We decided to take my mother out to East Side Mario’s in Scarborough (a Toronto suburb) for lunch, but unfortunately the kitchen was under renovations, and the restaurant next door had gone bankrupt.   So we decided to take her to Eggsmart, a restaurant we had tried a few months earlier in a location just a few blocks north.  But apparently not all locations of this chain are operated identically.

The parking lot was almost empty — a bit strange for 12:30 PM — but an electric “open” sign compelled me to pull in. My mom is bothered by glare, so we asked for a seat just to the left of the main doors, but were told we couldn’t sit there.  So I spotted an area in the back which was also windowless, but were told they weren’t using that section, either.  So much for “power of arrangement.”   I noted to the guy seating us, “This isn’t getting off to a good start, is it?”

However, I was optimistic.  We found something for my mom, my wife ordered and I pointed to a western sandwich on the menu and told the waitress I would have that, taking the side salad option instead of the fries.  This option was clearly printed on the top of page four of the menu, but she would later deny that I ordered the sandwich or pointed to the menu item.

It seems that Eggsmart has two almost identical items on their menu, a Western sandwich and a Western omelette, and they’ve never trained their staff to ask customers to clearly distinguish between them, something I didn’t need to do anyway, since I was pointing right at the menu as I ordered. I suspect the “switch” with this item happens often at this location.

I then left to go outside and take an emergency cell phone call, which resulted in four other quick calls.  In the meantime, the waitress came by and asked my wife if I realized there would be a substitution charge for the salad.  She knew I wanted the salad, and didn’t consider the implications.

When the meal arrived, what I considered the “innards” of my sandwich were served separately, but there were four half pieces of toast and the salad dressing was on the side, so I figured, “When in Rome…” and rather than try to insert the western sandwich pieces in the bread, decided to eat the two separately.  But I did comment to the waitress that, “This is a different way to serve a sandwich;” but she chose not to hear that, I guess.

The food, our time together and everything else at that point was delightful. 

And then the bill came.  The sandwich is $5.99 including salad.  The omelette is $8.99 plus $1.99 for the salad.  That’s $5.99 versus $10.98, almost double.  At first I noted the $1.99 charge, and then I noticed the $8.99.  I made it very clear that I had both ordered a sandwich, pointed at a sandwich on the menu, and commented when the sandwich arrived in two parts.

Too bad.  They said, “You were upset from the minute you arrived here and were determined not to enjoy your meal.”  Yeah, they really said that. Apparently instead of looking for a good lunch, my sole purpose on gracing their establishment was that I was looking for trouble.

The waitress did remove the $1.99 charge, but that was as far as they were willing to go.  She insisted that I had never said “sandwich’ nor pointed to the item on the menu, both of which statements are untrue.  Customer always right?  Not at Eggsmart.

I told her upon leaving that, “You have to admire how you’re able to spin this whole thing to make it all appear to be my fault.”

Never again.

Not in a million years.

Eggsmart:  You’re not so smart after all.  There’s a concept called “grace” that has all but disappeared in our society, but when you uncover it, you won’t have a restaurant where half the seating section is closed in the middle of the lunch hour and all the parking spaces in front of the restaurant are vacant.

The present Shopper’s Drug Mart marketing model looks like this:

1. Decide that out of all the SKUs (individual product line items) you carry, a third of them are going to be on sale every three weeks.  This means environmentally that your flyers will be responsible for the killing of many trees, and that your product images in the advertising will be so small that people will go blind trying to read them.  It also renders your “regular” prices meaningless.
2. If it’s a truly good deal, make sure none of your stores receive enough product to last even the first few hours.  But do remember to keep a few cartons back for staff, personal friends, and customers who start screaming audibly.  (Funny how they’re always able to turn up something when you keep asking.)  The SDM where we live has been chronically out of stock of their specials for twenty years now, this is not a new strategy.
   
