Waitrose and the Heston Black Forest Buche

QuackQuack_2

robofski wrote: »

FYI, Sheffield store said they were having a further delivery on Sunday for the shelves on Monday.

Waitrose said;

I am pleased to advise that further stock arrived in our branches on the 08 and 09 December. Following on from this the next allocations will be the 15 and 16 December, and the 19 and 20 December.

Unfortunately work commitments will stop me travelling at leisure next week so it's over and out on the cake for me. I hope your misses loves it.

I'd now like to buy a custard pie or two, take them up to the board of directors and deliver them right into their mushes, but given they hand out jail sentences for flan flinging now, I best not.

zax47

Please.... all this fuss (and expense - time and petrol) over a cake - IT'S JUST A CAKE!

You lot are an advertisers wet dream, falling for this hype like your life depends on it.

IT'S JUST A CAKE - make one of your own.

vyle

QuackQuack wrote: »

In the interests of balance, I've done a ring round the five stores I visited on Wednesday. None of them have the item in stock - but guess what, getting through to them on the phone! Hell, that's something else!!!!

Best one was "I'll just go and have a look for you sir"...... 8 - yes count them EIGHT - minutes passes .... "I'm sorry, no."
I'll try again in the morning.......

At the end of Christmas I'm going to send Waitrose the bill for the calls and my time - I don't expect they will pay it, but I may just risk a summons in the County Court to recover it if I'm really cheesed off by then.

I've also lodged a complaint with the ASA. If you are going to advertise something nationally, it is only reasonable to be able to expect to purchase the product - not to be dragged into the store when they know full well most people will be disappointed.

Can I pair you up with that person who was annoyed that someone in Morrisons knew stock availability off the top of their head which CLEARLY wasn't good enough, because they didn't spend a long time looking?

What exactly is the sweet spot when it comes to looking/pretending to look/not needing to look because you know when the time it takes to find things is acceptable, even if it is just a placebo?

FWIW I've not seen an advert for this thing. I wanted a heston one last year and wondered if Waitrose was doing anything this year. According to HB, the christmas puddings took 2 months to make. No idea about this Buche, which sounds too close to the french word for mouth.

I don't want to eat a mouth.

QuackQuack_2

zax47 wrote: »

You lot are an advertisers wet dream, falling for this hype like your life depends on it.

You'd be wrong there. In general terms there is nothing at all wrong with an item being brought to your attention with legitimate advertising. There is also nothing wrong with wanting that item.

However, when a potential shopper experiences a bad customer experience as a result ,he or she becomes anything other than 'an advertisers wet dream' - it is more likely that person will hold a negative image of the company and avoid them, bad mouth them and never recommend them.

From a simple perspective not only have they have failed to convert their paid advertising into a sale, they have also lost potential additional revenue in other residual sales they may have made whilst I was in store. An amazing thing to achieve considering I was prepared to spend nearly a day of my time, and travel many of miles to buy the lead item. Not far short of crawling over broken glass to be honest.

Expanding outward from that, it potentially has a wider impact. Suppose others who were tempted to do a little leg work and buy one read this and think "It's only a cake, it's too much hassle to get one, lets leave it and use our time more constructively elsewhere". Nope, I'm not getting that as an advertisers dream, I'm getting that as a total fail!

The good ole days of 'any publicity is good publicity' died with the exponential take up of internet access by the masses. Effectively you can spend millions of pounds creating, marketing and 'bigging up' a product, only to have your reputation totally trashed by a vocal few with a budget of nothing - all this by just by giving them a bad consumer experience! I guess this could be a particular problem for Waitrose who seem to still be stuck in the 1970's and not very savvy.

I don't know how you would describe that, but I'd summarise it as 'every advertisers worst bloody nightmare'

QuackQuack_2

I've rewritten part of that Mariah Carey classic 'All I want for Christmas is you' and lovingly named it 'All I want for Christmas is that Buche!'

Der dum der dum der dum der dum der dum der dum...
I don't want alot for Christmas,
I just want a Heston Buche,
I don't care about the presents,
I just want this lovely food,
Waitrose quite deliberately,
Made a fool of you and me,
What else can I do???
Stick two fingers up at Waitrose ....
.... and say F U!!!

Backing track, microphone, youtube, viral?

rizla01

This is how it's done in Essex.

AN ONLINE entrepreneur is hoping to net £35,000 from selling sought-after Christmas puddings on eBay to pay for his daughter's wedding.

Steve Evans, 55, bought 350 of Heston Blumenthal's candied orange Christmas puddings from Waitrose and is selling them at £99.95 each, more than six times the original price.

The much-publicised £13.99 pudding which has an orange in the middle, sold out within days in Waitrose stores around the country.

