BWS (Bloody Waste of Space)
8February 23, 2013 by 250 Beers
Friday, February 22nd 2013…it was 9am and, as is ritual on a Friday, most of us in the office saunter across the road for a $5.50 bacon and egg sandwich. Whilst the staff busy themselves frying our orders, we generally turn our attention to the huge window and any passing leggy blonde. We also leaf through a couple of the daily newspapers to see if the larger chains of bottle shops had ran any ads showing off forthcoming weekend beer specials.
Bingo! The Courier Mail have a full-pager for BWS.
OK, the ad is mainly pumping Sail & Anchor at the casual drinker but my eye catches the new Monteith’s IPA…2 x 500ml bottles for $10. Bargain!
Approximately four hours later, I walked into the nearest BWS store to my work on the hunt to get hold of a litre of IPA for just $10. “Can I help you?” came a voice at me. “Good start” I thought…. “Yes, I’m looking for the Monteith’s IPA please.”
Guess what he said………….wait for it…………”I’m sorry but I don’t believe Monteith’s do an IPA”. I replied with “Well that’s rather strange because I’m pretty certain they do and your marketing people ran a big ad in today’s paper that contains a picture of the stuff.”
He shrugged his shoulders and apologised. He didn’t know anything about it.
Today, Saturday, 23rd February 2013. I’m out and about doing this and doing that when I happen to be passing a BWS. With yesterday’s debacle still fresh in my mind I thought I’d chance my luck locally to 250 Beers Towers. This is what happened…….
“Can I help you?” came a voice at me. Groundhog day. “Yes, I’m looking for the Monteith’s IPA please.”
Perplexed, he started to look up and down the fridge shelves in a helpful way. There was no sign of the stuff. Again!
I questioned him on the ad and asked if it was applicable state-wide. He believed that those ads are indeed ran all across the state.
So where the hell is my IPA???
I ran a few more errands this morning and by chance passed another BWS on my way home. Curiosity got the better of me. I pulled up outside, went in, walked straight to the beer fridges where the manager happened to be standing and I said “Hi mate. Before I start looking, I saw an ad yesterday in the Courier Mail advertising Monteith’s IPA – have you got any please?”
Brilliantly, he asked me in reply “IPA? Are you sure?”
F***, YES, I’M SURE!
To the bloke’s credit, he saw that I was a million percent certain and apologised for not having it in stock.
When I got home, the first thing I did was check it out online. Here is a screen-grab of what I found:
You’ll see my intended acquisition at the bottom of the image.
You’ll note from the top section of their web page that not only does today fall within their availability date-range but you might also note three letters ‘NAT’. Methinks this means that the ad is applicable nationwide. So, this begs the question, why did three stores have no idea what I was talking about?
It also begs the question whether BWS actually stands for Bloody Waste of Space?
For the record, I ended up buying a 6pack of Sleeping Giant IPA (Gage Roads). It’s kind-of-an-old favourite.
I feel you … I’ve been looking for those Monteith’s Brewers Series beers in BWS outlets in Wollongong. One of them had none of them, one had just the apricot wheat but no IPA, and I’m going to check out the third one later today.
Seven stores on Brisbane’s north-side and still no joy. Right, this calls for a complaint…
I just realised I’d checked three BWS outlets before today, not two. The fourth one, which I checked today, also had no IPA. But I finally found it at the fifth.
It’s a poor effort given that the beers are advertised online as being available in NSW.
I can’t help thinking that BWS have really stuffed up in both QLD and NSW.
Could be a publicity stunt to get people into their stores!?
Damn right!
[...] I’d found out two of the series were available at BWS – an IPA and an apricot wheat. The latter I found at the first BWS I entered but the IPA was a much greater hassle to find. I had to visit all five BWS stores to find the IPA, which is odd given that both beers are advertised in the chain’s NSW catalogue. More odd was that two of the five BWS outlets in Wollongong stocked neither of the two beers.I’m not the only one who has had this BWS problem – Darren over at 250 Beers has been dealing with the same issue in Brisbane. [...]