Why do we pay more to shop at local stores?
I HAVE just returned from a visit to England and was astonished to see the mark-up that our local Waitrose makes.Some individual items were as much as £1 cheaper in the UK. Multiply that by the thousands of items that are sold each week and it will perhaps give you an idea of how much profits the local stores are making.
No doubt the old chestnut of huge freight costs to the islands will be raised by the management but there are freight costs involved in delivery to all the variously located stores in the UK.
The other disgrace is that M&S, unlike Amazon and John Lewis, will not allow islanders to order from their online facility and thereby avoid paying VAT. No doubt the local franchiser has put a stop to that as their sales would be affected.
One final point, instead of bemoaning the fact that there is no bakery here since the demise of Warry's – of course there is the excellent Senners – then buy a bread machine and make your own at a touch of a button.
Name and address withheld.
Editor's footnote: Waitrose and M&S were both asked to respond:
Ian Burdekin, branch manager, Waitrose in Guernsey, replies:
Thank you for your letter. At Waitrose, we place great importance on providing our shoppers with excellent value for money. For us, value is all about achieving a balance between price, quality and high ethical standards. We also do all that we can to ensure the products we sell are competitively priced.
Working with and investing in local producers is also important to us. This does mean though that we aren't always able to sell some of the same products we sell in the UK at the same prices.
We continually monitor our prices to ensure we deliver the best value we can. Inevitably, it does cost more for products to be delivered from the UK, which is reflected in our prices, but we also pass on the savings of UK VAT to our shoppers here and we have hundreds of promotions across our branches every week.
We remain focused on continuing to offer great value and Waitrose quality – for example, our essential Waitrose brand, which offers everyday groceries without any compromise on quality or welfare standards, is hugely popular with customers.
If you do have any further questions I'd be very happy to discuss these with you – please ask for me next time you're in either of the branches.
Ian McLaughlin, director, Marks and Spencer – Guernsey Franchise, replies:
Thank you for allowing us the opportunity to respond to your reader's letter.
Over the last two years M&S have been in the midst of a major programme to replace their web ordering technology. The initial phase was launched at the start of the year with many further improvements planned, one of which is to extend the number of locations that can be ordered from and delivered to.
Although we do not have a timeline as to when this facility will be available in the Channel Islands we would like to reassure your reader that we are working hard with M&S to resolve this situation.
