Wh Smith Has Acquired Cult Pens

[RJS]

They tend to price gouge more than the rest, that's the 'point'. Their business model is to push customers as far as conceivably possible. The nerve of selling essential items at 3-8x the regular price in hospitals is particularly unpleasant.

 

Edit: When they started selling 80p toothpaste for £8 in hospitals, that's when the got a particularly big backlash. After the backlash they were kind enough to lower the price to about £3...

Edited October 24, 2020 by RJS

[RJS]

Apparently a lot of WHSmith's book business relies on the kind of readers that are daunted by the prospect of entering a dedicated bookshop or shopping online. For the usual bestsellers you'd think they'd just buy them in our supermarkets (Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury's etc) which all offer heavy discounts on a very limited range.

[ParramattaPaul]

Everything one can buy at airports globally is priced higher than it would be elsewhere. There are a number of reasons. One is there is an expectation that travellers are a 'captive market' or that they accept higher prices for the sake of convenience. Another is that airports actually charge a premium for the retail spaces they lease out.

 

Hospital gift shops charge a premium for much the same reason knowing that the majority of their custom comes not from patients, bur from visitors who were too forgetful or lazy to buy gifts, etc. elsewhere. Then too, I believe a percentage of the sale is a 'tariff' charged by the hospital itself.

 

WH Smith, like WC Penfold Stationers in Sydney, have been perceived as somewhat 'up-market'. Whether that is true, is a matter of personal opinion. I know, speaking for myself only, they, Penfold's especially, were my go-to shops back in the day when I was working.

[RJS]

You don't need to make excuses for greedy companies, especially not companies that can top a nationwide poll of most disliked retailers.

 

And no, airport shops don't necessarily have to be more expensive than those outside, especially with all the tax breaks they get. Travel round Asia and you'll find tons of airports with 7Elevens and the like that don't raise their normal prices one iota. A company *can* survive or thrive for years by ripping consumers off, but they can expect to be pretty damn unpopular as a result. Ideally governments should ban the practice. Regional supermarket pricing can also be baffling- when I worked in London Tesco saved their lowest pricing for the stores in the Square Mile- London's incredibly wealthy financial distract. Poorer areas had to pay more.

[RJS]

No one is perceiving WHSmith as upmarket over here any more- google WH Smith and Carpets to see what I'm talking about. A great fall from grace for the world's first retail chain.

 

M&S are an upmarket grocery seller, who at the same time flog increasingly low quality clothing. They probably wish they'd plonked their shops in all the places WH Smith find themselves- at least with premium quality goods you could understand the pricey sandwiches and snacks.

 

And please don't suggest that their hospital shops are merely 'gift shops'. For the unfortunately souls trapped in hospitals (a lot of which are absolutely (bleep)-poor here, sadly) the convenience stores operated in them become essential and unavoidable. Some of our hospitals are gigantic and have various food and retail outlets, many keen to profit from misfortune. Don't get me started on how hospitals have the most expensive car parks around... Basically anyone or any business that actively participates in ripping people off will receive my scorn.

Edited October 25, 2020 by RJS

[ParramattaPaul]

No one is perceiving WHSmith as upmarket over here any more- google WH Smith and Carpets to see what I'm talking about. A great fall from grace for the world's first retail chain.

 

M&S are an upmarket grocery seller, who at the same time flog increasingly low quality clothing. They probably wish they'd plonked their shops in all the places WH Smith find themselves- at least with premium quality goods you could understand the pricey sandwiches and snacks.

 

And please don't suggest that their hospital shops are merely 'gift shops'. For the unfortunately souls trapped in hospitals (a lot of which are absolutely (bleep)-poor here, sadly) the convenience stores operated in them become essential and unavoidable. Some of our hospitals are gigantic and have various food and retail outlets, many keen to profit from misfortune. Don't get me started on how hospitals have the most expensive car parks around... Basically anyone or any business that actively participates in ripping people off will receive my scorn.

All true, and I am not making any excused for predatory business practices. In fact, such practices are detestable.

 

A mate of mine was doing his Business degree, and did a study of marketing practices quite a number of year ago. He was more than a little surprised to discover what most of us already knew that supermarket and department store chains had a higher price structure for stores in less affluent neighbourhoods. Again, it was the perception that they had a captive market. The belief was that the poor had less opportunity to go elsewhere to shop, access to transport, and had less time to available to them than their more affluent fellows.

