Some of Alan's views on this digital marketing malarkey ... there's more on: AlanCharlesworth.com

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

costcutter cutting communication costs?

Somewhere along the line I had taken possession of an Irish £5 note. Not a problem for me, I worked in retail for a long time. I know that although it is not legal tender in the UK it is treated by the British banks in the same way as Scottish notes ie they accept them at face value [* see below]

Sadly, the nugget working in my local Costcutter store didn't know this. Neither did she know that the island of Ireland was divided into two countries, Northern Ireland and Eire. Neither did she know that Northern Ireland was part of the United Kingdom and that the £5 note was not 'foreign money'.

It was bad enough that a shop wouldn't take money from me [surely, the ultimate retailing sin?], but to add insult to injury, I was told that they accepted Scottish money but not Irish and was talked to as if I was an idiot and ... well, I was treated in such a way that I would have sacked that member of staff had she acted that way in one of my shops.

So I went to the 'contact us' page on the costcutter.com site [strangely, the .co.uk returns a '404' page despite the fact that costcutter own the domain name] and after reading the message: 'Our highly talented people are what make the Costcutter story amazing!' I fired off an email. Well, no I didn't fire off an email because they only had a contact form - but anyway, I detailed my poor experience at the hands of one of their 'highly talented people'.

Upon pressing 'send' I got this message:
Nice, although I think you will find thank you is two words, not one - perhaps they are not highly talented spellers.

The thing is ... that was over a week ago. Do I need to say any more?

* In case you aren't aware, only English money is 'legal tender' in England - indeed the term 'legal tender' is unique to England, other countries using the legal term 'promissory note' to cover the issue. However, because England, Scotland and Northern Ireland are all part of the UK, the banks have an agreement that they will accept each other's notes.

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