For Sale At Friendship Supermarket

[Jingthing]

Sometimes I see things in the local foreigner oriented markets that truly mystify me.

At Friendship, they have a couple of types ricotta cheeses for sale.

One brand is on a reduced price, no refunds special. That one is identifiable and I think it has the sell by date (they are pretty much telling you something is wrong with the cheese).

Now they are selling a new brand of ricotta cheese. Its in a small container.

On this container:

No weight or volume information

No country of origin information

No produced date, no sell by date

No producer contact information

Picking it up, it feels like even the small container isn't filled amply

This is one is refundable if it is rotten, but do you really need the stress of bothering with that? If so, would you open it before you left the area, or wait to get home, then you have to immediately lug it back to complain. Your idea of rotten might be different than theirs, isn't cheese supposed to SMELL?

Only the brand and that it is ricotta cheese and the price (about 200 Baht).

If you wanted ricotta cheese, would you buy such a mysterious product?

How do they even know when it is past the sell by date if there is no sell by date?

Can't they do better?

Edited June 18, 2009 by Jingthing

[MeetJohnDoe]

<deleted>...Jing you have lost me with this post

Must have been a slow baht-bus riding day

[Jingthing]

<deleted>...Jing you have lost me with this post

Must have been a slow baht-bus riding day

If anything is unclear, I am glad to clarify.

[tomjoad56]

Sometimes I see things in the local foreigner oriented markets that truly mystify me.

At Friendship, they have a couple of types ricotta cheeses for sale.

One brand is on a reduced price, no refunds special. That one is identifiable and I think it has the sell by date (they are pretty much telling you something is wrong with the cheese).

Now they are selling a new brand of ricotta cheese. Its in a small container.

On this container:

No weight or volume information

No country of origin information

No produced date, no sell by date

No producer contact information

Picking it up, it feels like even the small container isn't filled amply

This is one is refundable if it is rotten, but do you really need the stress of bothering with that? If so, would you open it before you left the area, or wait to get home, then you have to immediately lug it back to complain. Your idea of rotten might be different than theirs, isn't cheese supposed to SMELL?

Only the brand and that it is ricotta cheese and the price (about 200 Baht).

If you wanted ricotta cheese, would you buy such a mysterious product?

How do they even know when it is past the sell by date if there is no sell by date?

Can't they do better?

[tomjoad56]

Sorry about the blank previous response.

One thing I've noticed about this place is that there don't seem to be any consumer rights. I've seen so much nonsense in the marketplace that simply wouldn't fly where I'm from, the US. Text on labels is often so small that I can't read it. I'm not blind, yet. On labels that I can read, I've looked at ingredients listed, and the %'s don't add up to 100. Must be some kind of math I'm not aware of. I've purchased ready to eat fruit on several occasions from Carrefour, and it was obvious to me that they packaged it to include some pieces that were flavorful, and some that were tasteless. Pretty clever, huh? "Give 'em some edible fruit and throw in some garbage and they probably won't complain." I rarely buy fruit at Carrefour anymore. Another time, I bought some sliced red pork from the same crooks. At the time of purchase, I noticed that it was packaged in a way that you couldn't really see the meat, but didn't think much about it. I ended up throwing at least 90% of it away because it was not meat.

It's really sad, because there's so much warmth from Thai people, and so much sleaze from organizations and large companies.

To answer your question, yeah, they can do better, but like everything that's ugly and corrupt here, they won't, until nuke the system they're under and replace it with something that approaches fair and decent.

[NanLaew]

^ ...and then it won't be Thailand, it will be like where you come from and it will be a boring litigious society with only the only daily shopping choices being between Wal-Mart or Target.

I am sure that Carrefours problem is lack of supervision and quality control of it's vendors since they just buy in the stuff, bung a price tag on it and sell it to dumb farangs in a brightly-lit, air-conditioned environment that they are used to. IMHO, the French are the worst supermarket operators in the world with Carrefour's Brazilian operations being a total disaster and the Auchan hypermarket that used to be in Houston just a license for local employees to steal the stock.

Get your arse down the local market for your FRESH meat, fruit and veggies.

[tomjoad56]

^ ...and then it won't be Thailand, it will be like where you come from and it will be a boring litigious society with only the only daily shopping choices being between Wal-Mart or Target.

I am sure that Carrefours problem is lack of supervision and quality control of it's vendors since they just buy in the stuff, bung a price tag on it and sell it to dumb farangs in a brightly-lit, air-conditioned environment that they are used to. IMHO, the French are the worst supermarket operators in the world with Carrefour's Brazilian operations being a total disaster and the Auchan hypermarket that used to be in Houston just a license for local employees to steal the stock.

Get your arse down the local market for your FRESH meat, fruit and veggies.

I buy lots of fruit from the street vendors. Nice of you to make assumptions about me. Most of my experiences have been good.

You can't stop "progress", and yeah, I recognize that the word is somewhat loaded. I don't know how long it will take, but Thais will gradually demand more consumer rights. I don't know when MCD, KFC, and other big western chains established themselves here, but I'm pretty sure that people thought that would never happen, until it did. The world moves in the direction of the dominant culture (s), warts and all.

[Jingthing]

Update on the mystery ricotta cheese!

They just slashed the price to under 100 baht, but with a big sticker saying NO REFUNDS.

OK, that is outrageous. No refund if it is rotten? Clearly they weren't selling the mystery cheese at 200 baht, but rotten cheese isn't worth even one baht.

BTW, local Thai produce and meat markets do not sell cheese, so don't know how that got in here ...

Edited June 19, 2009 by Jingthing

[johng]

They just slashed the price to under 100 baht

Now wait and see what happens when they can't sell it at 100bt...maybe they'll do what Big C did recently with a

32 inch LCD TV offer... loads went for 9,900 baht...the last one left and they put the price up to 17,000 baht

Or

They had some 10 cubic foot fridges in Carrefour for 10,000 baht last week they are show items so have some scratches

didn't sell ( for a whole week gasp )...so this week price is up to 13,700 baht, that will sell em like hot cakes.

Its funny ( in a sad sort of way ) to walk around these stores and see the "discounted" stuff

most of it is ancient, no wonder it sits on the shelf for years on end they cut the price by such miniscule amounts

and say no refund <deleted> !!!

Ohh almost forgot.....I wouldn't buy ricotta cheese full stop

Edited June 20, 2009 by johng