Responding to yesterday’s story about Albertsons deciding to shift to a largely part-time workforce in the Dallas-Fort Worth market in an effort to reduce expenses, one MNB user wrote:
How can any retailer expect loyalty from their employees if all of a sudden they cut their livelihood out from under them. Albertsons sure gave everyone a great holiday gift. The worker gets his health benefits eliminated, no vacations or holidays, his pensions dramatically reduced, but I guarantee you the upper management isn't feeling any pain. If Albertsons leaves, which I hope they do, HEB is waiting in the wings to come in and shake things up a
lot more than is now.
To be fair, if Albertsons is losing sales and market share in Dallas, the company certainly has to do something…and reducing costs is certainly a legitimate approach. What concerns us is that a reduction in costs simply reduces service to levels at which there is no reason to choose Albertsons over another store…which seems to us to be sort of the wrong approach.
We also keep getting email about the reimportation issue. One MNB user wrote:
We have some friends that are buying drugs from India, prescription drugs, WITHOUT a prescription! This is for the Lipitor, etc. not for prescriptions written for an immediate illness. They say in some cases the shipping costs are actually more than the drugs themselves, 10 -15 dollars. I not sure of the process, but they tell us, a lot of drug companies manufacture drugs in
India.
We have not used, but they and their friends swear by it!
Another MNB user pointed out:
Generic Atenolol 50 mg, 90 pills in Walgreens - $27.00
Generic Atenolol 50 mg, 100 pills in Santiago, Chile - $4.35
I do not think that the difference is all frivolous lawsuits.
Then again, maybe it doesn’t matter because, according to the Pew Report, almost nobody is ordering drugs from abroad.
How can any retailer expect loyalty from their employees if all of a sudden they cut their livelihood out from under them. Albertsons sure gave everyone a great holiday gift. The worker gets his health benefits eliminated, no vacations or holidays, his pensions dramatically reduced, but I guarantee you the upper management isn't feeling any pain. If Albertsons leaves, which I hope they do, HEB is waiting in the wings to come in and shake things up a
lot more than is now.
To be fair, if Albertsons is losing sales and market share in Dallas, the company certainly has to do something…and reducing costs is certainly a legitimate approach. What concerns us is that a reduction in costs simply reduces service to levels at which there is no reason to choose Albertsons over another store…which seems to us to be sort of the wrong approach.
We also keep getting email about the reimportation issue. One MNB user wrote:
We have some friends that are buying drugs from India, prescription drugs, WITHOUT a prescription! This is for the Lipitor, etc. not for prescriptions written for an immediate illness. They say in some cases the shipping costs are actually more than the drugs themselves, 10 -15 dollars. I not sure of the process, but they tell us, a lot of drug companies manufacture drugs in
India.
We have not used, but they and their friends swear by it!
Another MNB user pointed out:
Generic Atenolol 50 mg, 90 pills in Walgreens - $27.00
Generic Atenolol 50 mg, 100 pills in Santiago, Chile - $4.35
I do not think that the difference is all frivolous lawsuits.
Then again, maybe it doesn’t matter because, according to the Pew Report, almost nobody is ordering drugs from abroad.
- KC's View:
