@wayned My niece lives in North Shields... 🤣
@cathovisor Terry Malloy (who played Davros in Doctor Who during the 80s) mentioned that he's originally from North Shields. I mentioned that I was from Walker and he said: "Well someone has to be!"
Slightly off-topic, but during the same conversation he mentioned that he also played "The nice man from the Council" in Beadle's About!
The nearest Comet to me was in Halesowen. It was within five minutes of the railway station but someone didn’t do their homework as that closed to passenger traffic in 1928. I can’t remember when it arrived there but it was in the same ‘shed’ for decades. Perhaps the shed was built for Comet as it looks 1970s. It is now occupied by a motorbike dealer. There was another in the Selly Oak district of Birmingham and ISTR that was very close to the railway line.
Locally, there was a store called Apollo 2000 that was a direct competitor, advertised heavily and occupied massive building next to the West Bromwich Albion ground. A quick search tells me that Apollo 2000 was absorbed into the Hughes Electrical operation.
I bought numerous items from Comet. The earliest items I can remember are some Connoisseur turntable items bought in the mid 1970s from the Sandiacre, Nottingham branch. I’ve had radios, radio cassettes, and a radio/cassette/CD player, a flat screen TV and my oven and gas hob from there – and probably a fridge or two. Most are still soldiering on. Unusually, I took out an extended warranty on the flat screen TV – bought for DSO. It developed a screen fault within a few weeks of the end of the period. A guy came around, took a photo, and then three weeks later I received a letter saying it was unrepairable, the model was no longer available, so here is a cheque which will cover the cost of buying a similar spec TV, make and model XYZ whatever. The TV finally went to the tip earlier this year...
The Halesowen Comet soldiered on until the end. The last thing I had from there was an induction hob sometime in the early 20-teens. Ultimately, its intended use never came about and is still in its packaging.
Nick
I am so glad I got out of the trade when I did. The amount of dealers that must have lost out on Flat panel stuff!
I heard in the late '90s - early 2000s that Peterborough John Lewis' TV dept was losing a huge sum every year "but they had to have a TV dept" The rest of the shop made a profit and that covered the loss. They used to give a 5 year guarantee on all of their TVs as standard but I think they stopped that after a couple of years of selling flat panel stuff.
My mate worked for the firm that did their repairs and the scrappage was massive. Harvey Nicholls stopped running their own TV dept around 2001 and the firm that bought me out started running it as a franchise. They soon found out why H.N were keen to pass it on!
How the pile 'em high and sell 'em cheap brigade survive beats me! I do wonder if the profit on white goods subsidises the TV sales. How is an independent supposed to compete with that ?
I bought numerous items from Comet. The earliest items I can remember are some Connoisseur turntable items bought in the mid 1970s from the Sandiacre, Nottingham branch.
I used to work in the building opposite side of the road to that store!! It was my second job, (with the same company as my first!) they were called CRC, and I used to repair Nokia mobile phones there, mostly the 9210i communicator. I wasn’t there very long, just between 2003-2004, after they had closed down the place I originally worked at in Rugby. I stayed at my Grandads house in Eastwood while I worked there, as it was before I could drive, and he used to give me a lift in and pick me up at the end of the day. I was still at college back then doing an apprenticeship in engineering, and had to go back on Tuesday to Rugby for college. A lot of faffing about! It wasn’t a place I particularly enjoyed working, management were always looking for excuses to have a go at people, some were just down right rude, I remember one manager, one of the senior ones, I happened to come to the canteen door at the same time as him, so me being polite I held it open for him to come through, only to be met with ‘well are you f***ing coming through or what?!?’. No need for that kind of thing.. There were more nice people there though, I kind of miss them.
As for Comet across the road, I never went in! Never got paid enough to be able to afford anything! But my Grandad did go there and buy a Panasonic widescreen telly, which lasted a good number of years.
Regards,
Lloyd
Digressing – but why not – this is VRAT!
Some of the jobs I had senior management only spoke to you if you were carpeted for something. And I am not talking big firms here – twenty to thirty employees so very much ‘SME’. Prospective clients were invited late in the day and were only shown our work area when the hoi polloi had gone home. Some of the senior management serviced particular clients but briefs and instructions came via an intermediary. One day I was summoned to the oak panelled office over a job I had done correctly to the brief but was clearly not what the client had requested. When asked: “Why has this gone wrong?” I failed to realise that this was a rhetorical question (I have subsequently discovered I am a bit Asperger’s) and began to answer. Big mistake. I was there to take my punishment even though I had done everything as instructed. By chance one of the guys there had been at the same school as me and although different years we had been allocated the same dinner table for the grey gruel provided by the school kitchen. He moved on from the firm before I did but we remained in contact and is probably my closest friend these days.
Back to Comet. All the Connoisseur turntable bits from Sandiacre cost the equivalent of two week’s wages (gross). (I know people have varying views about the Connoisseur stuff but it was the poor man’s route into something approaching hi-fi.) I made the plinth and my father, who had once been a cabinet maker, finished it and stained for me. I still have it and recently did a refurb so I can play vinyl once more. Thanks, Dad (whom I remembered yesterday in the usual way on his birthday – he would be well over 100 now).
Nick
I am so glad I got out of the trade when I did. The amount of dealers that must have lost out on Flat panel stuff!
I heard in the late '90s - early 2000s that Peterborough John Lewis' TV dept was losing a huge sum every year "but they had to have a TV dept" The rest of the shop made a profit and that covered the loss.
