Phones4U, a well known UK retailer of mobile products and services, will be shutting its doors beginning Monday morning to all of its 550 standalone stores due to the recent pull-out from the last two mobile operators to do business with the company. Vodafone and EE, had recently made the decision to pull back from business partnerships with Phones4U which is essentially forcing Phones4U to keep the doors closed. This could spell bad news for its 5,560 employees somewhere down the line, although Phones4U employees will still be required to show up to work as normal for briefing by management over the matter and are stated as being paid until further notice.
There is a possibility that Phones4U could once again re-open for business, but for now the entirety of Phones4U’s retail locations will be closed pending a decision from the Administration on whether or not it can ever operate as normal in the future. That will prove hard to do though without any products to sell or offer to customers. Phones4U says this comes as a shock as they have been making a healthy profit of £100 million which suggests a continued prosperous business future, despite this though all of Phones4U’s mobile network partners are declining to supply the retail outlet.
Existing customers won’t be affected by any of the decisions made, and Phones4U ensures that all contracts or services purchased and setup through the company will continue to operate and the mobile networks are continuing to provide service for these customers. Phones4U also states that customers will still be able to contact the Phones4U customer services team as that part of the business will remain operational for now so as to provide the needed support. Phones4U being forced into administration leads the company to believe that appointing an administrator will occur tomorrow although there is no guarantee that it will happen that quickly. It is believed that mobile network operators in the UK were looking for a way to achieve goals of a higher profit margin, and if true it seems the way that they went about this was to cut down the amount of third party retailers selling their products. With Phones4U out of the picture indefinitely, Carphone Warehouse remains the only authorized retailer for mobile network services and products until further notice.