It’s a small, small world – it turns out Sainsbury’s Director of Communications lives in my constituency – and has some views about the Jerry Springer DVD controversy!

The background first. The various campaigns against Sainsbury’s and Woolworths over their decision to pull the Jerry Springer: The Opera DVD from sale are gathering quite a head of steam – and both supermarkets seem to be feeling the heat.

Sainsbury’s first apparently told The Independent it has only received ten complaints before deciding to withdraw the DVD.

In subsequent media coverage this was upped to 10-20 complaints though outside the BBC and The Independent all the coverage seems to have been on blogs – most of the mainstream media have missed the story so far. That may be about to change as the actors’ union Equity have taken up the case too.

My favourite complaint to Sainsbury’s is The Customer is Always Right’s: – Jim Davidson and Rabelais in the same email – not often you see that!

So – what do Sainsbury’s now say? Well, their Director of Communications (Pip Wood) says they received “hundreds” of complaints, the DVD was selling badly and would have been withdrawn from sale anyway. The complaints just speeded it up.

This leaves some interesting question – where did the 10 and then 10-20 figures come from, and why were they left out there for so long? And why was the initial coverage all about how Sainsbury’s had been responding to customer complaints? Of course the media don’t always get stories completely right – but then why was none of this either given in the various replies from their customer services that people received either? Could it be that they realised they’ve blundered and are looking for a way out … ?

As for Woolworths, they’re now saying – “The product is not currently available in stores, however should a customer wish to purchase it, it is available from our website.” Looks like they’re trying to back out of their earlier decision a bit … especially as they’re now telling the press that they didn’t pull it after all because of complaints – see the PA story

So – in summary, keep the letters and emails going I think! More on this in my earlier Jerry Springer: The Opera DVD blog post.