In knew many in the TV repair trade. The amateur radio clubs of my youth were, as you would expect, populated by many repairmen. A schoolmaster suggested it as a career path for me. I went into another trade that within twenty years had changed beyond all recognition and shed the majority of my peers. (I was classed as one of the great survivors but perhaps surviving was a mistake. What work remained became increasingly troublesome and the remuneration less and I ended up filling my spare hours with work outside my trade.)
The TV trade heyday seemed to be the 1970s with a booming rental sector. By the mid-90s many of the rental guys were moving out and the repairers forced out. I convinced one of the managers at a firm where I did regular work to repair CRT monitors rather than scrap them. Many of these were the trendy (and thus expensive) blue and grey Apple ones and provided work for one of my self-employed friends but that was a final and small last hurrah. In the end, new monitors were so cheap to buy that the smallest of repairs wasn’t deemed worth it. He gave up and down-sized into early retirement. The last local to me TV repair shop disappeared about twenty years ago.
Nick
Comet caused us a few problems in the 70’s, cut throat prices that we couldn’t get anywhere near. Then their customers coming into the shop to ask about repairs, the boss said we only deal with the agencies we held and couldn’t help. Whether that was wise or not is immaterial now.
We managed to keep going but the owner/boss was in poor health and in the end sold out to another small business. I saw the writing on the wall and got out around 1980-81, there was obviously still plenty life in the trade but the omens for me were there.
Frank
Purchasing power and economies of scale mean that the bigger operators will always see off the smaller ones. I knew what was coming when a customer showed me a price for a job at which we couldn’t even buy the raw material. What had been a steady line of income soon came to an end. There was no choice but concentrate on niche work but with lower quality cheap players entering the market it became harder each year. What I learned is that most people buy on price and that all the worrying done over the quality of work in the years before had probably been a waste of time and stress.
My local town is full of charity shops and coffee shops. It is serviced by three supermarkets and two DIY sheds. Everything else has moved online. There is a Wilko in a relatively recent building and I hear they are in bother. The last time I went in there were lots of empty shelves. Photographs of seventy years ago show the centre had many residential properties. The characterful centre was demolished and a concrete shopping precinct erected along with (now half empty) office blocks in the 1960s. Perhaps time to bring in the wrecking ball and turn it back to housing.
Nick
I heard in the late '90s - early 2000s that Peterborough John Lewis' TV dept was losing a huge sum every year "but they had to have a TV dept" The rest of the shop made a profit and that covered the loss. They used to give a 5 year guarantee on all of their TVs as standard but I think they stopped that after a couple of years of selling flat panel stuff.
My mate worked for the firm that did their repairs and the scrappage was massive.
I take it this was after a chap called Martin in Market Deeping died at an alarmingly early age, or did they have a network of independent repairers? I remember him coming out to look at our second (and last) JVC Hi-Fi VHS bought from John Lewis after the heads wore out in just under two years. Martin's shop was where I think they sell stoves from now, adjacent to the craft/antiques centre.
I still find it astonishing that John Lewis was closed mid-refurbishment - it seems to have wounded Queensgate somewhat.
Yes I remember Martin, a really nice guy. Didn't he work for Deeping TV? The place my mate worked for was Peterborough Video Services (PVS) they finally closed recently as the owner retired. They used to service John Lewis equipment until Lewis's closed and Freemans until they closed the Peterborough warehouse. PVS solutions continues to trade run by the previous company's owner's son. My mate now works there part time which means we can still borrow a van to go to Retrotech! 😎
When I left school my dad wanted me to work for Baker Perkins as he had done since coming out of the army in 1946. My Grandpop worked for Brotherhood's and a lot of my mates from school went to Perkin's or Molin's . My dad said engineering is a job for life.... Our school was certainly training us to be factory drones. I left the trade in 1981 just after I qualified as I was offered a job in electrical controls and switchgear. I doubled my wages and got a new Cortina estate. Three months later I bought a (very) used Escort van, left and went self-employed, the call of the delta gun was too much!
I did another 19 years in the trade by which time I was tired of it and I could see a meteorite sized pile of shite heading for my fan... I got out and missed all of the joys of the painter chips, the widescreen tubes going H/K short in a year and the flat panel crap.
I wish I still had that Escort van though.... SRW 913R where are you now?
Yes I remember Martin, a really nice guy. Didn't he work for Deeping TV?
He might have done in the past for all I know but back then he definitely had his own place. Deeping TV were/are in the Market Square but Martin's place was by what was Terry Wright Cycles back then. Deeping TV survives but in a smaller shop adjacent to its original location and is a one-man band run by someone a wee bit younger than me.
The place my mate worked for was Peterborough Video Services (PVS) they finally closed recently as the owner retired.
Just down Papyrus Road, between the sorting office and Sycamore?
Freemans reminds me that's how I got my first cassette recorder; a catalogue return that came via my brother's father-in-law, who worked there.
a lot of my mates from school went to Perkin's or Molin's . My dad said engineering is a job for life.... Our school was certainly training us to be factory drones.
Much the same as my school, Rich - but don't forget Redring or Hotpoint! We used to have a commissionaire on the door at the old BBC Television Theatre whose brother worked for Molins... (for the benefit of others, Molins make cigarette vending machines. The name is now just a memory, except for an industrial park on the site)
Mods or Chris. Sorry to be a pain but could the threads about dumping / Tips etc be split onto a new thread please? I have a few tales to tell and I am really interested to hear other's experiences but I don't want to drag the Comet thread off topic . If it is too much of a problem I understand but I don't want to start a new thread and fragment the posts.
Rich.
Done, see here
CrustyTV Television Shop: Take a virtual tour
Crusty's TV/VCR Collection: View my collection
Crustys Youtube Channel: My stuff
Crusty's 70s Lounge: Take a peek