Steve, along with wife Jeanette, decided that this year it was time to invest.

He said: "Last year we bought two, so we had one spare and one of my friends offered me £100 for it.

"If I'd realised how much more they were selling for I'd have reconsidered the offer!"

This time round, as soon as he saw the puddings in store, he decided to buy them in bulk.

"I and many others invested in these puddings only for the fact supply is better this year.

"My daughter happened to be passing the Canary Wharf store and I said, can you buy them?"

Steve's daughter Gemma told staff at the store that she was buying them for her wedding.

He continued: "She is now married but the money is paying everything back."

After last year's clamour for the desserts, Steve wondered how easy it would be to buy a store's whole supply.

"We went to collect them and the security desk was surprised but off we went," he said.

The internet-savvy couple run an online sportswear company from their home in South Woodham Ferrers, which is where they idea came from.

"I put a few on eBay because I knew I would have an excess and I had a customer in the USA who bought 125 of them.

"We put it at £99.95 because there were a lot of people selling it for a lot more.

The puddings have an expiry date of April 2012.

http://www.thisistotalessex.co.uk/Christmas-pudding-pound-100/story-14143627-detail/story.html

QuackQuack_2

I read that a while ago and was wetting myself laughing! I must do a search on ebay for bidders and put them in my 2012 'fleecable victims list'.

As an aside if anyone has any empty boxes for the Buche I've come up with an excellent eBay scam:

1: List the buche for sale with free delivery
2: take money
3: post empty box
4: when 'not as descirbed' Paypal claim is raised enter 'melted in transit' in reason box.

Job done.....

bromleymum

I use Waitrose and Tesco,s and I am convinced that there's really not that much difference.

However, they often have exactly the same offers on at the same time but Tesco's always advertises the RRPs as a lot higher that Waitrose.

They've got the massive tube of Jaffa Cakes in T's at £3 and advertised as half price. In our local Waitrose they're exactly the same price but not advertised as on offer. This is almost always the case for my local stores.

I think Tesco's invests more time and money into convincing you that you're getting a bargain and Waitrose likes to advertise itself as offering better quality and more variety of produce.

I think they're both strong in different ways.

It's laughable to judge a person on where they buy their tinned tomatoes. For most of us it's still a question of geography.

QuackQuack_2

bromleymum wrote: »

.tinned tomatoes.

I beg your pardon? Tomatos (or is it tumartos) in a tin? In Waitrose? This is a very sad day. I need a Jaffa cake to cheer up.

http://www.ilovejaffacakes.com/

meer53

QuackQuack wrote: »

You'd be wrong there. In general terms there is nothing at all wrong with an item being brought to your attention with legitimate advertising. There is also nothing wrong with wanting that item.

However, when a potential shopper experiences a bad customer experience as a result ,he or she becomes anything other than 'an advertisers wet dream' - it is more likely that person will hold a negative image of the company and avoid them, bad mouth them and never recommend them.

From a simple perspective not only have they have failed to convert their paid advertising into a sale, they have also lost potential additional revenue in other residual sales they may have made whilst I was in store. An amazing thing to achieve considering I was prepared to spend nearly a day of my time, and travel many of miles to buy the lead item. Not far short of crawling over broken glass to be honest.

Expanding outward from that, it potentially has a wider impact. Suppose others who were tempted to do a little leg work and buy one read this and think "It's only a cake, it's too much hassle to get one, lets leave it and use our time more constructively elsewhere". Nope, I'm not getting that as an advertisers dream, I'm getting that as a total fail!

The good ole days of 'any publicity is good publicity' died with the exponential take up of internet access by the masses. Effectively you can spend millions of pounds creating, marketing and 'bigging up' a product, only to have your reputation totally trashed by a vocal few with a budget of nothing - all this by just by giving them a bad consumer experience! I guess this could be a particular problem for Waitrose who seem to still be stuck in the 1970's and not very savvy.

I don't know how you would describe that, but I'd summarise it as 'every advertisers worst bloody nightmare'

I disagree. Say, for instance, your cake search and subsequent experience of bad customer service from Waitrose went national via the TV, (and these days it's not impossible !) how many more people would be aware of this flippin cake than were before ? And whats the betting you would receive a complimentary cake from Waitrose as a "gesture of goodwill" ? People would then be saying "aah, how nice of Waitrose, that poor lady couldn't get her cake, so they sent her a free one !" I still feel that ANY publicity in this sort of situation is good. Think of how many people on this forum are now aware of the latest Xmas fad from mega rich Heston Blumenthal. You're not going to change the mindset of Waitrose shoppers, they're fiercely loyal.