I’ve decided to delete the post I made a few days ago on differences in pricing I found for the Felton Road Block 3 Pinot Noir.
But I also wanted to make it clear that I’ve done this, and also explain why I have done it.
The ‘old media’ way would have been to quietly delete it and hope not too many noticed. But I think that ‘new media’ should have higher standards of openness, and the ability to enter into conversation with readers and respond to valid concerns.
I think that the wine I chose was a poor example – it is in short supply, and highly sought after. The merchant with the highest price had secured stock from another merchant, and then applied a normal margin.
To have left the post up would have caused unfair publicity for that merchant. This site is highly ranked by google and gets a lot of traffic, and with this position comes responsibility. The story got a lot of attention, and plenty of comments. But doing the right thing is more important that getting a good story, and I think if I was that merchant, I’d have felt hard done by.
So that’s why I deleted the post. I apologise to the readers who spent time posting some worthwhile comments, which have now disappeared.
10 Comments on Why I deleted a post…
Bravo !
In this day and age, if people want to hunt down the cheapest price they can log on. I believe (and it is just a belief) in the case, the higher priced wine merchant wasn’t fleecing his customers, he was just not able to source it at that cheaper price. I hardly think this disadvantage makes them a “bad” merchant, just unfortuante.
Fair play, Jamie.
Cheers, Jamie. I used to work for a high profile Los Angeles wine merchant, and there were certain items that absolutely always had to be in stock, no matter the cost. For example, prior to the economic bust, our (relatively large) allocation each year of Cristal was not remotely enough to cover the demand from our mostly entertainment industry clientele. Having to find alternative sources, our price on “Cris” was considerably more than nearly any other retailer. While this shop is by no means a discounter, using the price of a highly allocated item as representative of its overall “gauging” price structure was simply unfair. In addition, we all know the importance of provenance and should all be suspect of inordinately LOW prices, as well as high prices.
Mmmm, are you sure that it wasn’t just that you-know-who was about to set his dog on you! 😉
What you disparage as the “old media” would not have deleted the post. Newspapers don’t go round public libraries ripping pages out of archive copies because some columnist has changed his mind, or thinks he used an inappropriate example. Airbrushing history is the exact opposite of the kind of openness that I thought the web was supposed to about.
That said, I applaud you for being open about your decision.
Tough balance, eh?
Agree with Philip. A better way would have been to have left the post and the comments up, with an explanation as to why you now feel it was misguided.
Not sure I agree with Philip & Richard – if someone Googled “The Sampler”, they might get a link to the story, only partly read it and get a bad vibe.
OK, a few ifs and mights there, but if I were Mr Sampler, I’d rather it wasn’t there.
The thing is, there is a good story here, just that (as he says) Jamie was unfortunate in his selection.
BTW – I should mention that Google have cached the original (without the facility to link through to the comments), so there may be a case of horses and stable doors. Now even less convinced of the right way to handle this!
Agree with Monsieur Lake. The problem with the internets is that it doesn’t forget. That youthful indiscretion up on Facebook can come back to bite in that job interview 5 years later.
I posted something similiar (albeit on Twitter) a few months ago. There was an unbeatable deal going from a certain “Lafite of the Languedoc”. It was actually selling retail for cheaper than it cost to import. Not much of it, mind, but it was liquidated stock being dumped on the market. Great short term gain for the customer, but potentially very long term damage to the wine merchant on a very modest margin.
Great to see your honesty, Jamie. The independent wine merchants out there are operating in an extremely tough climate.
As far as i can tell the Sampler are very keenly priced on a handful of lines but have pretty fat margins on the majority of lines. Very honest of you to admit you’ve removed the article but, in hindsight, possibly a bit of a shame because I think you’d foreseen the problem that Mr. H is having with his suppliers :
http://www.harpers.co.uk/news/news-headlines/10873-jamie-hutchinson-calls-for-suppliers-charter.html