SVP Blog

Issue 267 of ComputerActive! magazine (15-28th May 2008) contains a letter in the ConsumerActive! section from Bob Mclean. Bob writes in to express his concern that SVP did not have stocks of promotional items (specifically an LCD photo frame) advertised for the Wild Wednesday promotion. In brief summary, the advice from ConsumerActive suggests that the promotion could have been perfectly legitimate - but it’s virtually impossible to know if it were not - and that new regulations shortly to come into force would be relevant to this promotion had there not been adequate stocks and information that there was limited availability.

Here’s what we’d like to say in response to that article.

Naturally SVP respects the law and also values the goodwill of its customers. The initial Wild Wednesday promotions (announced here, here, here and here) gained a huge amount of attention. We’ve always mentioned that limited availability applies to the Wild Wednesday Wipe-Out lines - that’s integral to the nature of the promotion.

One of the perils of marketing a deal that’s truly good is that attention from busy social web sites can snowball dramatically. Sometimes this effect is hard to see in easy numbers but with one of the busiest and best deal-sharing websites, HotUKDeals, you really can see exactly how excited people are about an offer. That’s because a voting system shows how ‘hot’ the members think each deal is.

The second Wild Wednesday promoted a Datawrite LCD frame and you can see the HUKD temperature hit 338 degrees (hot!). This artificially high focus on one item caused it to sell out in around five minutes. You can read a bit more here. The web server struggled to cope with the shear number of buyers - it was the online equivalent of a mad dash in the biggest of January sales in a bricks and mortar shop. The Wild Wednesday promotions have created new sales rates records that have far exceeded previous promotions.

We were able to offer a different photo frame in the following week’s promo (HUKD post). Despite having about 200 available, they still all sold in half an hour.

To be true to our word, we release all the Wipe-Out stock for sale at as close to noon as we can. Due to the technical limitations of the shop, we can only do this by making things artificially show as ‘Out of Stock’ whilst we prepare the discounts. Rest assured that we try hard to make sure that we have an amount of stock that any reasonable person would consider was enough to be worth promoting.

We hope this clears up any doubts about SVP’s Wild Wednesday and our approach to honest promoting. We’re sorry if anybody feels they’ve been disappointed. Feel free to post comments here or email us.

Chris

As a loyal customer of SVP, I have, on the odd occasion of shopping on the Wild Wednesday, discovered that one or two of the Items on Promotion were not available. Frustrating as this was for me, I still had a great deal of Trust in SVP Promotional Wednesday, cause I had other deals going and bought under these deals. Unlike, the other person complaining about this Issue, I have a great deal of Faith in SVP’s intergrity as Traders; namely, that they have always been able to offer genuine deals to their customers, at least I found them to be so all of the time I have browsed their Website and made bargain purchases. Hence, if on Wednesday’s promotional if I find an item is no longer available, it does not bother me because I firmly trust that SVP will remedy the situation once they have replenished their Stocks of the item/s in question. So, the logic of my argument is:
(a) When I benefit from SVP by buying a USB lead for a mere £1.86, when the same item I was shopping for was being priced at £14.00 in a Well-Known High Street Retailer Shop, I can easily forgive SVP if they fail to have ample stock of an item offered under the Wednesday promotional Sale Day.
(b) I can understand the frustration of certain Buyers, but I would kindly remind them that each year of shopping with SVP, my enormous financial savings I make with them, by far outweighs the odd occasional failure to meet a customer’s specific item offered as a Promotion.
(c) As a retired Mathematics Teacher, I always pride myself on using LOGIC when solving any type of problems, and in this case, I start from the Logical point of : ” In The Absence Of Malice”, thus meaning that Do I Trust SVP’s Intentions To Serve Their Customers without deception ? My answer to this question is: I have 100% trust in their integrity, and have always operated the honest policy of Serving Their Customers With Intergrity because this policy will bring them Customer Loyalty. This form of Customer Loyalty have from me without any doubt.
Zouhair Tourmoche

People like Bob Mclean.should stick to shopping using those paper catalogues that come through your letterbox with the rest of the junk mail.

SVP are by far one of the most honest, decent and genuine retailers on the web.