Friday, April 22, 2011
Bouquets and brickbats. Today I decided to write some consumer letters. I haven't done this in years.
To Ambra Corporation
Hi there,
Last year I bought a three-pack of your Velvet Matte 80 opaque tights – two pairs in black and one pair in a delightful violet colour somewhere between purple and blue.
These are still the best tights I own. They feel wonderful to wear because they're so soft and stretchy, and the waistband doesn't bisect me cruelly as some other brands do.
They've also maintained their look and feel through many washes. I just love them!
In particular, the violet pair are my favourite tights, but they seem to have been discontinued as I just can't find them in the shops any more.
Please consider offering these tights in a range of colours other than black. There is such a huge untapped market in Australia for plain, excellent-quality opaque tights in a rainbow of colours, and if Ambra's Velvet Matte 80 were available in other colours, I would never buy any other brand, and would encourage all my friends to do the same.
Kind regards,
Mel Campbell.
To Grosby Shoes Australia
Dear Sir/Madam,
In January 2011 I purchased a pair of black leather Grosby women's flats with rubber soles (style 6629922). It's now April, and after JUST THREE MONTHS of average wear, the left shoe has already developed a hole in the sole over the ball of the foot. As you can see from the attached photographs, the leather upper is still in near-new condition, but there is a distinct crease in the inner and the sole is worn so thin it has torn.
This is totally disappointing and unacceptable! You should be ashamed to put an 80-year-old Australian brand name, which Australians trust for quality and comfort, to such a substandard product.
I don't wear these shoes every single day, and nor do I work in an occupation that demands I be on my feet all day, as a teacher, a nurse or a shop assistant might be. In fact, I work from home! The only wear these shoes get is when I walk to and from public transport, or to and from local shops and cafés. It's simply unacceptable that I could have worn a hole in them in just three months!
This is all the more infuriating for me because I'd bought these shoes as part of my New Year's resolution for 2011: "Fewer and better shoes". I was sick of wasting money on adhesives and insoles to try to make poor-quality shoes more comfortable and durable, and of having to buy replacement shoes every few months. So imagine how pleased I was to find that Grosby was making just what I wanted at such a reasonable price.
Now imagine how angry I am that I'll still be faced with spending extra money to have these relatively new shoes fixed. Making shoes that last shouldn't be my job! It's your job!
I'm writing to let you know about my intense disappointment so that perhaps in future you might use sturdier materials or design your shoes better in order to withstand even average amounts of wear.
Kind regards,
Mel Campbell.
To Ambra Corporation
Hi there,
Last year I bought a three-pack of your Velvet Matte 80 opaque tights – two pairs in black and one pair in a delightful violet colour somewhere between purple and blue.
These are still the best tights I own. They feel wonderful to wear because they're so soft and stretchy, and the waistband doesn't bisect me cruelly as some other brands do.
They've also maintained their look and feel through many washes. I just love them!
In particular, the violet pair are my favourite tights, but they seem to have been discontinued as I just can't find them in the shops any more.
Please consider offering these tights in a range of colours other than black. There is such a huge untapped market in Australia for plain, excellent-quality opaque tights in a rainbow of colours, and if Ambra's Velvet Matte 80 were available in other colours, I would never buy any other brand, and would encourage all my friends to do the same.
Kind regards,
Mel Campbell.
To Grosby Shoes Australia
Dear Sir/Madam,
In January 2011 I purchased a pair of black leather Grosby women's flats with rubber soles (style 6629922). It's now April, and after JUST THREE MONTHS of average wear, the left shoe has already developed a hole in the sole over the ball of the foot. As you can see from the attached photographs, the leather upper is still in near-new condition, but there is a distinct crease in the inner and the sole is worn so thin it has torn.
This is totally disappointing and unacceptable! You should be ashamed to put an 80-year-old Australian brand name, which Australians trust for quality and comfort, to such a substandard product.
I don't wear these shoes every single day, and nor do I work in an occupation that demands I be on my feet all day, as a teacher, a nurse or a shop assistant might be. In fact, I work from home! The only wear these shoes get is when I walk to and from public transport, or to and from local shops and cafés. It's simply unacceptable that I could have worn a hole in them in just three months!
This is all the more infuriating for me because I'd bought these shoes as part of my New Year's resolution for 2011: "Fewer and better shoes". I was sick of wasting money on adhesives and insoles to try to make poor-quality shoes more comfortable and durable, and of having to buy replacement shoes every few months. So imagine how pleased I was to find that Grosby was making just what I wanted at such a reasonable price.
Now imagine how angry I am that I'll still be faced with spending extra money to have these relatively new shoes fixed. Making shoes that last shouldn't be my job! It's your job!
I'm writing to let you know about my intense disappointment so that perhaps in future you might use sturdier materials or design your shoes better in order to withstand even average amounts of wear.
Kind regards,
Mel Campbell.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Resting on their quality laurels. The Melbourne media scene is pretty small, and for reasons of continued patronage I should be careful about how pointed my criticism is. However, recently I've been pondering the ways that we determine 'quality' in a newspaper, and how oddly contradictory the perceptions of quality in the Melbourne news media continue to be.
