Newsagents in NSW and ACT will sympathise with this – Fairfax in Victoria has told Victorian newsagents to create extra display space to promote The Form from this Friday. Regular readers of this blog will know The Form first surfaced in NSW last year supported by similar demand from Fairfax in NSW.
Newsagents are in business. This request from Fairfax is unreasonable. It does not respect the labour and real-estate costs. It is unreasonable for Fairfax to demand charity from newsagents – especially given the lack of support from the publisher for newsagents seeking a fair increase in home delivery fees.
There is more fun to come, when the home delivery list arrives. Also the customers comming in looking for it as it wasn’t inserted in the paper
The Form is a $2 publication. It competes in a space where newsagents typically sell $5 publications. What makes Fairfax think any newsagent would be interested in replacing $5 sales with $2 sales?
It’s already happened in the bridal section. Introduction of the $6.95 Melbourne Wedding & Bride mega-mag has seen bridal shoppers turn their backs on the traditional $15 titles in favour of the cheaper alternative.
The Form is free with The Sydney Morning Herald, but Fairfax expects newsagents to display it on its own.
Dont Fairfax realise that people come in, grab a form off the pile, turn around and walk out with it?
we had people saying they’ll buy the Telegraph but expect to be given the Form for free now.
So we had to cop abuses slung at us from the customers saying we are mean-hearted, not giving them a fair-go etc.
What about them giving us a fair-go!!! selling newspapers are our bread & butter, so to speak.
But we took our stand at not giving them away for free.
If we lose that customer, then so be it, they are not worth keeping anyway, besides they are not even our usual customers.
I even had repeat performances that her elderly mom/dad bought paper without taking the Form. The 1st couple of times I gave in but not the last time when the same lady tried it again!!!! I believe these people do the rounds of going to different newsagencies in the area.