I was interviewed last night by Mark Hawthorne for his report in The Age today about how Tattersalls is treating its retail network over the handling of allocating space to Intralot. Jon Faine on ABC local radio in Melbourne today covered the Tattersalls / Intralot story from a different angle and interviewed a Tattersalls agent from Cheltenham.
Media coverage of the challenges facing newsagents and lottery agents is most welcome. In my own case, Tattersalls is demanding I follow a rule book which the company has conveniently ignored for the last five years. The space I have allocated to Intralot is space I have used for other products all this time. Now, it suits Tattersalls to dust off the rule book and threaten my livelihood and that of all stakeholders in my newsagency.
Silence from Tony Robinson, the Minister for Gaming in the State Government is deafening. Having created the challenges for small businesses, his government appears to care less about the business owners, their employees and the families which rely on them.
Commonsense ought to prevail. Tattersalls ought to have business rules which focus on our sales performance and not the real-estate we allocate. It suits me and them that I and my team do this.
The photo shows one of our scratch ticket bays this morning at Forest Hill. We only have two packs of scratch tickets left. Tattersalls has no new product for this and currently does not have Government approval for scratch ticket product. Why they demand we keen this space vacant for them without a revenue opportunity is beyond me.
I see some irony in your recent posts Mark,and to be frank, find your own actions and actions of people like you,are half the reason there is so much confusion and uncertainty in the lottery network….and the providers ,Tatts and Intralot feed of this uncertainty and confusion and continue to provide the network the proverbial “shit sandwich”they have always served us.You have installed intralot at Frankston ,where you wernt a lottery agent ,ten feet away from the existing lottery operator in the mall(remember your posts about Aust Post selling stationery near your stores)and will harm his business, and then on the other hand complain about your other store at Forest Hill where they are making you move intralot or lose your Tatts machines there ,in my mind your a hypocite in so many ways with those two blogs, its mind boggling. Talk about wanting your cake and eating it too!!
Helen,
I don’t see the confusion of which you wrote. The Government by their decision opened the market and said let’s get rid of territories. It would have been foolish of me to not apply for Intralot at Frankston – especially when the lottery kiosk in front of the newsagency is a Tattersalls Kiosk and therefore less likely to re-brand as Intralot – and when they are closed Sundays and public holidays.
The time to fight the new competitive market was before the decision by the state government – when newsagents and their associations sat on their hands. As I have blogged previously, as soon as the decision was made it was time to move on.
The issue of this post on which you and I have commented was the treatment by Tattersalls of agents who want to sell both. This is a problem which could have been handled better by Tattersalls. I may be missing something but I do not see hypocrisy in my comments.
There is no connection of this issue and my views of Australia Post government owned stores.
Mark
Im all for competition ,as for my comments let me be a little clearer,i may be misunderstanding your inferences in past blogs,it seems to me like you want to have Australia post not sell stationery (or be banned for some reason for doing so )near your store,but now you want to and can sell intralot in Franskston even though the lottery outlet (which im sure will, and can rebrand to sell both lottery products,he is a lottery agent afterall),is only10 feet from you,plenty of irony and or hypocricy there in my humble opinion,all im saying is dont complain about competition from strong competitors on the one hand and then deny you are doing the same thing on the other
Helen
Helen,
I do not want a government protected monopoly from abusing that protection to compete unfairly. If they were 100% privately owned and not protected by a monopoly I’d say go for it. It is completely unrelated with the Intralot issue.
Mark
I think the whole saga has been beyond belief. It seems to me that the NSW Lotteries run by the rotten old government seems, and I can’t say for everyone, but they seem to be a lot more stable and fair. I know they will only allow new agents if the territory can take it, and will not allow agents to take on the huge startup costs in areas they know will not be viable.
Unlike Bill Express who had not a scrap of morals with putting their stupid machines in so many places where they would NEVER be viable. Your attack on the government owned post offices makes no real sense, as you know they are a corporation with only protection on small letters, not on every part of their business, and it they hadn’t become more commercially savvy many small towns would have no services, particularly after the bill express fiasco which would have nearly taken both the newsagent and post office down in some cases.
Helen is stretcj\hing a point maybe in your opinion, but Mark you do often come across as the poor hard done by one, while I can see that tattslotto agent sitting in his booth feeling quite sad at the high rent and loss of income he is having to deal with.
Clem,
Australia Post government owned stores can land a customer in their locations for a fraction of what is costs a newsagent thanks to the protection of government ownership and monopoly. Sure this is around postage but it is protection nevertheless.
While I write here with examples of my newsagency in this regard and on other topics, I often wrote on behalf of others.
The last thing I want to look is like a pitiful character and hope that is not what others here take away.
On Frankston, what would have me do – not sign up for Intralot? Would the Tatts outlet not take on something offered to them if I have it in my shop? No. I did not create the competition.
Mark
Mark is right to sieze opportunities for himself and the people who rely on his business for their incomes. The people who changed the rules are the ones who caused this, not Mark. Plenty of shops are getting Intralot who do not have Tatts.
Everyone,
Mark is right to bleat about the Post Office on a number of grounds, as I have, all the way to the Minister. They have authority under the Act to run commercially but only on products that are ‘incidental’ to the business of post. All of the Ministers replies so far have neglected to answer this question I have posed, but I am not going away. I find it offensive that I have to compete with my own Government on a playing field that is decidedly NOT level.
Cheers
Here we go again with AP bashing and all the things that they do wrong it’s quite obvious that the Bill Express issues are over with.
Hi Clem,
I’d respectfully suggest this post is about Intralot and Tattersalls. There is another post relating to Bill Express, which everyone is still feeling considerable pain about. My 20 cents worth is if we concentrate on the subject of a post, our political friends and foe will get a better understanding of our feeling.
Bottom line is we have many issues facing the industry and they are all impacting on all of us. Bill Express isn’t forgotten I’m sure. Nor is Intralot, Aussie Post, the industry associations, Magazine scale outs.
It’s probably an inditement on the industry associations, that claim to represent newsagents, that we face the multitute of issues we do.
All the best
You’re right Clem.
Obviously there are no post-it notes on the front of Fairfax papers, or the airport is fogged in, at the moment.
But that’s all from us.
We’ve been invited to pack our bags, and leave the building.
We’ve had fun – and we know a lot of you have too.
As a final note, please don’t take yourselves too seriously. They are only newsagencies, after all.
Latrobe students
Well said Lorraine. Too many comments which get off topic.