Dear Editor, I feel I must write to you concerning an advertisement in last weekend’s national press referring to a Servis washing machine sold by Tesco at a retail price of less than £100. Having been in the electrical appliance trade for over 30 years, I can’t ever remember being able to buy a washing machine at less than £100 incl VAT trade price.
Obviously, there’s no power in the world to stop the mighty force of Tesco, but surely Servis must have struck the deal with Tesco to enable them to retail the product at this price. However lean their margins are!
As an independent retailer, I for one will never ever stock anything branded Servis or associated brands in my store ever again.
The one and only way we are going to stop businesses like Tesco from making independent retailers look greedy, overpriced rip-off merchants is to stand up for ourselves before we are all forced out of business.
My suggestion to all my fellow independent retailers is to boycott the product from manufacturers who employ such strategies. Whilst this sounds harsh, they cannot think much of independent electrical retailers as prices like this make independent retailers look so stupid.
Now is the time to start sticking together and boycotting any manufacturer that allows similar future slaughtering of prices in this manner. Maybe if we do this, they can look round and see they have no other customers.
Paul Cunningham
Proprietor
A1 Appliances
info@a1appliances.co.uk
