M&S Penny Bazaar Discussion

kerrydrobertson

i went shopping today just before 11 and noticed there was a few people in the queue so figured there must have been things left.
joined the back of the queue of about 10 people, pathetic people queue jumping, my 2 year old son has better manners and stayed in the queue.
anyway, the staff were well organised and informing everyone it was only juice left which i was more than happy with as love their lemonade! when i got home i noticed there were sweets in the bag too and also got 12.5% voucher.
donated £5, a lot for 3 cans of lemonade but hey ho, its for charity! noticed a few other people giving generously too!

NotJustAny...

Reverbe wrote: »

A little known fact about M&S is that they actually employ some homeless in an initiative to give those without an address a chance to get work experience and a start. Dont know if this is still running but it is something among the many things they have done over the years for charities and charitable works.

Reverbe - it does still go on. It's called 'Marks & Start' and it covers people who are homeless and long-term unemployed. We had a girl join in my last store - she was a single mum trying to get back into work. Lovely girl, worked like a trooper, and was really happy to be able to offer her a job at the end of her trial.

One of the ops guys in my current store was formerly homeless and got a job through the scheme. Big stores have a target for the number of people they try to get onto the scheme.

Also, a lot of the charities in stores are very personal to staff. Our store is collecting for a local guide dog charity - one of our long-time customers has had three dogs from the charity, and hearing her talk about what a difference it has made really galvanised everyone in store.

ThinkingOfLinking

I did get the Penny Bazaar stuff for the first time at M&S today....I got it in 2 stores. I gave £5 in each store and am the proud owner of:

A pretty jewellery set
Pretty lacy knickers
2 teatowels
2 cans of dandelion and burdock
2 chocolate coins

All of which I love and 2 items I am going to get rid of for charity:
A leather luggage tag. Never knew it was leather; I can't even touch it and it's not my style.
A mug. Not my style either. But both are new and tagged so will make some charity happy.

pippo

Oh my goodness.. an annivesary celebration has caused so much of a stir!

I didn't go ... but thought about it. thought about buying things for 1p & ebaying. (was at work)
Didn't realise there was a charity element to this event either .. would have been happy to donate.
but this has brought back memories from about 25 years ago..


worked in a 'faith' children's home... each Tuesday & friday the nuns collected, or asked us to collect the ood food from M&S..

..for them....
the kids only got what they didn't need!!!

Times change I'm pleased to say & our local m&s have made substantial contributions towards equipment for a home for disabled children.

dolphinl

Flickering_Ember wrote: »

I did get the Penny Bazaar stuff for the first time at M&S today....I got it in 2 stores. I gave £5 in each store and am the proud owner of:

A pretty jewellery set
Pretty lacy knickers
2 teatowels
2 cans of dandelion and burdock
2 chocolate coins

All of which I love and 2 items I am going to get rid of for charity:
A leather luggage tag. Never knew it was leather; I can't even touch it and it's not my style.
A mug. Not my style either. But both are new and tagged so will make some charity happy.

If you are looking to get rid of the mug - I will give you a couple of quid for it as I was really after one and missed out on getting one.

lawsofnature

I didn't go to Bazaar thing despite because frankly I find it a big marketing con to get people in the store.

Personally, from what I heard from staff while doing my food shop tonight, the whole thing was a bit of a damp squib, and was clearly intended to increase footfall in the stores as well as 'celebrate' the anniversary (note Sainsburys is also jumping on the anniversary bandwagon). All this talk of charity is BS, there are much better ways for them to raise money for charity if that was their genuine intention. Charity is always used as a good smoke screen for what is essentially a marketing ploy.

If M&S were being genuine about all this celebration, they wouldn't have promoted the event through the media at all, but just sprung it on their normal customers and offered goodie bags of anniversary merchandise and maybe a glass of wine. But as normal, M&S is putting profits in front of customer loyalty.

