Remember the days when the supermarket chains used to proudly tell us, "If you don't see what you want, ask us for it and we'll Special Order it for you"?
Notice how they don't do that anymore?
Instead, what happens is that from time to time, you'll be doing your weekly shopping and suddenly, one or more items that you've been buying regularly is off the shelves. You ask the store clerks, and they'll shrug and refer you to a manager. The manager will usually give you one of several stock answers:
"It's seasonal and we can't get it until later in the year."
"It's on hold because of warehouse issues."
"It's been discontinued by our warehouse or supplier."
Very seldom, if ever, is it a case where the item itself has been discontinued by its maker. For instance, one item on my shopping list that I can suddenly no longer get is the different fruit flavors of Diet Rite soda; I used to be able to reliably get both Red Raspberry and Tangerine flavors, but for the last two months, they've been gone from the shelves of every store in the NW Las Vegas area...and I've been to no less than four of them. But when I go to the Dr. Pepper/Snapple website (as they're the ones who do Diet Rite as well) I'm assured that both flavors are still made and should be available anywhere...as are two others that I'd never even heard of, much less seen. In this case, the local distributor seems to have decided to not stock anyone with these flavors, for reasons of his/her own.
Other times, it's simply the decision of someone at the individual stores. Another item I suddenly can't get is my favorite frozen garlic bread: the Claim Jumper Garlic Cheese Bread. Previously, it was available at my local Albertson's and nowhere else; now Albertson's doesn't have it either. But they still have all the other frozen Claim Jumper products.
My dad runs into the same problem. Most of the week's shopping is done at our local Wal-Mart; up until a month ago, he was able to get all the Farmer John pork products he wanted there, at a good price. But Wal-Mart changed to a different warehouse last month, and suddenly, they don't want to carry the FJ line anymore. So now he has to go to a different store for Farmer John stuff, and pay more for it.
And as far as the supermarkets are concerned, that shouldn't be a problem for anyone. After all, they still carry other brand names of these products; can't we just substitute what they have for the kind we were getting before?
My answer is: no, we can't. We want the brand names that we know and trust and like; we don't want stuff we consider sub-standard (for whatever reason) just because you ninnies at the supermarkets have decided you don't want to stock it all of a sudden.
And my question is: why are we, as a people, putting up with this? Why are we letting the supermarkets tell us what products we can choose from and what ones we can't have anymore? When did the balance of power shift from the customer (who used to be "always right") to the retailer?
Where is the public outrage over this? Why aren't we as a people standing up and telling the supermarket chains that we deserve better? Nay, that we DEMAND better? Don't we have the right to buy the products that we choose and want? Isn't that how the marketplace is supposed to work?
Some would say that we vote with our wallets, and we can patronize other stores...but that's only a partial solution. What happens in cases like the Diet Rite issue above, where none of the stores in your area have what you want, and the problem seems to be with the distributor...whose contact information the stores won't provide you with? Answer: at the moment, you just do without the product you like. To me, that's not acceptable...and it shouldn't be acceptable to anyone else.
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