About Debenhams: Debeham’s are a UK high street chain specializing in fashion, beauty, sports goods and home furniture, and with stores across the country selling everything from electrical to womens lingerie instore as well as a whole host of other goods online. More information about Debenhams can be found at their website http://www.debenhams.com/

UK High Street games retailer GAME is to trim its high street presence with the closure of 12 GAME stores as well as six Gamestation stores and the removal of all its Debenhams concessions.

The move will see the closure of 43 outlets in total which the group attribute to tough market conditions. Most of the closures will occur where outlets are situated close to one another.

The company also said that it plans to seek employment opportunities for all 247 affected workers.

A statement made by GAME to Edge Online said:

“We are committed to evolving our business to make sure it operates as efficiently as possible while consistently delivering the high standards of service our customers demand,”

“We regularly review our entire store portfolio, including our concessions, to maximise the opportunities to reach customers while also ensuring that the business is running as effectively as possible.

“The majority of the identified sites are located close to another one of our stores, and we will help each customer affected by a closure to transfer to their nearest store as well as our online offerings.

“We will provide extensive support to the teams in each store. However, with deep regret, we have had to offer redundancy to 247 employees. We will do our utmost to redeploy roles if possible, and have started consulting with all affected employees in the 43 sites.”

Talking Retail reports Tango has launched a new limited edition drinks can which uses temperature sensitive ink to reveal a series of jokes once cans have been properly chilled.

Appearing in fridges across the country from last Monday (15th Feb) the gimmick features across 20 million cans built on the ‘too much Tango causes side effects’ theme, which launched in 2009. The theme will continue through Tango’s 2010 plan and strap lines will run across orange, apple and cherry Tango varieties.

Strap lines will include such witty gems as:

“Chilled Tango Froze my Peel Off”
“Chilled Tango Made My Stones Shrink.”
“Chilled Tango Made My Pips Go Hard”

The limited edition cold effect can will be supported by a cash and carry 24 for 20 promotional deal, which will run for 12 weeks while retailers’ POS kits will also be available upon request and include wobblers and chiller stickers to raise awareness and drive trial say Tango’s maker, Britvic.

The app also allows users to locate their nearest branch and browse the menu to place their order, which is sent directly to the kitchen for preparation. Users can specify a collection time and pay for the order via the app.

Talking Retail reports recent research by the Consumer Forum has found that bad customer service really does impact consumers’ perception of retailers and where consumers are likely to spend their cash.

A survey revealed that more than 80% of consumers tell their friends, family and associates about good or bad customer experiences they have had. And of those who spill the beans its more likely the feedback will be negative. Three times as many respondents (25.2%) would relay bad experience over good (8.4%).

Almost all respondents also indicated that bad customer service would likely compel them to take their business somewhere else.

The Consumer Forum surveyed thousands of customers on all aspects of retail experience, from online shopping to the brands and services they like and dislike.

Simon Calver, CE and founder member of the Consumer Forum said the results provided a real insight into how UK consumers think about where to spend and on what products.

Millions of Wordpress blogs were unavailable for almost two hours on Thursday after a datacentre problem caused routing issues and prevented blogs from being served to viewers.

The downtime was the worst experienced by Wordpress.org for four years and more than 10 million blogs were affected. The outage cost bloggers some 5.5 million page views and Wordpress-hosted blogs were unavailable for 110 minutes as a result.

The outage was blamed on the unscheduled changing of a core router at one of Wordpress’ datacentre providers and also took down safeguards meaning any blogs hosted by Wordpress were inaccessible during the downtime, although no data was lost.

“It also broke all the mechanisms for failover between our locations in San Antonio and Chicago. All of your data was safe and secure, we just couldn’t serve it,” said WordPress. “I know this sucked for you guys as much as it did for us. The entire team was on pins and needles trying to get your blogs back as soon as possible.”

The outage affected all regular blogs hosted by WordPress.com, as well as those sites hosted through the enterprise-class VIP service the company offers, including tech blogs like TechCrunch and GigaOM. Blogs which host Wordpress open source release on their own servers were not affected.

A-TAC Armoured Golf Cart

For golf buggy users who have been on the wrong end of a wayward drive, they may want to get one of these. This latest golf cart comes courtesy of the Indian design firm Metaltech Motor Bodies.

Called the A-TAC, or Anti-Terrorist Assault Cart the vehicle has been designed following the 2008 Mumbai bombings.

Basically, it appears that the firm has taken a standard golf cart and stuck some armour plating on it to create a vehicle that looks like something from a Batman movie.

The cart has a top speed of 15 miles per hour and is battery-powered with a six-hour charging life. It comes with a price tag of $43,000 and there is room for two adults in the vehicle. Sadly, there is no room for golf clubs or a drinks cooler.

The A-TAC has been designed to operate in confined spaces such as hotel corridors, but perhaps there could be a market for the vehicle on the golf course from which it is apparently derived!?

Although, if it were truly bullet-proof they’d surely do something to protect those exposed front wheels?

Sony Ericcson has received a slap on the wrist from the Advertising Standards Authority over ‘misleading’ claims surrounding the company’s Satio smartphone. The BBC’s Newsbeat reports that the claims centre on the company falsely representing the handset’s ability to access Facebook.

In a TV commercial for the Satio, the handset was shown to be running a Facebook application but a user of the phone later complained to the ASA after it was found the feature wasn’t included with the phone and couldn’t be installed due to software issues with earlier models.

The ASA said: “Because the ad implied the application was either pre-loaded on the phone or would be available to download, and because this was not the case at the time the ad was broadcast, we concluded the ad was misleading.”

Sony Ericsson claim that the problem has been rectified and the application can now be downloaded to the phone.

The Satio has been something of a thorn-in-the-side for Sony Ericcson since it was launched in October 2009. Both Carphone Warehouse and Phones4U were forced to withdraw the phone from sale temporarily following a high number of customer returns, following a buggy operating system.

Sony Ericcson has struggled in the mobile market for some time, with 2009 seeing a 40% drop in handset uptake compared to the previous year.

Normally, when caught short a mad dash to the nearest bush is called for but the UroClub provides an on-club reservoir capable of holding in excess of a half-litre of liquid.  It can be used and carried in your golf bag thanks to a triple-seal screw cap although it isn’t designed for play so if you do use one, be sure to use the right seven-iron, otherwise you could be in store for a nasty surprise!

And if you still need to spare your blushes while performing your ablutions then there is even a handy ‘privacy towel’ for use to conceal the action.

Still not convinced? See for yourself in the product advertisement the UroClub in action.  And ignore the price in the ad; you can own a UroClub for the low price of $24.95!

New shopping habits – most notably online shopping – may to be blame for a decline on the Great British High Street.

A Local Data Company study of nearly 700 shopping locations across the UK revealed that almost 18000 retailers had shut up shop by the end of 2009.

Margate in Kent showed the highest proportion of vacant retail premises with 1 in 4 shop fronts being boarded up while retail operations in the North East and the Midlands also showed high levels of vacancies.

Whilst changing retail habits of shoppers had a huge impact on the high street, so do did the recession with several well known chains succumbing to the effects of the economic downturn, including First Quench – who owned the Threshers, Victoria Wines and Haddows brands – and book chain Borders..