Comment: Is P4U robbing Peter to pay Paul?

Phones 4U’s actions appear a little bit contradictory. On one hand it claims fantastic sales results, great commissions, increased training and a new surge of store openings.

Hardly standard market behaviour in the current economic climate.
On the other hand, it is cutting jobs like everyone else.

It might just be the profitability it talks about and the real estate activity is the result of a reduced wage bill. If so, staff wouldn’t like it much.

And it seems to be covering itself by training staff up, under its new Skills4Service scheme, to cope without some of their old colleagues.

The notion the redundancies are being made in order to “run as a proper business”, as one sage staffer suggested, perhaps isn’t so laughable.

Or maybe it is to run like other high street retailers. Elsewhere, some network chain stores are audited only once a year, whereas Phones 4U stores have faced the ignominy of being hit by men with briefcases almost monthly.

Perhaps rightly so, as complaints of mis-selling against Phones 4U staff were numerous.

And perhaps, then, it can be seen as a measure of Phones 4U’s success at stamping out such behaviour, and a reduced pressure on staff to lure customers in by hook or by crook.