All Dear Jac articles – Page 81
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Dear Jac
Dear Jac: The Swiss are after European City Guide.
This will come as good news to retailers in this country who have been harassed by European City Guide (ECG), a company fingered as operating a scam by quite a few European countries. The high-profile website www.stopecg.org claims that 50,000+ businesses are fighting against bills they never expected to receive ...
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Dear Jac
Dear Jac: Self-service stores will always be tempting to thieves. But are there double standards at work?
I frequently hear stories about inventive crooks. Amjad Farooq, who runs a Booker Premier at Bolton in Lancashire, offered me a good example. He has traded in the Halliwell area for 18 years and has suffered plenty of petty thievery. But this one was different. A ‘gent’ came into the ...
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Dear Jac
Dear Jac: Chocs away! Remember, customers eat with their eyes.
Here’s a story with a sweet ending. Mahendra Oza, who trades in one of London’s trendiest districts, Islington, found himself caught up in the food supply chain when a customer brought back a Snickers bar because it had turned a bit white. The date was fine: November 19, 2005. He ...
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Dear Jac
Dear Jac: News retailers and wholesalers continue to be uneasy bedfellows.
Keith Palmer emailed me with the beef that the Daily Mail was offering readers a free DVD if they picked up their copies from WHS. He wondered if this was legal.
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Dear Jac
Dear Jac: This is a Camelot question - how big is your wallet?
This is the feedback slot. Chris Blakey (The Paper Shop, Halifax) has been in touch. Yes it’s him again, as featured in our last issue with definitive info on coins of the realm. Chris is a university graduate and a very lively retailer with, I suspect, useful input on most ...
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Dear Jac
Dear Jac: Here’s a training tip – make it clear to staff what they can and can’t sign for.
This interesting little tale comes from Paul Henshaw, whose current Spar store trades in Meliden, near Prestatyn, North Wales. He used to own another store not far away at Bodelwyddan, and in 2001 a member of staff signed him up to a five-year leasing agreement with a hygiene services company ...
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Dear Jac
Dear Jac: The need for at least two licences has caused trouble for some.
Two retailers trading in Norfolk have been utterly incensed to have their licensing applications rejected after getting local authorities blessing in the first place and getting the paperwork in on time. Nicola List rang to say that her partners application had been checked in front of them by a helpful ...
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Dear Jac
Dear Jac: Have councils discovered a new licence to print money?
Retailers are continuing to contact me with tales of licensing wrangles with their local authorities.
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Dear Jac
Tesco surges on
Tesco is on course to open its 600th Express convenience store this month, and could soon push well past that with the acquisition of another 21 petrol station sites from Morrisons.
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Dear Jac
Dear Jac: When is an accountant getting money for old rope?
Mukesh Patel is unhappy with a bill he received from his accountant following a VAT inspection.
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Dear Jac
Dear Jac: There is almost always another side to the coin.
In the last issue I discussed coins of the realm, prompted by a call from Binz Sidhu in Telford who wondered whether it was okay to accept coins from the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and so on. He had been told they were okay/they were not okay and ...
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Dear Jac
Dear Jac: Anybody know where a Lotto retailer can find supplies of plastic wallets?
Camelot used to provide special plastic wallets, but no longer does, and furthermore couldn’t tell me who could.
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Dear Jac
Dear Jac: Don’t put your signature anywhere near a blank standing order.
I had two calls in as many days in late July regarding SD Media, which sells on-screen space in places like doctors’ surgeries, advertising local businesses. But both retailers, Subhas Patel in Richmond, London and Roger Yalim in Margate, Kent believed they were only handing over cheques for around £120 ...
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Dear Jac
Dear Jac: ‘Top shelf’ means you have to be tall enough to reach the titles stocked there before you can buy them.
That’s a pretty good rule of thumb. And it is also Byron Jackson’s approach. Byron, who runs a c-store in Burry Port, South Wales, with his wife Nadette, emailed me with a bit of a saga. He writes: “We (rightly or wrongly) restrict the sale of the only two top-shelf ...
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Dear Jac
Dear Jac: The DTI is still busy winding up dodgy publishers.
In the last four days I’ve had two emails from the DTI saying that it was in the process of winding up Adrian Smythe Publishing and has already wound up UK Frontline Services. The former was engaged in cold-calling businesses to sell sponsorships in child safety and crime awareness books. ...
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Dear Jac
Shops group gathers data
Retailers, trade associations and supermarket groups have submitted their evidence for the All Party Parliamentary Group for Small Shops’ investigation into high street retailing.
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Dear Jac
Dear Jac: Join me, I’m celebrating! This column is into double figures age-wise.
The helpline page ‘went live’ on September 8, 1995 and has appeared in every issue, every fortnight, ever since. I may not know, even now, how to run a c-store, but on your behalf I regularly try on lots of the hats that you are forced to wear in your ...
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Dear Jac
Dear Jac: Coins of the realm, but which ones are bona fide?
Time to talk money. I was contacted by Binz Sidhu, who owns a small shop in High Ercall, at Telford in Shropshire. He took over from his parents last October and says he’s been baffled by the not-quite-the-full-ticket coins that have come across his counter ever since. “I’ve noticed that ...
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Dear Jac
Dear Jac: Can you club together to get cheaper video hire?
This was another service query and for obvious reasons I’ve kept the retailer anonymous because what he was suggesting turned out to be illegal. He thought that he might be able to run a ‘video rental club’ from his shop, signing customers up to a sort of library and using ...
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Dear Jac
Dear Jac: Regard this as a global warning.
I had a very interesting conversation with Dilip Patel, who runs London Superstore at Millbank, behind the Tate Gallery. In the middle of the night he and his wife keep getting pestering calls from a call centre apparently based in the Punjab on behalf of Global Telecommunications.