According to Virgin media, Unlimited doesn’t actually mean unlimited. If you sign up for their Unlimited package, they charge you extra if you make long calls.
What Unlimited means according to Virgin is that you can make calls for 59 minutes and 59 seconds, or you get charged at an eye watering 9.94 pence per minute. So, if you are on a conference call, and it is likely to run over the hour, you have to hang up and then dial back in to avoid any extra naughty costs. To find this out, you have to read 637 words into their legals buried at the very bottom of the details page in six point and even then you need to download a PDF to get the actual price.
Doesn’t sound very unlimited to me. It doesn’t sound very much like the Virgin way of doing things to me either.
An Express Queue with Goldcar, where you can expect to wait over two hours and then get royally fleeced
I’m not going to hide the fact that I am involved with Feefo who manage customer reviews. It’s obviously made me more aware of why reviews matter. But when I went overseas a few weeks ago, I broke my own golden rule and made an online purchase from a supplier I had used many times before even though they had no real reviews on their site. So I thought it was worth writing down my experience and learnings from it.
The company is Do You Spain. I must have booked cars through them ten times in the past. This time, on our way to ski with family in Andorra, I was lured by an amazingly low price of €42 for the week for a Ford Focus. Wow. It was with Goldcar as Do You Spain are a broker for lots of different car hire companies.
I read the small print that went with it and found a few little treats. Firstly €62 to take it out of the country and into Andorra. and then a full to empty policy on the fuel. So I figured say 55 litres at €1.40 per litre. By this stage we are up to a figure of €181 with no real chance to burn a whole tank of fuel on a 350km round trip to Soldeu and back. But still cheaper than five of us paying for transfers at €75 per person.
I read on and then found a hidden extra which was an €850 excess, in case I crashed it. Sensibly I thought, I can insure that with http://www.carhireexcess.com/ at £1.99 per day, that has to be £14 well spent.
So when I landed at Barcelona El Prat Airport, and after a staggering two hour wait in the Express queue I was offered the following option. An upgrade to a slightly bigger car. Okay, don’t mind if I do. Fuel at €108, which works out at €1.80 per litre, surely the most expensive fuel in the whole of Europe?
But then the real shocker. Take out our additional insurance to protect the Excess at another €14 per day, or hand over the €850 excess and we will give it back to you if the car is undamaged. Who would trust them not to find some damage after their track record so far. Anyway, the final bill was €258 against the listed price of €42. Not terribly accurate pricing in my opinion. In fact none of the costs related in any way to the quote of €42.
So, on return home, I tried to speak to DoYouSpain and guess what?
Despite many, many positive reviews, they wouldn’t reply to my concerns or answer any of my queries. When I searched around, it appears that lots of people have expressed similar concerns on Money Saving Expert and other forums.
So the simple moral of this story?
Trust brands that display honest and open reviews. Distrust those that don’t. In fact avoid them like the plague. They are hiding reviews for a reason. And sadly, for Spain to recover, it needs to begin to behave itself, treat customers with respect and offer good fair prices we can rely on. Sadly I won’t be using these companies again and when I go back in a few weeks, i’m just paying for the transfer.
I was lucky enough to be invited to see Michael Eavis of Glastonbury fame speak at Confetti Industry Week yesterday. The whole week is designed to give students access to real industry people and occasional legends to put their own futures into context and get insight into the secrets of success. It’s a brilliant marriage of business and education and feels very much like the future route to success for HE and FE colleges. I have no doubt that some of the young people in that room yesterday wil be inspired to even greater success.
Michael Eavis is a quite unassuming 77 year old man, who was clearly nervous in front of a relatively small audience. I guess it’s not often that he is examined that closely in his shorts and t-shirt by 200 young people. What he did though in his interview was lay down the simple rules as to how to create a brand from scratch. What was even better is that he never mentioned or hinted that Glastonbury was a brand in any way, shape or form, he just did it, by doing the right things. Another accidental hero of branding.
So as a tiny bit of background. He started the festival in 1970 with Marc Bolan headlining and (eventually) paid him £500 for his appearance. Tickets were charged at £1 each. He lost £1,500 but as he was funding it from his family dairy farm, he could afford the losses, so he kept on reinvesting in the product itself, making it better and better each year. It wasn’t until 1982, when it finally turned a profit and was recognised as the global phenomenon we know it for today.
Horses wouldn’t be served at Waitrose, because we trust them and it’s in their values
I did a workshop at Nottingham Trent University yesterday and one of the key points I wanted to get across was brands who work with very focussed brand values have clearer marketing messages. More than this, they have clearer business propositions and it would seem to me that they are ultimately more successful as businesses too.
Take two companies, Tesco and Waitrose.
Tesco brands says ‘Every little helps’. What this says to me is that they chip away and chip away at every tiny little cost to try and drive the price down to one that is almost unsustainable by the supplier. I’m not saying I agree with them throwing a horse in with the beef to make a value burger, but I do think it may have de-specced the product to such a degree they just needed to add the protein to get them to the 63% meat content that their recipe demands (which is higher than Birds Eye’s Value burgers 45% meat!), so really, what do we expect?
