Consuming Interest
Making a Packet
By LESLIE ADRIAN.
SHOPS may spend thousands on
Most big stores deliver free 'in the London area'—but they are not agreed about the size of the London area. Most allow 'carriage free' on goods over a certain amount—but the amount varies. Some charge a flat rate per lb., some add a set sum to the postal charges; some just guess. But from all the vagueness one or two points do emerge.
First, the actual charges should be decided by weight, not price. One do-it-yourself firm charges 2s. 6d. in the £ for postage and packing, although the price of, say, a cupboard may vary as much as £4 (i.e. 10s. postage and packing), simply on different finishes, which involve no extra pack- ing at all. Second, for regular orders, it is worth while checking on different stores: Harrods, for instance, deliver free within a fifty-mile radius, others mainly thirty; but whereas Fbrtnum's send small articles free, Harrods charge Is. p. and p. even on the smallest object (a clear profit of 7d., as a reader has pointed out, on a tie or hairnet that can go into an envelope with a 3d. stamp). Wine is cheaper from Selfridges, who deliver free —if you order half a dozen bottles or more— the charge on five bottles is 6s. 6d. p. and p., so you might as well have an extra bottle of Spanish Burgundy instead. Selfridges, so far as I can dis- cover, are the only shop that charges nothing on proprietary electrical appliances, TV sets and carpet-sweepers—presumably because they arrive so well packed from the manufacturers. True, Lewis's and the Army and Navy Stores send goods
over £5 free (Fortnum's over £10), which miall seem to cover this—but bulky goods are usual! excepted.
Most charges seem to be based on averages, an if one customer is occasionally stung, anothe presumably benefits. But it is quite clear that thes charges are impossible to calculate accurately how much paper and string does a parcel take And how much of that came off a parcel of coming merchandise? How much do they pay t spotty youth in the brown overall? Clearly tit Army and Navy's addition of 2d. to the posta charge and Selfridges' 6d., Harrods' sliding scal and the hopeful guesses of Fortnum's and Joh Lewis's do not attempt precision. It is hard see why strictly postal customers should b charged anything: they see no window display wear out no carpets, use no lavatories or lifts all of which overheads are presumably include in the prices they pay. After all, if it has bee worth the while of a tobacconist in Curti berland to send the tobacco supply of a friend 0 mine, by registered post, every month since the vva without extra charge; and if it is worth the whir of a shop to hand over a dress in a box that cosi Is. wholesale, then the profit margin must surel. be big enough to cover all this? Small food shops, as well as general stores, vvill often deliver to the door; but even shops which willingly finance van, driver and petrol still ref Of to offer for nothing the bag in which a custoral could take the goods away himself. (A Soho fo0' wa` shop even had the effrontery to charge 2d. for / quite ordinary paper bag in which to wrap a loaf of bread—only a strip of tissue was offered free.) A check of eleven food shops near where I live glowed that three small shops and a dairy offered ii carrier bags printed with the shop's name at 4d., wo sold plain bags for the same price; a delicates- n sold a big printed bag at 6d., but gave it away ee with orders over 7s. 6d. One supermarket y charged 5d. for a bag (but delivered free—as did it two of the small shops); another sold a weak II Printed bag at 4d. (given free with orders over 175. 6d.); the third charged 4d. for all bags (Printed) and the last gave them away only with orders over £2, but charged only 21d. for. the i largest size plain bag.
I object most strongly to paying for the privilege of carrying around someone else's advertising on Paper bag. Yet the shops that sell printed bags are so unaware of this that they refer to the cost Of printing (about id. a bag) as one of the reasons Why carrier bags are expensive. (The bags cost 3d. Wholesale, so they always make a profit on it.) .ither a bag is part of the shop's wrapping and should be free; or, if it is charged, it should at least be discreetly anonymous.
There seems to be a basic difference in attitude toWards a wrapping, however expensive, that is for one particular object, and a general bag into which (this is the root fear) a shopper might put his own things, This could be a psychological mistake: an encumbered person is reluctant to add more Parcels, but someone who knows he has plenty of tempting space to fill will buy like anything.
All this applies particularly to supermarkets, Whose whole economy depends on people going in to buy a can of beans and coming out with a dazed expression and three pounds' worth of ri groceries: perhaps the cut-price bag at 24-d, is a reasonable compromise. But the supermarkets that never give a bag free allege that their profit illargins are too small to allow for it. Nonsense. A carrier to take the stuff away is as much a part of supermarketeering as pre-packing (described bY one of them as `untouched by hand—except the packers, of course'). r5 I had rather hoped that the Packaging Exhibi- tion at Olympia last week might have revealed a new form of baggery that could be made for a s°118—but so far, all plastic works out dearer than Paper. The only possibility I see is an extension of that tube of plastic netting they wrap apples and °ranges in—perhaps the day will come when the 't.ssistant at the check-out simply rolls our goods In netting and hands us the ends. What the Exhibi- tion did reveal was twenty million different ways of wrapping our food before we get it—but a Word of warning here. A vacuum pack is not heat- sterilised like a tin; the bacteria are discouraged but still among those present, and polythene- Wrapped food may be staler than it looks.
Another thing I had hoped to see, but did not, Was the stuff that goes in America by the name of Saranwrap : it looks like thin cellophane, sticks (though not irrevocably) to itself, and is a quick and perfect answer for covering bowls and pots ind for wrapping sandwiches. America has had it i or four years; I understand from the manufac- turers of such things (who already possess Saran, Which is presumably what it is made of) that we are only supposed to be three years behind in this sort of thing. Ah, well, I dare say we shall get it in time. It
Previous page