3. If you have a deal that’s something like, 2-For-$5.00, but the individual price is $2.99; make sure you only have one unit left on display at a time.  The customer will think they got the “last one” before realizing they’re being charged a higher sale price than the $2.50 the above price would suggest.
4. Purchase an expensive array of point-of-sale terminals and electronic payment terminals, but make sure only one cashier is on duty at a time.  Not only does it save you money, but the long lineup makes (some) people think there’s a buying frenzy going on.
5. Be totally indifferent, totally monolithic, too big to care.

This is from I Love Charts.

My wife and I recently started buying TP for our business at an industrial janitorial supply company, the kind of place where motels and businesses — who don’t have time for the short roll nonsense — get their supplies and we occasionally use these at home, too.  The two types we buy offer 605 and 650 sheets per roll respectively; which makes a lot more sense.  One of them is a bit rough, if you know what I mean, but neither one represents a severe loss of quality.

Customers should simply (a) boycott the short rolls, and (b) make sure their friends are aware of the need to read the “sheets per roll” counts.

Part One

The evening telemarketing calls continue at the same pace as before the establishment of the government-backed “Do Not Call” list, and while it’s bad here in small town Ontario, I’m told it is worse in the big city. So it’s time for a different solution.

Call block technology already exists; and I wish to propose we call block all calls from India. Seriously. The entire nation.

It’s not a racist thing; it’s just a matter of dealing with the truth that many, many telemarketing calls originate in this single country. I don’t know anybody in India; I have no friends traveling through India; and I am unlikely to have reason to receive a call from India.

So block the calls. The Do Not Call List concept isn’t working.

+ + +

Part Two

Okay, consider this one:  A group of us all get phone calls from XYZ Computer Services offering to do a house call visit and get our laptop or PC whipped into shape.  And we agree that one of us will agree to be the “customer” (quotation marks intentional) and sign up for a service appointment.

And then, when the technician arrives, he is immediately placed under arrest for violating the Do Not Call List.

…So the first thing you’re thinking is, “Wait a minute, the technician didn’t actually place the marketing call; that was done by someone half a world a way, or someone in Arkansas, which is the same thing.”   And of course you would be absolutely right.

But before there was time to sort all that out, technicians for XYZ Computer Services would be quitting faster than you can say Firefox.  And other companies would be rethinking the gross violation of privacy that is currently taking place completely unchecked.

+ + +

FreshCo: And not a car in sight. Makes you wonder.

Last Sunday we went to Fresh Co, the new incarnation of what was once Price Chopper, now featuring classy display fixtures and higher prices.  Sobey’s thought this change was a good idea, but they’ve never convinced us to buy our “staple” items through them instead of No Frills (Loblaw Group) or Food Basics (Metro Group).

The item in question this week was a special on drumsticks.  I’m not sure if you have those in the U.S., but they are an ice-cream treat in a package of six that is extremely high in fat, and therefore very popular here in Canada.  They regularly run in the $5 – $6 range, and they were featuring them at $2.77 each.

Of course they were sold out by the time we got there on Sunday, which is pathetic when you consider it was only the third day of the sale.

Checking out both the “sale bunker” and the regular freezer section where these are normally kept, I encountered, in one minute, four “sets” of shoppers who were extremely ticked off.  I’m still not convinced these drumstick things are healthy, so I could go either way on this issue, but these people were genuinely angry.

It made me wonder what Sobey’s gains by being sold out so soon.  Maybe setting the price at $3.77 instead of $2.77 would have tempered the demand enough for them to keep stock.   Maybe they planned to supplement the stock with a second delivery; though we come into the city from the country, so that wouldn’t help us.

But I thought about it:

• Nothing left for the Sunday customers
• Nothing left for the Monday customers
• Nothing left for the Tuesday customers
• Nothing left for the Wednesday customers
• Nothing left for the Thursday customers

…and then it all starts over Friday with a new flyer, more “tease,” more “bait and switch,” more anger.

Now let’s give Fresh Co the benefit of the doubt and say that my “four irate customers in sixty seconds” thing was an aberration.  Let’s pretend there are generally only four irate customers every five minutes.

That’s

• sixty upset customers an hour
• if the store is open 8:00 – 8:00 that’s 720 upset customers per day
• if they were out of stock for five of the seven days that the item was advertised — and they don’t do rain checks, remember — that’s 3,600 upset customers for the balance of the week.

