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The HBC has been coasting on it's reputation as "Canada's oldest corporation" for too long. The selection is poor, everything is overpriced, and store layouts

The HBC has been coasting on it's reputation as "Canada's oldest corporation" for too long. The selection is poor, everything is overpriced, and store layouts haven't changed since the 50s. Remember that scene in Queen's Gambit where Harmon buys a dress at the department store? That's basically HBC except they've given HBC a new coat of paint and proclaimed it ready for the 21st century. HBC was one of the prime places to do a wedding registry. They had nearly all the stereotypical registry items, but you had to go in and scan them. I tried using their online backend to add to a registry, and it is firmly stuck in the 90s, stopped working, and nobody bothered to fix it. They do this weird thing where there are multiple counters scattered throughout the store, manned with helpful ladies to answer questions and ring out purchases, except they're always unmanned, except one (on the other side of the store you're standing in), and that one counter has 5 people in line, some who wish to do returns, which take extra time. Their policy seems to be to sell their HBC card at every chance, and if someone decides to sign up, you will be stuck in line while they fill out the entire form. Remember, there's only one till open, and because they ask about the card right before payment, the session cannot be put on hold, in order to ring someone else in. When I worked at Zellers in 2005, they had an ancient text-based GUI for their POS. It's fast if you know what you're doing, but nobody at HBC seems to know how to use it. Oh, and HBC still uses this system in 2020. Want to see a piece of history? Check it out. I can't wait for HBC to die. It should've gone instead of Zellers. All this they're doing to try and defer rent payments is just the death throes of a once great corporation that decided they had it all figured out, and that nothing ever needed to change. There's one nice thing about HBC, which is that they make nice mugs, I guess.

pbourke 6y ago
> They do this weird thing where there are multiple counters scattered throughout the store, manned with helpful ladies to answer questions and ring out purchases, except they're always unmanned, except one That’s a classic department store pattern. Macy’s and Nordstrom also do this. And their counters are often empty as well. I wonder why the pattern persists nowadays since it obviously only works when the stores have twice the staff that they currently do. I suppose it’s just a lack of funds or will to change the layout of the store.
gww 6y ago
The quality of many of their own brands is terrible as well. We were moving and needed a couch and bed quickly and the bay could deliver one reasonably fast. The couch cushions lost their loft in a few months and were covered in pills. Customer service offers no solutions. The bed came with bent slats thst couldn't support any weight and the upholstery was poorly affixes to the frame. It took almost 10 hours of phone calls to get them to take it back and another 5 hours for them to tell us the gift cards they sent us couldn't be used until we activated them in store. We ended up replacing the couch with one from Urban Barn that only cost 15% (regular price while the bay was a 40% off sale price) more and is much better quality. Everything with HBC is terribly mismanaged and I agree that it really needs to die.

pbourke 6y ago

> They do this weird thing where there are multiple counters scattered throughout the store, manned with helpful ladies to answer questions and ring out purchases, except they're always unmanned, except one That’s a classic department store pattern. Macy’s and Nordstrom also do this. And their counters are often empty as well. I wonder why the pattern persists nowadays since it obviously only works when the stores have twice the staff that they currently do. I suppose it’s just a lack of funds or will to change the layout of the store.

gww 6y ago

The quality of many of their own brands is terrible as well. We were moving and needed a couch and bed quickly and the bay could deliver one reasonably fast. The couch cushions lost their loft in a few months and were covered in pills. Customer service offers no solutions. The bed came with bent slats thst couldn't support any weight and the upholstery was poorly affixes to the frame. It took almost 10 hours of phone calls to get them to take it back and another 5 hours for them to tell us the gift cards they sent us couldn't be used until we activated them in store. We ended up replacing the couch with one from Urban Barn that only cost 15% (regular price while the bay was a 40% off sale price) more and is much better quality. Everything with HBC is terribly mismanaged and I agree that it really needs to die.