Maplin Electronics

AVOID MAPLIN on Winchombe Street Cheltenham. The car parking enforcement is totally scurrilous. You only have to step 10 paces off the premises and your car will be clamped and a £90 release fee charged. This totally negates the utility of this well-placed store. I was clamped when I went to withdraw cash to spend in the store. There is no point in trying to reason with the parking enforcement automatons.

Maplins is quite a large shop with a bit of a warehouse feel about. It is convenient to park in the free carpark outside Though don’t go anywhere else as clampers operate Maplins is one of those places you go in for one thing, spend twenty minute looking come out with 2 things and probably not the item you went for in the first place.
Staff are helpful and as the shop midweek especially can be very quiet don’t mind spending time with you.
The shop is useful at Xmas to get those difficult or a bit different presents especially for boys . Got nephew a great metal detector which he loves.
Beware of buying goods from maplin on the internet Because even though they say you can return goods to the shop for a refund When we tried to return a wrongly sent HD wire it took 6 weeks to get a refund as the store does not issue refunds depsite what it says online.

This branch of maplin is very similar to all the others and is quite a large branch. As you would expect they stock a large variety of consumer electrical items from the smallest of components up to radio controlled planes. They have a desk for buying electronic bits and pieces at the back of the store from their catalogue and I found the people on the desk very willing to help me find what I needed but you need to bear in mind no one can know everything and I did end up with the wrong thing. One piece of advice is that unless your wife / girlfriend is specifically into electronics, she might want to take a rain check on this shopping outing.