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Rumbelows was bought by Radio Rentals, who then merged with Granada plc, who then merged with Carlton to become ITV.

I worked for a competitor to RR (Visionhire) when a teenager, BSkyB had started the first satellite TV series in the UK. Nobody wanted to buy it (why would I need more than 4 TV channels?) so they gave it free, including installation, for 6 months before charging money. Unfortunately so many people wanted to cancel after the 6 months there was a huge backlog waiting to get somebody to take the dish down.

People were unbelievable angry, I worked in the callcentre and we'd have people turning up threatening to kill us, others sent us boxes full of literal shit. Not the greatest job ever.

BSB was first (Squarials!) and Sky second and then they merged pretty early on.

Rumbelows went out of business, many stores became Escom and they too went out of business pretty quickly.

Escom acquired the Amiga brand and distributed Amiga hardware (till they went out of business.)

Commodore brand too.

I very nearly bought an Escom Amiga in May 1996 but got a Pentium 60 Commodore branded PC instead.

By July Escom was done.

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