A horse didn’t just fall into that beef vat by accident. Someone threw it in, knowing they needed to add some cheap meat to make up the weight of their consignment. That’s supplier desperation in action.
Waitrose work on the core brand value of ‘Trust” and for me, this comes trough everywhere. I just don’t believe they would buy their meat on the open market, without knowing where it came from. I trust them. For me, they have almost become curators of good food choice. If they sell it, then we know it’s going to be pretty good – certainly for supermarket food and we can be pretty sure it won’t contain horse.
It’s too easy to take pot shots at the giant that is Tesco, but they deserve it in this case. Their values are wrong and too many of us care about what we eat for them to remain as the force they are now. They need to change their values, change their brand behaviour to be a little more loveable and change the way they treat their suppliers. Or, they’re off……
Sam Farmer, made for the blindies and those who actually care about what they wash themselves with
I don’t much go in for personal grooming products and have genuinely never knowingly bought an after-shave that has a smell to it. As a series of brands, they have just rather passed me by. I’m not sure if it’s just because i’m quite cynical and know too much about the production cost/selling cost ratio, or whether it’s because I don’t have much of a sense of smell.
But this range which I came across the other day, has two really clever points going for it, which give it a real chance of succeeding in a very crowded market place.
1. Older people like me, have poorer eye-sight I was genuinely struggling to find out whether a shampoo style bottle contained shampoo or conditioner last week because I couldn’t read the miniscule words on the front of the pack. in the same way that fashion brands use an XL size that is tiny, to stop people like me from buying their wares, maybe the shampoo brands are so clear in their targeting that me buying it would damage their brand. Or maybe it’s just poor user design.
2. It’s backed up by the research I was lucky enough to see a speaker from CrowdDNA talk about their Road Trip research they did for MTV. One of the key learnings from this was that today’s ‘youth’ would prefer that they were marketed to as individuals and not by gender. The whole concept of gender neutrality, is apparently important to a significant proportion of youths. Sam farmer has addressed this directly.
Time will tell though, whether these two points are strong enough to allow Sam and his range to stand out and sell in the market. I hope they do, because I love the fact that it’s such a small player up against such global business opposition.
You can see the website here or like them on Facebook.
I think I must be turning into a bit of an old softie as I saw this video today and just loved it. The music by Willie Nelson is a beautiful interpretation of the Coldplay song ‘The Scientist’ Which I have since bought and played a few times to check it is as good as I think It is. It is.
I knew nothing about Chipotle, but it turns out the are pretty big in the US with over 900 stores, none of which incidentally are franchises. If they are half as good as this video and the way they present themselves on the rest of the brilliant website, they will be a place that I want to hang out. There are four stores in the UK, all in London, but i’m hoping the development page here, may be picked up by some of my agency friends and some perfect Nottingham sites suggested to their development team.
But this simple video tells me everything about their values. They do the right thing, they are a simple business model and they are prepared to invest in quality. That doesn’t sound far off the perfect brand value set to me. Please come to Nottingham, you will be very welcome. Better still, come to West Bridgford, you’ll be alongside, the fabulous Escabeche, Fellicini’s and the busiest Pizza Express in the UK (allegedly).
In the meantime, enjoy the video and go and buy some locally produced food.
Updated 28.03.13
I was in London yesterday meeting some friends and colleagues and managed to get chance to finally go and eat in a Chipotle restaurant and I wasn’t even a tiny bit disappointed. The food was lovely and the staff friendly and helpful. For what is effectively fast food, there is almost no saturated fat and you leave feeling full and healthy rather than ‘dirty’ as you would with other fast food joints.
Chipotle Burrito – One of the nicest things I have ever eaten
I was lucky enough to travel across Costa Rica some years ago (on a bike!) and one of the highlights for me was the food. Chicken, rice, black beans and some chilli style sauce with Guacamole. Chipotle serve this plus some. Chipotle, please come to Nottingham. We need you.
Sorry to be rude, but exactly how is the new logo for Weightwatchers an improvement over the old one? I have underlined the offending area of oversight in red.
Weightwatchers logo – before and after – This may make you feel a bit of a twat
Admittedly the old one was a little dated, but is this really better, more inclusive, younger, more dynamic, or does it just make the agency – Pentagram – look a little silly and the research they would have carried out look a little flawed.
I bought a new printer for home a few months ago. An HP 8600 Pro. It uses big and expensive inks, but it’s fast and prints to a lovely quality – Particularly for photos. So I needed a source for genuine HP inks that wasn’t too expensive. I tend to buy a lot online and rely heavily on reviews to see who I can trust. GlobalApe.com weren’t someone I knew, but they had great reviews from Ekomi, so I thought i’d give them a go as they were miles cheaper than anyone else.
