Vodafone and Three UK Today Start Merging High Street Retail Stores
Merged mobile operator VodafoneThree (Vodafone and Three UK) has begun the process of transforming its UK retail estate, which will see the operator combining stores across the country and closing those that duplicate their presence. The expected move will also result in Three UK becoming available in over 130 new locations.
The latest development supports VodafoneThree’s post-merger plan to invest £11bn into upgrading the UK’s 5G mobile infrastructure and coverage over the next decade (here, here and here). The combined business has previously stated that it aspires to reach more than 99% of the UK population with their 5G Standalone (5GSA) network by 2030, then 99.96% by 2034, while also pushing fixed wireless access (mobile home broadband) to 82% of households by 2030, among other things.
According to today’s announcement, VodafoneThree is said to be injecting millions of pounds into refreshing its retail locations and remains committed to remaining in “every town the stores already have a presence“, supporting over 4,500 jobs. But from today their stores will start offering products and support for both Vodafone and Three UK customers under just one roof in each location where they have a presence.
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A supporting study from the Centre of Retail Research (CRR), which was based on sample of 1,200 visitors to 30 VodafoneThree stores, highlights how 28.9% of people say that Vodafone and Three UK stores remain the single biggest sources of information on new phone models, ahead of social media (20.4%) and online articles and websites (14.8%) for customers.
In addition, a fifth of visits to such stores were also said to come from customers who would not otherwise have visited the high street, which is claimed to help generate £168.5m per year for the UK economy, plus another £61.2m from local hospitality.
Jon Shaw, Consumer Operations Director at VodafoneThree, said:
“We know how important stores like ours are to the health of the high street and the communities which rely on them. From shopping devices, seeking support from our experts or getting their phone repaired, we are proud to serve our customers where they are and reaffirm our commitment to the UK high street. The stores will help bring our brands to more people, offering customers more choice and greater value, as we build the UK’s best network.”
VodafoneThree now plans to “evolve its stores from purely retail spaces to hubs for support and advice“, such as through the introduction of services like ‘Fix & Go’ by Vodafone, with 55.4% of people saying that technical advice from a human reduces stress and anxiety and 68.7% saying it would be beneficial for the stores to repair phones as well as sell them.
The transformation will include flagship stores in major cities, with the first of those expected to be in London, Manchester, Edinburgh, Birmingham and Cardiff. But naturally you can’t combine so many locations and remove duplication without there being some job losses.
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Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Interesting read – given all of Vodafone’s stores are now franchised too, wonder how this will work. My city has a three store and Vodafone store one shop apart in the local shopping center
VF Franchise Staff here – Three stores have been told they will be franchised as well
Franchised stores are a disaster. Awful customer service, just incentive to sell -Vodafone sell contracts to vulnerable people
No surprise there, the Vodafone & 3 shops are virtually next door to each other in Banbury Castle Quay & I have no doubt this will the case up & down the country.
Depending on how this is handled I could see a situation where a lot of the stores are switching customers from Three to VF or vice versa so it’ll go down as a new acquisition for them…
Be interesting to see what happens in Plymouth. Both Vodafone’s and Three’s outlets are fairly close to each other (Three inside Drake Circus mall, Voda just outside), Vodafone’s is probably in the better location but is a franchise.
I haven’t been to a mobile store in 20 years. I get that some people prefer stores and not everyone has cards to use online but it seems to me mobile stores will eventually suffer the same fate as bank branches…
I prefer the Three stores because there is no language barrier. Three customer services is incredibly hard to deal with… That being said I hope this improves customer services all round.
That’s by design. Vodafone isn’t much different. They don’t want to offer phone support, they want you to self serve online
Worcester has caused VF store but no 3 store so but sure what that site will become
Birkenhead has VF and 3 but they are 5 doors apart aroubd 50 yards from each other. So not sure which will survive of the two.
CORRECTION
Worcester has a VF store but no 3 store to my knowledge so not sure what that site will become Birkenhead has VF and 3 but they are 5 doors apart around 50 yards from each other. So not sure which will survive of the two.
It was clearly going to happen, rationalise the retail estate. Lots of duplication of resource however.
franchise model is the way forward, lots of negativity around vodas historic poor practices with their ex franchisees.
I knew someone who works for 3, the plan if a shop shuts the staff will just move across the other store.
The no redundancies thing doesn’t make sense as there will be 2 store managers, 2 or 3 assistant managers and lots and lots of staff in a store that isn’t equipped to handle that level of headcount
the plan is for natural attrition to take place, ie make people miserable and they will leave of their own accord. Saves the payouts, bet there will be plenty of payoffs for the guys higher up the food chain
The morale on the front line in 3 is rock bottom.
The takeover should never have been given the go ahead
A similar thing happened when Vodafone acquired 150 phones 4 u stores. They kept them around for a while, then moved all the staff around their regions and ultimately made any excess managers redundant.
For the franchise model, the new business owner of the three stores which could also be someone who already owns the nearest Vodafone equivalent will probably consolidate their management.
They may even have multi site managers e.g. one store manager – managing multiple stores.
Tesco Mobile did the same thing last year in April with the multi store manager model. 500 small format store managers got made redundant overnight. And that was all company owned stores – imagine how franchised stores like Vodafone will handle it…
I got connected to Edge (2g) again last week in the middle of Leeds city centre, I’d rather have 3G or 4G before 5G SA…
3G is all gone. 2G is much more valuable for calls and texts which is why it still exists. 3G was terrible. It was very lightly used which is why it was first to go.
Say i went on Holiday Abroad out of Europe. How will I get much Cheaper calls from Dubai, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, South America, The Caribbean and Asia to the UK?
vodafone Northampton town centre branch has horrid sales assistants. Down right rude with a high and mighty attitude.
How long will it take to get through the closures?