 

 

 

 

Corrected for typographical errors.

Edited October 25, 2020 by ParramattaPaul

[RJS]

Absolutely agree.

[AmandaW]

I've ordered from Cult Pens many times since before my descent into fountain pens simply because I found them first and was happy with the range and service. I will admit I was watching out for those features to go downhill when this thread started a couple of years ago, but haven't seen much evidence of it. Yet.

 

I recently tried a couple of other UK pen places, including Writing Desk. Unfortunately the Kaweco inks in one package leaked badly, wasted about a third of the ink and ruined the labels on the bottles. OK, so probably wasn't their fault, but it still lingers as a bad experience and it's hard to ignore the mess. To make matters worse the Kaweco Sport has threads so sharp I put a Bandaid around the middle of my middle finger before I use it.

[RJS]

The threads are sharp on the plastic Kaweco Sport? Is that normal? They're completely smooth on my Al-Sport (which I really like, though the nib is a tad scratchy).

[shostakovich]

Absolutely agree.

 

I do admire your tenacity and support for the people who appear to be (and I am sure are) ripped off by big business and I do think the government here and elsewhere should do something about it.

 

I had a parcel yesterday which contained a tiny 3 inch by half an inch pot of silicon grease. The parclel size was 14 inches by 9.5 inches by 4 inches deep. They had also put in air bags and a thick, several hundred page catalogue of their products which I did not need, as well as some other leaflets. Needless to say the postage and packaging was more than 2.5 times the cost including tax of the silicon grease. That should be illegal and they should be fined several thousand pounds each time they do that, in my opinion. It was a British company.

Edited October 25, 2020 by shostakovich

[RJS]

I once received a box delivered to my house that was about 3 foot x 4 foot x 3 foot, and felt practically weightless. It barely squeezed through my front door. I couldn't think what I'd ordered that could possibly be in there. It was full of packing noodles. I rummaged about inside but couldn't find anything. I poured the entire contents on the floor, and still couldn't see anything. I had a last look in the box to see if there was any paperwork- and low and behold, there was something I'd ordered inside. A micro-sd card. Good banter from whoever packed it, or a horrid waste of money? You decide.

Edited October 25, 2020 by RJS

[Moominyak]

Wow, WHS buying out Cult Pens had completely passed me by (and I'm in the UK 😊).  Glad to report some 4 years later (!) that I haven't noticed any changes to offerings or service.  I have used CP, The Writing Desk, Pure Pens, Penbox (amongst others, probably - it all depends on what I'm looking for at the time), and have always received great service from all of them.

 

The CP minimum order for free delivery has crept up, think it's now £30 and IIRC it used to be £10 or £15 back in 2015/16ish, but that's probably just down to costs rising generally, eg. RM's own price rises, NMW rises etc, and is still much lower than Art From The Heart's £50 threshold (I've only used them once but again no issues).

[uaexemarat]

On 11/13/2022 at 2:26 PM, Moominyak said:

 😊The CP minimum order for free delivery has crept up, think it's now £30 and IIRC it used to be £10 or £15 back in 2015/16ish, but that's probably just down to costs rising generally, eg. RM's own price rises, NMW rises etc, and is still much lower than Art From The Heart's £50 threshold (I've only used them once but again no issues).

The international delivery threshold though jumped from £50 all the way to £100

[MuddyWaters]

On 10/25/2020 at 5:08 AM, RJS said:

The threads are sharp on the plastic Kaweco Sport? Is that normal? They're completely smooth on my Al-Sport (which I really like, though the nib is a tad scratchy).

 

My plastic sport threads are also very sharp. It's unfortunate because I have a nice small vintage nib on mine but don't like to use it because of the small section and sharp threads. I won't get a metal version of the pen because I prefer to have it eyedroppered. 

[A Smug Dill]

1 hour ago, uaexemarat said:

The international delivery threshold though jumped from £50 all the way to £100

 

Um, when was it £50 last? It's been £70 for years.

 

The newsletter I received just earlier this week raised the ‘free’ shipping threshold for Australian orders even higher than £100. Coupled with all the increases to the list prices of most items over the past year, even with the Black Friday discounts there are no bargains so worth getting that I would try to build a >£115 order now.