W H Smith

You have to queue for 10 minutes to buy a newspaper. Terrible layout and always busy. I can never seem to find anything here and when I do it costs more than anywhere else. If you’re a student there are cheaper places for your bits and pieces.

Good size WHSmiths, selling everything you would expect, with magazines and newspapers at the front of the shop and books, entertainment and stationery etc towards the back. Always very busy and can be queuing for a while — the flow of people in and out the store is not very good and can sometimes be a bit too cramped (usually by the ones that are reading magazines in the path of others trying to get to the back of the shop!). Another annoying thing is that the national lottery stand is at the very back of the shop so if you are quickly popping in for paper and lottery ticket, it will take a lot longer than anticipated! Staff generally come across as young and inexperienced and though will do their best to help, are generally not that much help at all! Dont do as many offers as they used to, and therefore, though convenient (you know what you are getting), can be a lot pricier than most other places. Poor selection of cards.

Obviously a high street name that needs little introduction. It is in the pedestrian area of the town centre, so you pay to park in the Arndale or on street nearby. They have daily papers, a fantastic variety of magazines, books, stationary, DVDs, computer games, cards etc. Two paypoints (front and back) and often long queues.

The store is very big for W H Smith only bright is bigger in the local area i believe, the store it self has the best magazine collection i have ever seen and if you ever want hard o find titles this is the places to check, but other than that its all down hill form there the services has been terrible every time i go in, the cues are always massive and the cuing system they use stops you from shopping in part of the shop, the tills are very very slow. so if you want a good selection and don’t mind a wait then good place to go.

This shop has masses and masses of magazines that usually you would have to have a subscription to to be able to get hold of. It also has stacks of books. You can get drinks and chocolate too.
But you have to wait a long time at the till to be served but the understandably grumpy staff. I went in here with a wheelchair user and it was a logistical nightmare for him, its laid out really badly, so we could hardly get through the people to the till without knocking things over or running someone over.