Last week Paddy McGuinness posted on Twitter. And as you can see from the screenshot below. It says
Found out a shop nearby has put the price of hand sanitizer up from 99p to £4.99! How do these people sleep at night? That’s the price of milk, bread and eggs for families that are already financially stretched. Sad to hear but even sadder that I’m not surprised. #coronavirus
This, of course, is due to the coronavirus epidemic that’s happening at the moment. And it reminded me of when there was a petrol crisis many years ago,
My local garage doubled the price of fuel overnight, as it was in such short supply.
Yes, he thought he was being clever. He knew that it was all a case of supply and demand. And as he had the only petrol left in the town, everyone was going to go to him and would have no choice but to pay the price he demanded.
All well and good, or so he thought. He made some extra money. Quite a lot actually. But what happened when the petrol shortage came to an end? His regular customers boycotted him and told everybody else to boycott him also.
Three months later and he was bankrupt. The garage closed.
Before you think about taking advantage of your loyal customers, think of the long term impact, rather than immediate gains for yourself. Why not try building even more loyalty by doing something special to help those customers in their time of dire need.
Come on, folks. Don’t be greedy. Look after others, and they’ll look after you.