I can't believe some people are now trying to determine if those at the front of the queues should have got £50 goods for a penny...CHEAP springs to mind.

jenniewb

lawsofnature wrote: »

I didn't go to Bazaar thing despite because frankly I find it a big marketing con to get people in the store.

Personally, from what I heard from staff while doing my food shop tonight, the whole thing was a bit of a damp squib, and was clearly intended to increase footfall in the stores as well as 'celebrate' the anniversary (note Sainsburys is also jumping on the anniversary bandwagon). All this talk of charity is BS, there are much better ways for them to raise money for charity if that was their genuine intention. Charity is always used as a good smoke screen for what is essentially a marketing ploy.

If M&S were being genuine about all this celebration, they wouldn't have promoted the event through the media at all, but just sprung it on their normal customers and offered goodie bags of anniversary merchandise and maybe a glass of wine. But as normal, M&S is putting profits in front of customer loyalty.

I can't believe some people are now trying to determine if those at the front of the queues should have got £50 goods for a penny...CHEAP springs to mind.

I am with you on that!

I did also post something similar a few pages ago- people who read it still didn't get it:

M&S are a rich company- they make alot of money, they may be "struggling" but actually, they are still in profit year on year financially.

So they are indeed able to employ Marketing people- these are not people like you and me, they are not just paid to sit in an office and make up ideas as they plan the rest of the day, it is a paid job they have and something they are more then likely have a degree in. They know their stuff. They also have alot of experience and inside market knowledge. I know this, as I know of marketing assistants in other retail positions.

So then why why why did M&S have this in way of a celebration? I cannot recall the name of the poster (sorry!) but she mentioned, per M&S store, there were approx 440 1p items. PER STORE! Now what if someone were to say to M&S, you can only have 440 customers per day buying anything in your store.
They wouldn't last a year, let alone 125 of them!

M&S should have used their marketing employee skills to design a celebration that would have been more inclusive, fairer and actually more pleasant to do then standing in a queue, having reduced options in the way of choosing from what seemed (above) to be available and not adding to the landfill site: wonder what percentage of the stuff bought over the past 3 days will end up thrown away having not been used in the next year or two? (and before someone asks me to come up with a better idea then a penny bazarre, I am not the one who is paid a salary to do so, who went to University to do so, neither do I have the inside knowledge and team to assist me the way the M&S do).

I love M&S I really do, they do alot for charity, alot for their employees and seem to on the whole have good values, but this whole penny thing really stands out a mile, its not something that for me, really 'sits' for what M&S stand for, which I think is a shame.

jenhugs

Here Here Jennie great post.

kpa_2

Private_and_Confidential wrote: »

Apoliogies - A quick defence plea if I may.

I include all people who have been impacted by the recession in my 'genuine' people catch all.

The 'scuffers' are those who were supping Pilsner whilst in the queue and had no intention of going anywhere to earn money other than possibly selling their 1p bargains on ebay.

I hope my apology is accepted.

I guess I'm just bitter because I couldn't get in there and believe me, I'm been hit by this recession and could have done with a 1p ties and cufflinks.

Thanks for posting that

Unemployment is a really sensitive issue, it's not nice to be bored out of your skull and relying on £60 a week to pay off university debts, whilst being told you are either overqualified or under-experienced for every job you apply for. The worst is being told "I'd stack shelves in Sainsbury's" by people who aren't in this situation. I'd quite happily do it but I can't because employers take one look at my qualifications and decide I'd be off as soon as I got a better offer. The one penny items weren't luxury items and I didn't expect them to be, but it gave me a boost when I was feeling a bit down.


I didn't blame the sentiment of your first post but I really appreciated your second post.

Princess_Coupon

My mother was really cheesed off by this promotion she is a loyal customer who buys 90% of her and my dad's clothes from M&S on her store card, and about 1/2 of her food shopping.
No she's not on a low income but would have liked a couple of the gifts and why not?, but at nearly 70 there was no way she was going in queue for an hour outside. She told the manager that she was very disapointed that M&S card holders had not had any priority he agreed, and said he had had a few similar complaints.