These aren't new preoccupations for me. As far back as 2005 I discussed the absurdity of knee-jerk anti-News Ltd sentiment, which I still observe among my politically progressive peers. The News of the World phone hacking scandal has certainly confirmed a certain evilness in Rupert Murdoch's media empire, but it's still endlessly frustrating to see people imagine the Herald Sun to be staffed solely by cynical Liberal-voting panderers to the lowest common denominator.
In particular, the recent transferral of Melbourne International Comedy Festival media sponsorship from The Age to the Herald Sun has led to a certain amount of snobbery about the discernment of Herald Sun reviewers. A Twitter account has sprung up to ridicule the lamest moments from the Hez's MICF coverage, and I've also heard mutterings to this effect in the bars and on social networks among comedians and journos.
Having worked at HWT Towers in 2007-8, I know that Herald Sun journalists are just as committed as Age journalists to principles of journalistic 'quality'. Or conversely, the two mastheads are equally likely to shamelessly chase cheap pageviews, to publish tendentious, demagogic op-eds, to commission vapid, lazily researched trend pieces and to be full of subeditorial errors.
I believe in pointing crap journalism out wherever I find it. That said, there is definitely an argument to be made that The Age has slipped in quality over the last few years. Fairfax decision-makers are resting on their laurels – those being their history and their tradition of conferring cultural capital – while they're being caught short by all sorts of industry developments.
While Fairfax op-eds continue to be talking points, they're really losing ground to the more active commentary sites by News and the ABC. And Antony Catalano's masterstroke of real-estate advertising thievery, The Weekly Review, boasts some pretty decent writers whose coverage of culture and entertainment rivals that of The Age.
As I've previously argued, quarantining discussions of journalistic 'quality' to public-trust news, and concomitantly redefining 'lifestyle' as inconsequential pap, has had a deleterious effect on the journalistic standards in these sections of the paper. The kinds of fawning celebrity profiles that used to be confined to my favourite intellectual journal Sunday Life are now creeping into Good Weekend and A2 – sorry, Life & Style. Meanwhile, M likes to trumpet supposedly zeitgeisty trends that everyone has already known about for years.
But what really galvanised this blog post was a very thoughtful feature about Brendan Fevola in the Herald Sun. Oh no! you might think. A footy story in the Hez – how insightful could that possibly be? Very, if it's written by Andrew Rule. In February this year, Rule defected from The Age to the Herald Sun, and what's interesting about his professional history, and that of his longtime collaborator John Silvester, is that they've worked for both papers, and never defined their commitment to journalism by the masthead they write under.
These aren't new preoccupations for me. As far back as 2005 I discussed the absurdity of knee-jerk anti-News Ltd sentiment, which I still observe among my politically progressive peers. The News of the World phone hacking scandal has certainly confirmed a certain evilness in Rupert Murdoch's media empire, but it's still endlessly frustrating to see people imagine the Herald Sun to be staffed solely by cynical Liberal-voting panderers to the lowest common denominator.
In particular, the recent transferral of Melbourne International Comedy Festival media sponsorship from The Age to the Herald Sun has led to a certain amount of snobbery about the discernment of Herald Sun reviewers. A Twitter account has sprung up to ridicule the lamest moments from the Hez's MICF coverage, and I've also heard mutterings to this effect in the bars and on social networks among comedians and journos.
Having worked at HWT Towers in 2007-8, I know that Herald Sun journalists are just as committed as Age journalists to principles of journalistic 'quality'. Or conversely, the two mastheads are equally likely to shamelessly chase cheap pageviews, to publish tendentious, demagogic op-eds, to commission vapid, lazily researched trend pieces and to be full of subeditorial errors.
I believe in pointing crap journalism out wherever I find it. That said, there is definitely an argument to be made that The Age has slipped in quality over the last few years. Fairfax decision-makers are resting on their laurels – those being their history and their tradition of conferring cultural capital – while they're being caught short by all sorts of industry developments.
While Fairfax op-eds continue to be talking points, they're really losing ground to the more active commentary sites by News and the ABC. And Antony Catalano's masterstroke of real-estate advertising thievery, The Weekly Review, boasts some pretty decent writers whose coverage of culture and entertainment rivals that of The Age.
As I've previously argued, quarantining discussions of journalistic 'quality' to public-trust news, and concomitantly redefining 'lifestyle' as inconsequential pap, has had a deleterious effect on the journalistic standards in these sections of the paper. The kinds of fawning celebrity profiles that used to be confined to my favourite intellectual journal Sunday Life are now creeping into Good Weekend and A2 – sorry, Life & Style. Meanwhile, M likes to trumpet supposedly zeitgeisty trends that everyone has already known about for years.
But what really galvanised this blog post was a very thoughtful feature about Brendan Fevola in the Herald Sun. Oh no! you might think. A footy story in the Hez – how insightful could that possibly be? Very, if it's written by Andrew Rule. In February this year, Rule defected from The Age to the Herald Sun, and what's interesting about his professional history, and that of his longtime collaborator John Silvester, is that they've worked for both papers, and never defined their commitment to journalism by the masthead they write under.
