Tag: woolworths

Woolies contacts me to tell me that they know I don’t want to be contacted…

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But…

Here’s the relevant bits of a letter I received from Woolworths’ WRewards Team earlier this week:

Dear Mr Thousand,

If you’re wondering [why we haven’t contacted you] you’re on the Direct Marketing Association’s “Don’t contact me” register, and as a member of the DMA, we respected your wishes not to receive any marketing material from us.

However… we’ve decided that from from now everyone with a MySchool card will automatically receive all the benefits for their tier level as well as important Woolworths information.

If you would still prefer NOT to receive any communication from us, all you need to do is call [telephone number] or email [email address] to opt out, and we won’t contact you.

Kind regards,

The WRewards Team

Yes, I’m on the DMA’s “Don’t contact me” register and you can argue the alleged benefits of that service all you like – especially after that much publicised data leak last May. However, for the record, I get very little junk mail, very few junk SMSs and I seem to have been completely unaffected by last year’s oopsie. Look, the service works for me.

That said, it only works when DMA members respect my wishes. And I’m using the present tense there, unlike Woolworths’ “respected” in the letter above. I’ve yet to discover why they feel that they can disregard the rules of the DMA to inform me that they are disregarding the rules of the DMA.

Still, as they tell me, at least I have the option of not receiving any further communication by opting out via the methods given above. The thing that annoys me is that I was under the impression (as they were too) that I had already opted out of receiving any  communication from them in the first place.

And anyway, how far does this go? Once I have opted out (again) will they then contact me (again) against my wishes to tell me that they are contacting me (again) against my wishes to ask me (again) if I want them to not contact me?

I’ll be contacting Woolies and the DMA about this and I’ll contact you again soon to tell you what they say.

UPDATE (27th July):

Email from Woolies:

Recently, many of our customers who are on the DMA list have been complaining that they were not receiving their WRewards guaranteed benefits. By participating in WRewards they are entitled to receive their guaranteed benefits, but because they are registered with the DMA, we respected their wishes to not be contacted by us. This recent influx of requests from customers wanting to receive their benefits irrespective of their DMA status is the reason why you received the email you mention in your blog post.

The business took a view to communicate to all our customers on the DMA as a one-off intervention, to confirm that they do not want to receive further communication from Woolworths. We apologise for the situation and trust that this last piece of communication will resolve the issue.

If you would kindly confirm your opt out status you will receive no further communication from us, including WRewards benefits. You can do so by clicking on the opt out link in the original email or by calling 0861 50 20 50.

Hmm… ok. Three things here.

1. I can sort of understand now why they felt they should get in touch with me.
2. I still don’t think that they should have got in touch with me. That action blatantly disregards the rules of the DMA (whose code of conduct they signed up to) and also clearly ignores my wishes as someone who doesn’t want contacting, as they stated in the original letter.
3. That I have to opt out specifically from their ongoing communications is wrong. Having made the (incorrect) decision to make this “one-off intervention”, I should have to opt in if I want to hear from them, not be forced to opt out again.

I remain unimpressed.

Credibility issues

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As Sarah Britten penned an article documenting Helen Zille’s slow but steady meltdown on Twitter and with political commentator Eusebius McKaiser even suggesting:

For its own sake, the DA might need a new leader.

suddenly the rug has been smartly pulled from beneath DA supporters’ feet, as their previously solid and reliable leader seems almost to be suffering some sort of breakdown, resulting in her, her party’s and her supporters’ credibility being eroded; the sage advice of arguing only with logic and not emotion seemingly forgotten.

But while the own goals of opposition politicians are important in our democracy, there are bigger problems involving credibility facing our country. Hot Cross Buns.

Yep – Woolworths (and as we’ve said before, this isn’t the same Woolworths as went bust in the UK, this is the SA equivalent of M&S) are out and about offending christians again. But after their previous capitulation on the decision to remove loss making christian magazines from their shelves back in 2010 (a decision which resulted, incidentally, in a loss of credibility for the store), “surprisingly” this time it’s the christians who have lost the plot. This just a couple of weeks after their “Jesus is alive/Jesus is dead” car crash of an argument over the Red Bull ad.

Because today, christian people (not all christian people, it should be said, but some very vocal christian people) are ever so upset about there being a Halaal marking on Woolworths’ Hot Cross Buns.

And yes, they’re really annoyed:

I hate woolworths… How can you do that to the Christians, I hope that God will have mercy on you. And dnt be surprised if your shops run bankrupt.. I will pray to my living God and you will see what he is capable of!

Let’s pop back and review that threat in a few weeks, months or years, shall we? Because while your bloke upstairs is allegedly both omnipresent and omnipotent, Woolies do sell awfully nice chocolate brownies, very decent fresh fruit and veg, and have a huge selection of quality clothing as well. With their latest results indicating a turnover up 11.4%, profits up 26.8% (despite not selling very many christian magazines) and total assets of R9,218,000,000, it seems unlikely that they’ll go under any time soon.

But with several people up in arms over some seasonal bakery products, who knows what the future may hold?

