Mary Portas Secret Shopper- This time it's personal

It’s astonishing how many people get conned into buying a mobile phone they don’t want or agreeing to an over priced contract. Only the other day my hairdresser told me she is paying £55 a month for her iPhone on O2, problem is that after she dropped it down the toilet she found that the salesman hadn’t set up her insurance properly. So she’s had to buy a cheap phone but still stuck with the expensive contract. And she’s not alone, according to retail expert Mary Portas, who last night vowed to change this shopping hell, starting with mobile retailer Fone House. But it wasn’t going to be easy with 45 of the 50 stores ran as franchises and five owned by CEO Clive, a 70s rocker who fell into the business, a recipe for disaster?

Mary, with all her good intentions, was sent to the store in Waltham Cross, owned by top seller H, a man who drives a flashy sports car and believes ‘don’t fix it unless it’s broke.’But despite being able to talk the talk, and walk the walk, Mary discovered his customer service just didn’t come up to scratch. Her solution? To send the sales team, plus the companies worst seller -Matt from the flagship store in Angel, to work on a cosmetics counter, where listening to what women want is key. Turns out Matt was more suited to selling women’s lotions and potions than phones. Thank god then for Mary, who took him under her wing.

But that wasn’t all she had up her sleeve. Her plan was to recreate the mobile phone shopping experience into a sociable and enjoyable one by gutting the interior of the stores and introducing demonstration tables for customers to try before they buy and learn about the different phones, rather than be baffled by sales garble.

While Clive agreed to the changes at the Angel store, H and the other franchisees weren’t so easy to convince. Perhaps the cost of £20-25,000 had something to do with it?

But not one for being stuck in the past, H eventually gave in after hearing how sales had increased at the flagship store since the refit, money speaks!

Next week Mary goes undercover at Estate Agents.