Across the top of the masthead of today’s Gold Coast Bulletin is their offer of a free Roary the Racing Car DVD. Take this token to your newsagent they advise. The problem is that newsagents appear to have been provided insufficient stock. With enough for their own customers, newsagents do not have enough stock to satisfy customers bringing tokens from newspapers purchased from Coles, Woolworths and other outlets. When they tell customers they have run out, the customers will blame the newsagents.
I am grateful to a Gold Coast based colleague for providing photos and details of this story.
it is a lot better than seeing “only avaiable at woolies or coles “at least this way when they buy it from coles etc they know they should have just gone straight to the newsagent in the first place
The same thing is happening with the Courier Mail today with the fish measure.
Well promoted, but I sold out at 9:30am, so now I face a day of crying kids because they’ve missed out.
Why don’t they give us more papers to sell when they do these promo’s???
i don’t know what they think when they run them i am the same with the stickers ,i just take a list of names and order them on monday ,normally the rep holds onto a few promo products
We’ve had these dramas before with certain promotions. We’ve had the same complaint, and have taken them to the publishers (always various News titles), as well as encouraged customers to complain to them as well. We figured that irate customers also had a responsibility, and reminded them of it, to distract them from the abuse they were dishing out to us.
The main answer we get is that there has always been a means of getting extras in plenty of time for the promotion period. While this hasn’t always been true (the light globe and Aussie day flag fiascos, for example), we could have requested extras in plenty of time, if we so chose, in hindsight.
In this instance, we received a flyer at the beginning of the week (email and fax and hand delivered!!) outlining the promotion and allocations. We were told that the numbers would be similar to the Xmas one (another children’s disc), and that we could request extras. This was made very clear.
Just how good the extras service will be remains to be seen. The similar promo they refer to wasn’t such a big thing at our shop, so we didn’t bother ordering extras. Chances are, tomorrow we’ll be getting the supermarket/servo customers ‘doing the rounds’ that Mark’s correspondent talks about, but we doubt it’ll be a problem.
Then again, this issue goes both ways. During February, there was a half price weekday promotion with a coupon, for a News title. At the same time, they were half price at supermarkets and “participating newsagents” for the weekends. We were not one of those newsagents, so it was with pleasure that we told customers so when they came with that coupon. It did make me wonder, though, whether there were any participating newsagents at all, and why any self-respecting agent would agree to such a perversely outrageous plan as to be forced to compete with supermarkets in the first place.
As for complete strangers coming in with coupons from papers bought elsewhere, it’s not like our extra efforts to get more copies of the DVD to accommodate them are rewarded with future custom from them anyway. If they get their papers from a supermarket, then want the disc from us in exchange for a scrap of paper, then it’s their tough luck if we run out.
Jeez – that did sound negative, reading it back. We don’t come across as so grumpy, honest (-:
We have plenty of dvd’s. In fact this has been a better promo then others. Not only do we have a great give-away which brings in parents we have an opportunity to up-sell on fishing mags.
Another typical News Ltd stuff up.
on the topic of newspapers what is the typical time everyone gets there paper stock deliverd on a saturday ? only reason i ask is because latley we have been getting ours at about the 6am mark and it turns out to be a disaster when you have to roll papers and serve at the same time as well as answer the phone with complaints about late papers
Saturday papers at 6.00am would be fantastic.
7.30/8.00am is about normal.
Sunday is a pain. 8.00am is early 8.30 to 9.00am is normal.
The joys of being in the country!!!
What a joke and on top of that you have to deliver after that arrival time
We received one DVD per paper, which I was happy with because I can give one to ALL of MY customers.
I’ve rejected everyone buying the paper in the supermarket/service station and then coming to my store for the FREE DVD (Where do I make money in that?). Some customers have even taken the paper back for a refund and returned to my store to purchase the paper.
I hope in the future they advertise it as “With the purchase of your paper at your local Newsagent”. This would drive up sales and would be better managed as that is what we do.
It’s almost 1:00PM and I have two bullies left and two DVD’s to go with them. I’ve had my staff abused and almost(seriously) in tears. I’ll be sold out of the two most popular papers sold in my store for the rest of the afternoon, missing out on sales(Isn’t that the whole idea of driving sales with the promo?)
Now I have to waste my time for the rest of the day explaining why I’m out of papers, suspiciously coincidently on a $20M Superdraw.
Sad thing is that now that we are a Sub- agent. We don’t get any of these promo’s with the newspapers. News Ltd says because we are a sub-agent and yet on a Saturday we sell $1200.00 worth of newspapers. A lot of grumpy customers!
I just refer my customers to News Ltd and let them answer why!
We just didn’t get any more stock of papers! So much for the opportunity to boost sales, more grumpy customers here too Manni. I am also a subbie now.
It is a big opportunity lost. I’m sold out, but they’re still advertising on the radio.
Hey, hey, come and get ours!
The vast majority of our customers aren’t interested in cutesy DVDs, or the fishing sticker for that matter. More stuff for the freebie bin in a few month’s time. The freebie bin consists of stuff not given away or needing to be returned, saved up over a few months, to be given away in quiet times, like May.
Our freebie bin is a boon for customers – makes their day 🙂
Having said all that, though, today, we expect a few to come with their tokens, as often happens with locals or delivery customers.
Our supplies of the Courier Mail were reasonably increased, AND we had (and still have) plenty of the fishing stickers. (Mental Note: Must send more to subs next promo!) No complaints for this promotion from us.
Bit of a surprise when on Connect we found that QNP wanted their stickers back!