How about just smiling and saying good morning?”

4 Assistants who don’t know their stuff

“I was in Tesco Metro last weekend and asked for Yorkshire puddings. He said, ‘Pudding, pudding…’ and sure enough, led me over to the bloody cheesecake. Staff who don’t have English as their first language – I’m sorry, that has to go in, whether it’s PC or not. Coffee shops like Costa are bad for this too. Full of people who don’t know what the hell you’re on about. DIY shops are the worst. Winding queues, nobody on the floor. Bank Holiday Monday in Homebase? I’d rather stick pins in my eyes. And ears.”

5 Shoddy fitting rooms

“Primark and other ‘fast fashion’ stores? Loathe them. There’s a long queue to try anything on, but they say, ‘Only four items.’ You should be able to take a big armful in. And there’s nowhere to hang your clothes, so you have to put them on the floor. Except the floors are filthy.”

6 Too much stock on the shop floor

“Again, fast fashion stores are guilty of this. Stock is so crammed onto the rails that you can’t even see the sizes. You have to grapple the hangers apart to peer in, then they ping off onto the floor.”

7 It’s a shop, not a social club

“I hate it when assistants stand behind the counter gossiping to each other. It’s rife in clothes stores, hairdressers and coffee shops. It’s like you’re invisible.”

8 Signage overload

“Furniture showrooms have so many sale signs and offers that you don’t know what to read. ‘Interest free’, ‘Lowest price’, ‘Buy now’, ‘Free cushions and footstool’, ‘Never knowingly undersold, we’ll price match’… Rip the lot down and just make the place look lovely.”

9 The hard sell

“The ‘trust me’ salesmen are all over furniture stores. ‘If you don’t buy this now, trust me, you’ll miss it. We could get an email from head office any minute putting the price back up.’ Do me a favour. And beauty counters. You walk through the ground floor and it’s, ‘Could I just interest you in…?’, chasing and spraying you. It’s like jumping across a piranha pond. And they’re always really orange with drawn-on eyebrows. ‘You too could get my look.’ No thanks! I’d have to be dead to go in Debenhams.”

10 Most annoying phrases in retail

“I popped into Superdrug to get some hair ties for my daughter but the rack was empty. So I went up to this assistant to ask, and sure enough, she went, ‘If it’s not out on the floor, we haven’t got it.’ I think they’re lying and just can’t be bothered to look. I went into Office to get my other daughter some shoes. I said to the cashier, ‘Keep the shoebox, save trees.’ And she goes, ‘If you don’t bring the box back, you can’t bring your shoes back.’ Why? ‘You can’t bring it back if you don’t have the receipt.’ B------s. You can show proof of purchase on your credit card.”

Mary Portas: Secret Shopper is on Wednesdays, Channel 4 at 9.00pm