Blog: Caution - The Internet may harm your wealth, Thresher's

Olly Wehring | 5 December 2006

If, like us, you’re based in the UK, you may have been forwarded a voucher from off-licence chain Thresher’s last week.

The voucher offers a pretty impressive 40% off all wine and Champagne at the company’s stores. What has been interesting is the way this voucher has slipped out quietly on to the Internet - without any fanfare - and has spread virally over the last seven days.

In fact, the voucher looks to have become so popular that the popular press this weekend has suggested that the company is worried that its profits might take a hammering.

“We sent it out to our suppliers and we included a bit saying feel free to send it to your friends and family,” a spokesperson for Threshers told The Guardian on Saturday (2 December). “That obviously is a fuzzy number but we didn’t suspect it was going to be very much. But it has been huge,” he said. “We are waiting to see what happens.”

Well, I’m sorry, Threshers, but I’m going to call your bluff. I spoke to the company last week, and they said that the 40% offer isn’t that large a step from the buy-two-get-a-third-bottle free offer they have running in their stores. Not only that, but considering the cut-throat competition on the high-street - highlighted by the sad demise of Threshers’ smaller competitor Unwins at the end of last year - it would seem folly on a great scale if Thresher’s was going to paint itself into a corner in this way.

This must surely be a case of no such thing as bad publicity.

Surely?