Thanks to the many of you that have emailed Woolworths and Sainsbury's about the Springer DVD.
It seems that we all got the same responses. Woolworths came back to me first saying, "Woolworths is guided by legislation and regulatory bodies on what it can and cannot sell in its stores.
Our decisions to sell products are based on customer demand.
The product is not currently available in stores, however should a customer wish to purchase it, it is available from our website - www.woolworths.co.uk."
As was pointed out by more than one of you this seems a bit of a fudge and offensive to everyone, whilst satisfying no-one. Normal people will be upset that they can't get the product in the store and insane religious nutcases with no sense of perspective will be angry because Woolworths is still selling the item. Come on Woolworths, get your act together. Decide whose side you are on? Good or evil. I will never shop at Woolworths again. Which to be honest isn't going to dent their sales too much as I rarely go in there (well only to steal pick n mix, so actually their profits might slightly increase).
Sainsbury's response took a little longer to arrive, but at least addressed me by name and came from an actual person. This is what they said,
"Dear Richard
Thank you for contacting us. I am sorry you have been disappointed by our decision to withdraw Jerry Springer - The Opera from sale in our stores. As there has been lots of interest in this matter I would like to clarify why the title was taken out of our range.
We sell many DVD titles throughout the year and our range changes from week to week based on what customers want and, of course, sales. In the first week that Jerry Springer - The Opera was released, we sold only 111 copies in all stores nationwide and received a high number of contacts from unhappy customers. In the early part of the second week we sold only 21 more copies and received further complaints. Due to these very poor sales figures this DVD would have been withdrawn at the end of the week, but in view of the contacts we had received we removed it a few days earlier than planned.
Please be assured that, as a company, we feel it is our responsibility to offer choice. We do not feel it is right for us to tell our customers what they should or should not buy. However, in this case sales were so low that we did not think removing this title would have a negative impact on our customers and we wanted to give them a choice of more popular titles.
Thank you for taking the time to let us know your views on this matter and for giving us a chance to explain the reasons behind our decision.
Kind regards,
Gavin Wood
Sainsbury's Customer Services"
Now that at least shows a bit of thought, but is still unsatisfactory. Delighted as I am that the work of Stewart Lee has proven so unpopular with Sainsbury's customers, I still think it is wrong that they should have waited til the end of the week to withdraw the DVD. After all a lot of Stewart Lee fans are slothful and foolish and it woudl take them until the end of the week to get out to the shops.
I emailed back to say, "Dear Gavin, Thanks for the reply. My guess is youll get some good publicity and some sales if you restock them now. I hope you will. Tesco is just as near as Sainsburys and have just as good a selection of yoghurts
R"
I haven't had a response to this one yet, which is a shame as I would like to send Gavin a further and more insane email.
Do email Gavin if you haven't done so already, preferrably with some specific question that he can't just send a stock email response to. It sounds like they've been getting a fair few complaints from normal people. It makes me proud to be British.