Because of one item.

And completely under-estimated demand.

This is where I have to give No Frills credit.  They really load in the merchandise, obviously because they’ve run statistical simulations like the one I just described.

Let’s say that half of the very angry types I ran into cool off and decide to give the store another try the next week.  That means they still run the risk of having lost 1,800 customers.

In one store alone.

Multiply that by 50 stores, and you’ve got 90,000 ice-cream-treat-eating customers angry with you.

And the next week it’s an orange juice special you can’t keep in stock.  (Happened.)

And the week after that it’s a special on cheese.  (Happened.)

And the week after that you’re wondering why sales are declining.

They should have asked me.

Or issued rain checks.

(We did not return the next week.)

If something is advertised as 2/$4.00 that works out to $2.00 apiece, right?

Not necessarily.

Often stores reserve the right to enforce the “two-for” part of the equation.  Some don’t; they just might like the 2/$4.00 thing because it fits a pattern of having all $4.00 items on on page of the weekly flyer.

But the Loblaw group of companies in Canada has introduced the secondary, “if purchased individually” price concept in their stores recently; stores which dominate the grocery business in Canada under names like Valu-Mart, Your Independent Grocer, Freshmart, Real Canadian Superstore, and Loblaws.  They also operate the No Frills chain, but I cannot prove if the practice exists there or not.

So far, not a big story, right?

But you really have to watch the signage at these stores since the secondary price does not appear in the flyer and is written in a teeny, tiny font on the shelf-talker in the aisles.

But still not a story.

The problem at Loblaws is the price jump.   Those 2/$4.00 items are gonna cost you $2.79 if you only pick up one.  A price 40% higher than what you’re expecting.

Customers are not happy.  It leaves a bad taste.

But the real story here is, the staff aren’t happy.   They feel like they are employed by a con artist; that they’re being made to take part in a scheme.

And they are more than happy to refund your money or make adjustments if you complain.

That way they get to sleep at night.

Grocery executives, who have no consciences, sleep well, too.

I haven’t forgotten the issue of consumer nightmares.   I’ve just been busy writing and speaking on so many other fronts.   And also managing a retail enterprise of my own.   Which brings me to this story, which is decisively Canadian.   You see up here the post office is a crown corporation; you’re basically dealing with the government, and nobody tells the government what to do.   And for them Thursday was a day off.   The whole system shuts down on Remembrance (Veterans) Day…

Every other week, I ship a parcel from my home town to a town just two hours away by car.   I pay for a two-day service, though usually the parcel arrives the next day.   There’s no reason it shouldn’t.   Every other courier company does the two hour distance in a single day.

This time we mailed on Wednesday.    There was no service on Thursday.  We knew that.   We assumed it would arrive on Friday.

It didn’t.

Canada Post maintains that two business days means two of their business days.

So a parcel mailed on Wednesday now won’t arrive until Monday.

$25.00 for a 7-pound package that’s only going a two hour distance down the highway.

And it’s going to have taken 120 hours to get there.

And I can’t do a darn thing about it…

…or maybe I can.   We’re simply not going to do that bi-weekly shipment anymore.   Our new motto:  The Post is Toast.

So the product package is appropriately changed, but apparently that doesn’t stop Your Independent Grocer, a division of Loblaws, from drawing attention to the concentrate tins in the refrigerated cases as WELCH’s GRAPE JUICE.

Sorry folks, but if the manufacturer can’t call it juice anymore than neither can you.

The signs constitute mis-labeled product.   That’s against the law.

This is an old battle between Welch’s customers and consumers as indicated in this 2007 blog post.

BTW, U.S. afficianodoes of the brand can still purchase it in many forms including small lunch-sized plastic bottles, and Welch’s concord jam.    Canadian grocery stores have about half as many SKUs as their American counterparts.   Sad, really.

FOLLOW UP — Can someone confirm if the brand name is available to anyone who pays a fee?   Seems the bottles I like are distributed here from Mott’s; whose website doesn’t mention the concentrate.  Or are they too embarrased?