Deception II

by Sean Houghton in February 2012 - Piece of Pi

My last ‘Piece of Pi’ in the January 2012 edition certainly touched a nerve with many readers. The large number of emails and comments we received would indicate that many South Africans believe retailers and manufacturers are indeed “deceitful in their single-minded craving to satiate their wanton greed” as one of the respondants stated.

Another lady, a pensioner who too did not want to be named, says the problem is more common than we would like to believe… and she is correct.

Among many of her examples was the fact that not only have soft drinks increased in price but SABCO has decreased the size of the can from 340ml to 330ml. Yes, only 10ml, but when we consider the hundreds of millions of soft drink cans sold in South Africa every year, this 10ml translates into immediate and substantially increased profits.

The scores of examples provided by our readers are too numerous to mention individually but the unpleasant truth is that the problem is not only with Pick n Pay but all retailers and a huge number of manufacturers in South Africa. What disturbs me more though, and many of our readers, is that every single one of these examples is a coldly calculated planned strategy by all parties concerned to eke out those extra few cents from every item sold in their efforts to make even more money.

Let me repeat what I said in the last column, I have no problem with businesses making money for their shareholders… but how much is enough and what, if anything, is beyond them in terms of dishonest and deceitful practises?

Even though my comments offended a handful of people, it is quite true that these pillars of the South African business community actually do have strategy meetings about what they can do to squeeze an extra few cents out of each product, under the radar and without the vast majority of the consumer public being able to discern the difference. They pay people huge salaries to think up ways of fooling the public, methods of reducing costs and increasing their profits. Concepts and campaigns disrespect and patronise the consumer by telling them; we’re here for you, we care, while they con every one of us out of a few extra cents on whatever we buy.

How pathetic is that? How rapaciously greedy is that? How misleading and mendacious can people be? This sickening pursuit of wealth is given added repugnance when it is seen in the context or the world-wide and national recession in which the average South African is struggling to make ends meet and put food on their tables.

It simply doesn’t occur to these business gurus to be more productive, more efficient or to simply say, “You know what, our profits are pretty good anyway, let’s prove our commitment to our consumer by being satisfied with what we have.” Yes, I know that’s naïve but that doesn’t make it any less valid. It is this very insatiable greed that fuels the economic crashes that will continue to bedevil our world at ever shortening intervals leading to eventual worldwide disaster in which the value of the millions earned by the greedy few will be rendered valueless anyway.

It is simply unsustainable in the long-term, for the wealth gap to continue widening as the business community rakes in even more by delivering less to the consumer. It reminds me of the mad feral dog gathering all the scraps it can out of the back-alley dustbin into one heap upon which it sits not letting any other starving currs close. Not only does it have more than it can eat but it has to snarl and snap so much in defence of its ‘bounty’ that it can’t in fact eat anything at all and would rather starve to death knowing that it possesses the biggest pile of scraps than surrender any scraps to the other starving dogs – in peace, harmony and cooperation.

The truth is that business leaders in South Africa and around the world are too intellectually stunted, too emotionally immature and too egotistically self-important to see the bigger picture or the long-term view.

Over the past few decades and more recently, we have learned that no one and no system can indeifinitely subjugate the masses. The people will eventually rise up and fight back and no wealth or walls will protect the ill-gotten scraps of these people. In South Africa in particular, there is a very real and growing problem as the gulf between the haves and the have-nots widens. But our business leaders greedily, stupidly, oblivously, focus solely on raking in as many dustbin scraps as they possibly can to possess the biggest pile in their alley so that when the inevtibale eventuates, they will simply take their scraps elsewhere and abandon the people in South Africa and the problems they have helped to create.

These same ‘educated’ business leaders will publicly and privately criticise the government and its leaders for their corruption and mismanagement and wealth-enrichment programmes disguised as service delivery, but how are these business leaders any different? Like the people they criticise, their only interest in life is to create as much wealth as they can at whatever cost, never mind how much misery or hunger they create along the way.

It really does sicken me to my stomach that people can be so self-servingly wanton.

A couple of people asked me why I hadn’t asked Pick n Pay for a response. The truth is that over the last seven years I have approached the company six times at local branch and corporate level about various issues. I have been fobbed off every single time. So I was not going to waste any more of my own time waiting to be fobbed off again. I felt I should rather alert our readers to the problem so that they can investigate and make more informed decisions about what they buy from all of our retailers in future.

I received an email from the PR team at Pick n Pay which was as bland and predictable in its content as I have come to expect. They accept no responsibility for the price of items sold on their shelves, have not offered to address the problem and believe it is up the consumer to educate themselves about retail practises in other parts of the world and come to the realisation that by comparison we have it good in South Africa.

Yes… draw your own conclusion.

@FullCircleSean