Free advertising for fair prices? No thanks.

It seems that even offers of free advertising are not incentive enough for retailers to consider lowering their euro prices to their sterling equivalents.

MediaContact.ie wrote yesterday about an intriguing offer from Q102:

Dublin’s Q102, which recently promised a free week long Christmas advertising campaign to the first store to convert sterling to euro accurately, has reported that not one retailer has attempted to avail of the offer.

The free Christmas advertising campaign was offered in conjunction with the ‘Ignore that Store’ on-air campaign being run on Dublin’s Q102’s flagship current affairs programme ‘On The QT’. The campaign is naming and shaming the many retail outlets that are ripping off consumers by marking up prices when converting sterling to euro on labels.

Since announcing the campaign, Dublin’s Q102 has been inundated with texts, e-mails and calls from concerned listeners naming shops who are exploiting customers with unfair prices. Dublin’s Q102 has also visited some of the shops repeatedly mentioned by listeners to check their conversion rate, and found that many items were marked considerably higher than the actual sterling price shown.

Seems like retailers consider the euro markup worth much more than the kudos and publicity they would certainly attract for availing of this offer.  A bit shortsighted, in these times?

It’s not always easy to know when you’re being ripped off by a food retailer, as they don’t usually display their sterling prices. On a recent visit to Belfast, however, I did notice that M&S are charging a significant mark-up in their Southern shops, and it’s well established that Tesco also charge considerably less up North.

It’ll be interesting to see what transpires in the New Year. Which retailers do you think will lower their prices first, and which will hold out the longest?