CHEAP AND NASTY

Remember Boxing Day sales?

I mean the real ones where, the day after Christmas, many retail stores opened their doors for half a day to sell items at discounted prices - maybe as much as 10 or 15% off enduring items and 50% off consumable/perishable merchandise. These were very popular and a chance to buy things to put away for the coming year.

In Winter the big department stores like Ballantynes in Christchurch, Kirkaldie & Staines in Wellington and Smith and Caughey's in Auckland would have big clearance sales with even bigger discounts.

This was real exciting retailing and you felt really good if you got a bargain.
Nowadays there are so many sales that they cease to excite and, worse still a lot of the merchandise is cheap stuff brought in especially to be 'on sale'

In the late '70's and early '80's supermarkets developed from the previous small format grocery stores and began to show what they would latterly become, gobbling up wine shops, bakeries, butchers, fishmongers, greengrocers and most other traditional produce providers as they grew.

All good said Joe Public and raced along to shop for cheaper (at first) product with the convenience of parking.

In the mid '80's, because everyone was looking for a bargain Stephen Tindall made sure they got one with the establishment and subsequent growth of The Warehouse. Never mind that this behemoth destroyed local community shopping, led to the creation of shopping strip wastelands (and rise of $2 shops) and that most of the product was made in dodgy countries using even dodgier production methods which in turn was the last straw for much local manufacture - everyone was getting a bargain - or so it seemed until the $20 gumboots leaked after a month of use and the garden spade bent at striking the first stone.

Following on from the model of The Warehouse, electronic, home ware and variety stores (mostly owned or influenced by Australian companies) increased their formats and upped the levels of discounting. Great? Yes there were deals to be had, especially coming on the back of generations of import quotas, high duties and tariffs and cautious overseas borrowing and spending that had been controlled by successive governments. The 1984 Labour government, like 'em or hate 'em,  put paid to that and opened the gates for a flood of shit stuff imported goods that consumers hadn't previously been given access to. Initially the same TV, radio, computer, electric appliance, fridge, stove or washing machine became more affordable and, with a relaxation of credit controls and lending, anything could be bought on tick ( although it would end up costing twice as much over the may years of debt incurred). But hey. Live for today, not tomorrow. Soon though a huge amount of our country's overseas funds was used up by cheap, shoddy, throwaway junk that, whilst being initially cheap doesn't last as long as the quality product, cannot be repaired  and has to be replaced much sooner.

"No thanks, I'll wait for the 100% off deal"

In 1999 Trade Me started up. A novel idea for New Zealand, based loosely on eBay, Trade Me was a boon for buyers and sellers alike. No longer needing to hold or go to garage sales kiwis could buy treasure or get rid of unwanted junk. This site was phenomenally successful, eventually being sold to Fairfax for hundreds of millions. The trouble, eventually, with Trade Me is that it has developed into a site dominated by professional and unprofessional traders selling cheap and tacky rubbish. Sure there are still bargains to be had and opportunities to move stuff (we successfully sold some items of furniture recently - a good buy for the purchasers and some extra funds for us) but these are now buried amongst all the other shit.

Supermarkets, which as said before replaced local grocers and other providers have relentlessly ripped the heart out of most other fresh produce retail including wine resellers. The wine sales that are a regular feature offer wines at very cheap prices. While there are still great deals to be had it is a case of caveat emptor as a lot of brands that have been regularly promoted at '$10 off normal price' have been engineered downwards to be cheap imitations of their former selves. Also the 'normal price' is often a fiction dreamed up by the store owners.

With 'everyone seeking a bargain' it wasn't long before wine companies started using web sales to move product. Sites like www.blackmarket sprang up in the early 2000's. Blackmarket is the consistently best of them and is an honourable site offering good product and prices to the consumer and fair deals to the wine companies. Wine companies sell extra to requirement product through this and other sites for several reasons. Sometimes they do have legitimate 'failed export shipments' (although this is a well known marketing ploy nowadays). They often do have stock they wish to move before a new vintage arrives. Selling through websites is often more profitable than dealing through the  'greedy grocers' and is a way of largely keeping the discounts hidden and thus protecting brand equity.

There have been some new wine websites spring up that are less reputable. I had the experience of buying some wine recently that was advertised as X brand of Y varietal from  Z region of a 2009 vintage. When it arrived I saw, when pulling the cork that it was 2008 vintage (printed on the cork even though the label said 2009). More alarming was the fact that the cork also had the wine providers name and region on the cork. This region had no pedigree for the type of red wine I bought and if I had known it would not have purchased the case. The label as per the advertising stated a different region that had a higher reputation for the varietal and thus commanded higher prices.
Incensed I contacted the website company and asked for an explanation. The stammered and stupid response was that the wine provider had made a mistake and put he wrong cork in the bottle. Not accepting this I told the website company to come up with a better story real quick or I was going to the authorities (wine fraud is a serious offence). Meanwhile I contacted the wine company who were appalled at what had happened. They said that they had sold a large quantity of 'cleanskin wine' to the website (cleanskin is wine with cork or screwcap but no label) and were told that it would be properly marketed as coming from their region and correct vintage). The website provider soon rang back to apologise that they had got it wrong. They pretended to have mixed up the shipments and put the wrong label on the wine bottle. I had checked the label a bit more thoroughly by this time and found that of the thirteen mandatory requirements of information on the labels (front and back) no less than eight of them were either incorrect or missing. When pushed they admitted that they did not have a red varietal from other companies in the region that they stated on the label so the 'mixed them up' excuse held no water. The label in question was one that they had created. I told them that if the product was not immediately removed from the website then I would report them to the various authorities whose regulations they had contravened.
I am pleased to say that they did remove it and I received my credit.

Buyer beware.

This leads me to what I really wanted to write about (huge sigh of relief from Richard (of RBB) if he is still reading - ed).

We are all aware of the rise of Grab One and similar sites that bombard our e-mail in-boxes. Initially of course these were a good idea with retailers, wholesalers and service providers being able to get rid of excess stock and to increase their trade in quiet periods. Everyone got a bargain and everyone was happy. It didn't take long before the charlatans, wide boys and crooks got in on the act and Fair Go, Close Up, Target and other consumer watchdogs have reported on the problems of people not getting what they paid for or, when turning up to redeem the service they ordered being surprised to discover that it was no longer available.

Like Trade Me, these sites are being taken over by dodgy traders who take your money first before importing cheap and nasty product (sometimes knock-off or imitation product) from overseas and, if you are lucky you receive it weeks or months later.

A recent TV investigation into dangerous knock-off brands being imported from China warned consumers of buying them. No doubt this stuff will turn up on these sites.

Chinese brand interpretation

"Where Everyone gets a Bargain' was a good advertising slogan a few years ago. Unfortunately the good old 'There's no such thing as a free lunch' or 'Caveat Emptor (buyer beware)' may be more than ever appropriate now.