The announcement from Phones 4u's administrator Price Waterhouse Coopers that it is closing 362 of the retailer's stores permanently really is an appalling outcome for the 1697 store staff who now find themselves out of a job.
I feel very sorry for these people at the sharp end of what seems on the face of it to be a rather sordid tale. I know from speaking to some of the employees that most had absolutely no idea that their jobs were balanced on such a knife edge, and from what I understand from other reports, senior management had little inkling either.
Perhaps they should have done though. Certainly the company's main investors could have shown a little more sensitivity to the likely outcome of negotiations with the four main carriers when they explained that they weren't able to offer competitive terms in the face of a mountain of debt that needed to be serviced. Especially as a good deal of that debt was apparently self imposed as a result of some rather creative financial arrangements.
Equally Vodafone and EE should perhaps have considered the impression their actions would give to their own customers when they, fairly unceremoniously, pulled the rug from under a long-term business partner. Perhaps they weren't prepared for the Phones 4U management to take such drastic action. I know I was personally flabbergasted at how easily they appeared to give up the fight when the Vodafone contract had another 6 months left to run and EE's wasn't due to expire for a further year.
Most businesses would have kept trading in the interim and explored other possibilities, probably including some hasty re-trenching and fence mending with all the carriers. Of course I'm not privy to all the reasons for their decision to go into administration so eagerly, but it seems to me that a business with over a billion pound turnover and profits in excess of £100M might have been worth a little more effort than a press of the nuclear button without further attempts at diplomacy. I've certainly seen many much smaller businesses struggle to stay afloat for much longer than these guys.
Maybe that's the problem. For those companies already staked in the game, the mobile phone business has been seen for some time as easy money. The phones and tariffs are laid on by other companies and an obliging public pitches up every time one or the other produces another subtle flavour of hardware or call package that in essence does the same thing as the last, only slightly better. These carefully staged managed increments keep the punters hooked and the cash rolling in. Perhaps when things got a little tougher than that for the board, it's just wasn't worth the trouble.
Now the very same carriers that precipitated this situation are reportedly picking off the juicier fruit from the P4U property cherry bowl for their own standalone stores. After an epiphany, undoubtedly born of the internet, they've discovered that cutting out the middle men means the money tree just grew a bit taller.
It'll be interesting to see if tariffs are reduced accordingly now there's one less bite out of the pie. But somehow I doubt it, especially as most of the carriers have of late been furiously re-writing their contracts in ways that haven't been particularly advantageous to their customers. And let's not forget that, with a reduction in competition on the high street, the consumer is going to have less opportunity shop around. As the carriers take more of a direct sales approach, the choice will be limited to service and coverage rather than tariff as there'll be fewer independent retailers to stir the pot.
I suppose grabbing the tastier morsels of the Phones 4 U portfolio is a pragmatic move, but it still looks like opportunism born of fancy footwork on their part. In the final analysis the people who have, justifiably or not, pulled the plug are now picking over the bones of a business that was previously appeared to be thriving.
Dixons Carphone don't come out of this smelling like roses either, even though I suppose they can't be held accountable for the actions of their own suppliers, it does look like a superlative bit of luck on their part that shortly after announcing the closure of 160 Phones 4U concessions in their Currys stores, their main competitor loses all support from their mutual partners. I'm not suggesting there was any collusion involved, but it does seem like the kind of dream outcome that many a rival company would have to pinch themselves hard to believe.
To be fair, Dixons have offered jobs to many of the former concessions staff, which will of course also provides them with a ready made workforce. They've also been making efforts to acquire a number of the Phones 4U locations and have been promising jobs for the staff involved in those locations. However it's understood that the administrators have been less than enthusiastic and one can only speculate as to the kinds of offers Dixons Carphone are making on the stores. Even though the result could be the safeguarding of a number of jobs, they're unlikely to be doing so purely out of the goodness of their hearts.
There were undoubtedly a lot of contributory circumstances leading up to this meltdown, but it still leaves a very nasty taste in my mouth and a hell of a stink under my nose. A ludicrous situation and a sad outcome that could have been avoided at so many key points. I only hope all parties concerned, including the P4U investors and management, the carriers, and Dixons Carphone are as uncomfortable about all this as I am.
Although I doubt any of us will be as uncomfortable as the store staff and their families who suddenly find themselves without an income so close to Christmas.