Mark is married to Jo and is a 23 year old youth and schools worker based in South Cave (near Hull). Mark spent 4 years as a youth worker in Peterborough whilst studying for a degree in youth work & ministry with Oasis.
The Tesco saga continues, a couple of days ago I received a response to my second letter to Tesco. If you don’t have a clue what my Tesco battle is all about I suggest you read the book Tescopoly and read the posts in my ‘Ethical Living’ category.
So here is my second letter from Tesco (click to enlarge)
It’s nice that he acknowledged that the first letter was badly presented, however all he has really commented on within this letter is what he had effectively stated on the first letter. The comments he shared about suppliers and Tesco were very vague and the webpage he directed me too is fairly bog standard company jargon and as numerous recent reports on the ethics of Primark show it doesn’t matter what a company states on their website or what Ethical schemes they’ve signed up to because ultimately they can do whatever they like.
I don’t think I’m surprised there was no comment on the way they bully local councils because if I’m honest I don’t think there’s much they can say to justify their underhand techniques used to gain planning permission.
Since I wrote to them the second time they have applied to double the size of the Stallham store in Norfolk, the store has almost practically gutted the town centre and made it a ghost town, doubling the size of the store (which will ultimately happen as they bully the council) will finish off the town completely.
I do not intend on replying to Tesco, I don’t think they will share anything more than is publically available on their website and I very much doubt that John Leiper really knows what the company gets up to, I suspect he is just another customer services employee, there to quieten dissatisfied customers.
However this doesn’t mean that my writings to Tesco have been a waste of time, letting companies know your annoyance with them is always worth doing and you almost certainly get a reply because the appearance of good customer service is important to them although in practice companies like Tesco’s can afford to lose customers.
I am quite happily boycotting Tesco at the moment and intend on continuing to do so and I hope that more people will take this incentive with time.
I’m in favour of them expanding in stalham. look at it without the glasses of the moral high horse…
the jobs that were originally supplied by local smaller retail places are demonstrably unstable, whereas a big chain like Tesco obviously offer more dependable jobs – and you can be sure that they supply more jobs than the sum of the jobs needed for the sole retail traders (eg 1 man running a bakers vs a team running a bakery in tesco).
This puts money back into the local economy and by supplying same produce at a lower price increases the spending power of the local consumer. Thus more spend per head increases Tesco turnover and therefore Tesco deployment (as with all retail – more money = more staff)
And how is stallham a ghost town anyway? There’s nothing there, the old boating holiday industry has died, as with any morsal of youth in the town so all that’s left is a pensionable populous sitting round a duck pond on a fixed income moaning about the price of bread.
Da daaaaaaaaaaa, Tesco to the rescue
lol ‘How is Stallham a ghost town anyway? There’s nothing there’
Did you not answer your own question?
When Tesco finally had planning permission to build at Stallham the local shops either shut beforehand or very soon after the store opened, so by ghost town I mean lots of empty shops and nothing but a soulless supermarket.
I’m not convinced Tesco creating more jobs is a solution, often their staff are disposable and a shop double the size doesn’t mean double jobs, probably just a handful. The business model of Tesco and other chains is basically the less staff you need the more money you can make so they’re always trying to employ less.
ASDA in Yarmouth for instance have had new delicatessen counters installed so now half of the meats come pre-packaged thus meaning less staff are needed on the counter.
Finally other than paying staff some miniumum wages Tesco won’t put anything back into the community, you lose the community spirit you find in smaller shops where the shop staff know what Mrs Jones has, or order in the specilist magazine Mr Smith has each month.
If you look at Tesco Caister when it was the Co-op they used to run free fundays for the community in the summer, now it’s Tesco what do they offer the community? nothing!
Here’s a reply for you:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/aug/02/comment.supermarkets