Even the SA Catholic Bishops’ Conference spokesperson Chris Townsend said “people were overreacting and needed to be more understanding”:

Hot cross buns are only a symbol, and not a central tenet of Christianity. There are a lot more weighty issues to deal with in SA than a few ‘hot cross Christians’

However, for me, it’s just another nail in the coffin as far as christian credibility is concerned. And to be honest, we’re running out of space on the lid now. When members of a religion (or any other group) display such stupid, irrational (shock) and intolerant behaviour, there comes a point when society will simply stop listening.

And if they want their reasonable and sensible suggestions to be considered in the future, just like dear Helen, someone needs to tell them to pipe down before that moment comes.

UPDATE: Here’s some opinion from Georgina Guedes. You may recall that I also agreed with her thoughts here back in 2007.

UPDATE 2: Oh dear – there’s precedent! Tesco in the UK has lost market share, profit and has been infested by mice (twice) – all “since supporting Gay Pride“.

UPDATE 3: Hayibo’s response is brilliant.

UPDATE 4: This is also worth a read for a different perspective on this.

TRY ME!!!/Don’t try me!!!!!

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More shelf-edge goodness comes to us courtesy of Woolworths who are becoming confusingly selective when offering freebies in their fruit section. Take this example which I spotted (in their fruit section) just this morning:

What Woolies appear to have done is to alter their policy on the TRY ME!!! freebies which they use to tempt you into purchasing their (usually very decent) fruit.
It used to be the case that they would lay out some of their wares openly with the invitation TRY ME!!!, at which point, one could delve into said wares and taste them whilst trying to forget that other people’s hands had been in there too.
But Woolies seem to have cottoned on to the fact that this was not very hygienic and have now boxed their TRY ME!!! offers – as you can see with the strawberries above.
But then the poorly-photographed dates on the left (the store manager was rapidly approaching as I took it) have me confused. As you can see, This is NOT a try me!!!!!, but is a try me!!!!! different to a TRY ME!!!? And if This is NOT a try me!!!!!, then why are the dates unpackaged and ready for TRYing, while the TRY ME!!! strawberries are all sealed in punnets?

Using my nifty footwork to sidestep the rapidly approaching – and seemingly irate  – manager and applying my scientific logic to the situation, I made some rudimentary calculations. And I worked out (by extrapolation of the data gathered thus far) that anything in Woolies which was in any sort of packaging was obviously a TRY ME!!! whereas anything which was open on the shelves is NOT a try me!!!!!.

I began to look around and was instantly greeted by a whole heap of freebie opportunities. Virtually everything was packaged and therefore available for sampling.
Since I was in the vicinity, I started with some fruit. The strawberries seemed appropriate and were very tasty. I then moved on to enjoy a messy (yet satisfying) breakfast snack of wholenut muesli and plain yoghurt (750g and 500ml respectively) while wandering around looking for chocolate and beer. I passed the homeware section, which (with hindsight) would have been a sensible place to unpack a bowl from the boxed 12-piece porcelain dinner set for my breakfast combo. R199 all in, unless you’re TRYing it in the shop, in which case, it’s free.

It was at this point I noticed that I had dribbled plain yoghurt down the front of my jeans in a rather embarrassing fashion. The worst of it was cleaned up using pre-packaged Woolies kitchen cloths (R19.95 for pack of 5) and the rest of it will come out in the wash this evening, thanks to the mugful (mug from the R15.95 porcelain range – brightly coloured, holds washing powder well, but it’s just a mug) of washing powder I chose to TRY!!! (1kg Skip Biological, R35).

I was contemplating which of the wide variety of toothpastes to test out with my recently unpackaged Oral B toothbrush when I was grabbed from behind by two burly checkout girls and a security guy and literally flung from the shop. I could have been quite badly hurt if it weren’t for the Nautilus scatter cushion (R160) I was holding at the time which thankfully broke my fall.

I can only imagine that the manager was not happy with me taking photographs in his shop. I guess I should have asked permission first. Maybe I’ll give him a little bit of time to calm down and then pop in later to apologise and sample some free dinner.

It’s all lies – the myth of the unripe nectarines

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Never believe a thing they tell you.

It all began when the buyer, new to the job, went out to the nectarine farms. His inexperience was quickly detected by the evil nectarine farmers who had barns filled with dud fruit.
They’re not ripe, they’ll never be ripe.
But the buyer didn’t know that. He’ll take the lot, please.
Here’s the fat cheque – put them on the back of the lorries.

Once back at the warehouse, the managers were aghast: money down the drain – we can’t sell unripe nectarines. In this terrible financial climate as well. We’re for the chop once Mr Woolworth hears of this. If only there was some way out. But there isn’t.

Unless…

It’s brilliant. And we’ll put “KEEP REFRIGERATED” on them right underneath the bit where we say “will ripen in 2-3 days at room temperature”. Confusion will reign.
And before anyone knows what’s going on, we’ll have sold the whole lot and the customers will only have themselves to blame for believing us and keeping them in the fridge.
Or not keeping them in the fridge. Whatever.
It’s a win-win situation. Unless they want to eat the nectarines.
Which they won’t, because they’ll never get ripe.

Ker-ching.