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

Sunday, April 8, 2012

when is Sunday not Sunday?

... when it is Easter Sunday.

I needed to get some DVDs for my mum and the excellent [read: cheap] Thats Entertainment * has a branch at the Royal Quays outlet centre in North Shields. However, I hate shopping in crowds so I went online to check the opening times so that I could be there when the shops opened - and got this on the website:

So I was there this morning at 10.30 - but only a couple of shops were open, with signs in others saying they were open at 11. Worse still, around half weren't opening at all citing 'Sunday Trading Laws'. It is, of course, Easter Sunday, so I will assume that is the cause of the limited opening - but surely the law applies to all shops?

Anyhoo - open at 10.30 was Costa [so I had a cup of coffee] and Thats Entertainment did open at 11, so all ended well. But here's the reason for this entry:

As I have said plenty of other times on this blog; unlike printed material, website content is easily changed - so why was there no accurate details of opening times for Easter Sunday? I wonder how many people travelled to the centre for a 'day out' only to find half of it closed? Was it deliberate because advertising the real situation may have meant fewer visitors? I noted on my way home that many other retail parks were closed completely - so why not do the same for your centres? Because here's the thing managers at Royal Quays: the chances are that those people who wanted to go shopping would have gone on Bank Holiday Monday [the next day] if they knew the shops were closed on Easter Sunday. 

* though it does bug me that they miss out the apostrophe in that's.

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