Date published: 2009/05/09
The BBC says:
Marks and Spencer has agreed to end its policy of charging more for larger bras after a campaign by customers.
The store took out adverts in Friday's newspapers admitting it had "boobed" and promising to standardise prices.
The "Busts for Justice" campaign was led by Beckie Williams, a 30G. Her Facebook group attracted more than 13,000 supporters.
Marks and Spencer had added an extra £2 to bras larger than a DD cup on the grounds that they cost more to make.
It is bringing all prices in line permanently, and as a goodwill gesture between 9 and 25 May will be offering a 25% discount on all bras.
Miss Williams, 26, from Brighton, was so angry that she bought a £3.40 share in Marks and Spencer to allow her to confront chairman Sir Stuart Rose at the next annual meeting in July.
She labelled the surcharge "unfair" and "ridiculous," while other members of the Facebook group called for a boycott.
Marks and Spencer initially said bigger-busted customers were happy to pay a small premium for the specialist work needed to ensure a suitable level of support.
But on Friday the company backed down.
The BBC laughingly gives the headline to this story as "Victory for customers in bra war". This shows how little the academic middle class people who work for the BBC understand about economics. The only "victory" is for the narrow partisan (indeed, selfish) group that evidently thinks the rest of Marks and Spencer's customers should subsidise the purchases of this group. And it indeed will (eventually) be the other customers who pay for this. That Williams called the "surcharge" "ridiculous" is itself ridiculous. Of course Marks and Spencer backed down not because Williams was correct but because it was not worth the grief (from the academic middle class people who run the media) to stick with their original (sensible) policy.
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