The first order took around three weeks to arrive and coincidentally landed on the day after I prompted them as to why they hadn’t arrived. I installed the one I needed and the printer immediately said it was faulty and possibly a fake. Hmmm. It did still seem to work okay though even though the printer wasn’t happy with the ink.
A few days later I got an email from Ekomi asking me to review my purchase with GlobalApe. Naturally I was less than impressed so gave them a one star review. Now Ekomi Don’t like this as it could mess up their clients near perfect 4.8 out of five score. Bear in mind they need to average over 4 out of five to gain Google gold stars and perform far better in Adwords searches – Which is how I found them.
So the mediation begins. I didn’t want to mediate, I just wanted to write a review and carry on with my life. Annerose Kennedy from Global Ape Support has done a perfect job and stalled and stalled and stalled. We are now up to 983 words of correspondence. Annerose has provided a replacement Cyan ink (which arrived in seven days) and still my one star review hasn’t appeared.
So what was the point of the review? If I can’t warn people that in MY experience, the ink took three weeks to arrive and then failed. It calls the whole point of reviews into question and I won’t be buying from organisations that display Ekomi reviews any more as I simply can’t trust them to be truthful. At the top of their reviews page, they claim the following:
100% Independent
Absolutely Transparent
From Customers for Customers
But it’s not. It’s full of positive reviews as no-one is actually allowed to publish a negative. Sorry, but this is completely wrong – however helpful Annerose Kennedy is and however much they try and mediate me into me withdrawing my negative review.
Global Ape Ekomi reviews – Not worth the space on the Internet
What chance Comet and any other underfunded high street retailer?
Sadly, on November 2nd Comet slipped into administration. It was probably inevitable, even though it was only purchased by private equity firm OpCapita last year for £2. I guess they overpaid for the 236 stores.
Maybe i’m an idealist, but I do think these stores have a place in the market and this is where I see it.
1. They are brand showrooms. They price match any price anywhere on the Internet. It means they will lose out on some margin on sales to those who are price sensitive, but reward the ones who make all the effort to search for the best online price (like I do). There is no substitute for seeing the product and pressing the buttons and you just can’t get this from a photo online.
2. They then charge for delivery or installation as no Internet retailers seem to offer this.
So, is this possible?
Amazon seem to be able to match any online price pretty closely and whilst they don’t have 236 stores, they still have lots of warehouse space and staff. My suspicion is that the rent and rates on the stores are simply too high to make these spaces pay. I hope Comet survive. Not because I am a fan per-se, but because I believe in choice. I don’t want to just buy from Amazon and John Lewis, but I do want to be rewarded with a better price for my research and for making the effort to drive out to see them in their store.
PS
I just went down to Comet in Nottingham Castle Marina. The only sign of any change at all is an A4 sheet in the window. It isn’t a bad looking store really and the staff I spoke to were all friendly and helpful. The staff have said that anything can be sold at face value only, no gift cards and no discounts. It did look a little like it had been robbed as there were lots of gaps in the stock (particularly in the upstairs bit!). Expect a fire sale soon.
I quite like Jamie Oliver and I quite like Boots. I sometime pop into the latter for a cheap meal deal and something to make me look less old or ugly. BUt I don’t think they are brands that sit well together. As i’ve said before, brands work well together when they approach similar audiences who share a close match when you overlay their combined values. This isn’t the case with Boots and Jamie.
And I have some evidence to prove it.
Jamie Oliver and his so far unsuccessful assault on Boots lunch time audience
If you look at these two shelves side by side the one on the right is the normal Boots meal deal fare. £3.29 for sandwich, drink and crisps. On the left is Jamie’s good work. Sandwiches (which look lovely) starting at £3.70 and specifically excluded from the meal deal. By the time you add crisps and a decent smoothie you are at £6 or nearly double their normal price. 50p off isn’t going to impress or influence anyone.
As you can see one gondola is very full and one is very empty. That shot was at 14.45 today, so very little else will sell today.
Now, I don’t consider myself a tightwad in the lunch department, but this is a big step up in price for Boots customers. Too big. In Waitrose it may work, but not here.
This range will have to be included in the meal deal – even with a small price premium – or it will fail fast.
It’s not because the sandwiches are bad or the retailer is at fault. It’s just that there is nowhere near enough overlay in the values.
The promo video
This is what Jamie Oliver said before the launch.
I genuinely believe he is passionate about the product, but sadly unless there is a fundamental shift in Boots customers’ buying behaviour, it will be in the meal deal and dumbed down to meet the price point, or sadly it will fail.
Update 25.10.12
I went in again today at 17.05 to see how it was getting on today. The picture still doesn’t lie. There is an enormous amount left in Jamie’s stand and far less in the one on the right. It looks more even because the standard one has been re-merchandised to bring the remaining stock forward. And of course, we don’t know whether they had a jamie delivery overnight and how much will have to be thrown away.
Jamie Oliver’s lunch in Boots – Stlll not really selling very many sandwiches
Johnny Lyle's new brand thinking 