Ministry Affirms No Shortages Of Consumer Goods: Thailand

[nikkoid66]

Yeah, let's see him try to buy some Coke Zero or Pepsi Max.

I heard that Pepsi have a factory in Surat Thani so why is it so difficult to get some cans or bottles with Pepsi Max then?

Since the beginning, Family Mart and Seven Eleven are trying to make profit of the flood in a very indecent way.

1- they tried to charge people 39 bath a 25 ml bottle at the beginning, more expensive than beer! I took pictures before they removed it.

2- now they try to sell their Big Coke s.hit and carefully removed all the died products the same day in all the shops.

When you sell a bottle of water 40 bath, you do not want people to be able to pay 27 bath the diet coke right?

Now you have no choice if you want no sugar: either you buy a 40 bath filtered water bottle (cost was 12 bath before), or you go buy at TOPS!!!

Because at TOPS, the same bottle of water costs 11 bath, the diet coke and Pepsi max is there and there is no shortage.

The people at 7/11 are f.cking ass.hole who try to make cash on the people in these difficult situation. They have a monopolistic position in many place and use it.:bah:

[techboy]

I wonder if the Thai people that I know in Nong Khaem, southwest part of Bangkok, who have had to live in a school sleeping on the floor for the last month with almost no access to food or water and deep flooding even now, I wonder if they would agree with that?

Meanwhile in Chiang Mai, the 7-11s seem to be turning into detergent stores with filled shelfs of nothing but detergent..keeps the illusion that there is no lack of goods in the stores.........

There ya go!!! The people that own the 7-11 franchises are allocating personal funds from their business budgets to overstock detergent because they are in a conspiracy with public officials to make recovery efforts appear to be more expeditious.

[ignis]

Yeah, let's see him try to buy some Coke Zero or Pepsi Max.

Pepsi Max (and other Pepsi products) has been sold out in Bangkok for more than a month now. Why don´t Pepsi Thailand provide supply from other factories in the country, or even from neioghbouring countries? Typically Thailand . If anything goes wrong, people just have to accept it, because nobody is willing to change their procedures!

Not just BKK... when ordered to leave the Village, I drove down south, all the way down to the Malaysian Boarder and back the other side again 21 days, visited many Makro, Tesco Lotus, 7/11, and Big C _ C Extra on the way in different Cities and Towns... NO Pepsi products, No Coke Zero. No Beer, little water, very hard to find ICE, very hard to find drinks from machines at any 7/11, No ice cream products.. Just under 3,000 km and at least 70 stores !!!!

Yesterday went to The Mall + the big Big C in Nonthaburi, NO beer, Pepsi, Coke, Big C did not even have Fanta or the red drink

[noahvail]

Yesterday my wife went shopping in the little town we're in, up here in Issan. No bread, no milk, no eggs, no water, no coke. Last weekend we were in Tesco in Udon Thani, no water - they were stocking the water shelves with salty snacks (ironic, eh), no bread, only regular Coke, and over-priced eggs. They were also out of peanut butter, Smucker's jams, most of the falang stuff.

Glad to know the Minister is right on top of things

[Greenside]

Yeah, let's see him try to buy some Coke Zero or Pepsi Max.

I heard that Pepsi have a factory in Surat Thani so why is it so difficult to get some cans or bottles with Pepsi Max then?

For some reason the supply chain that Pepsi's licensee has set up is notoriously unreliable. Even in normal times, big retailers are without stocks for weeks at a time while Coke's is much better.

[barryofthailand]

Pepsi also has a factory and distribution center in Korat, but still no Pepsi Max or Pepsi. I think the main problem with many products is not the highway closures, but flooded factories that make what it takes to manufacture.

Barry

[slapout]

The ministers and others within the elite circles see no shortages nor price increases as they wait for what they want to be delivered by the hired help. Those who are flooded out, have no transport, out of work, etc, are the ones who experience shortages of necessities from all sides.

Many of us can live without the luxury (I want)items we do not see on the shelves or we can pay for a more expensive substitute. Those who have no choice but to make do with what is avaliable, within their means, are the ones I have sympathy for, and they are the ones who we hear little about.

[anterian]

My Thai partner obviously knows the ropes, I have suffered no shortages, even when it was 70 cm deep in my village. She even managed to keep me supplied in my miniature cigars. Mind you I am no fan of coke and my consumption of alcohol is about 3 beers a week and whisky on rare occasions. For a week bread, milk and vegetables were on the critical list and for a couple of days I was reduced to noodles and sardines, but I've lived on much worse on survival courses in the army

[crocken]

Yeah, let's see him try to buy some Coke Zero or Pepsi Max.

I scored three cases of coke zero and 36 of the big bottles the other day. I see it in cans in many places. (Not tourist heavy places)

Absolutely no Pepsi max any where. I hope Pepsi takes note of how fast it ran out and increases the supply. Many times stores have been out of it. This is the first time all of them have been out of it.

so thats why we have a shortage of goods because you hoard..........think only about your self ...now now now....grab.....you took the lot ????

[GOLDBUGGY]

Lets just hope the stores don't run out of toilet paper also! While a bum gun is nice to finish off the cleaning job, toilet paper is still a must (IMHO) for the basic cleaning job!

/quote]

I Hear Ya Bro!

I hear you loud and clear!

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

As usual, between bad journalism in the paper and out of touch government officials, the resulting report is skewed out of whack..

I think what the guy probably was trying to say was that supplies of things on the government's short essentials list -- which doesn't include all the varieties of soft drinks and beers discussed here -- are getting better... And indeed around central BKK, that's been my experience of late.

Note I said BETTER... not good... not well stocked... but at least some steps up from totally empty shelves.

The 7 Eleven shops on my soi have had bottled water in stock the past week or so... and even had Leo and some other beer in stock. And today I went to the Central Supermarket at the new Terminal 21 complex at Asoke and Sukhumvit, and they had both large and small cans of Heineken...the first time I'd seen any of those in quite a while.

Unfortunately, the silly headline on the posted article is "Ministry Affirms No Shortages of Consumer Goods," which as a statement is patently false right now.. There are shortages of all kinds of different consumer goods, as evidenced by the various reports here.

But at least around my parts, I'm once again seeing essentials like bottled water, rice, noodles, eggs, toilet paper, tissues and paper towels, and stuff like that -- some of which had almost disappeared at various points in recent weeks.

Now the empty shelves seem to be more scattered and sporadic... Yesterday, I went to a Villa market and wanted to buy some sour cream, which they normally carry in abundance. But they had not a single container on the shelf. Went back today, and saw that they'd received a whole case in and had at least a full stock of one particular brand, although still totally out of the others.

Things are getting better slowly... but hardly anywhere close to normal as yet.

PS - No one ever died for lack of Coke, Coke Zero, Pepsi or Diet Pepsi, despite what some of you surely will claim to the contrary.

Edited November 26, 2011 by TallGuyJohninBKK

[exeter]

At the checkout today I noted that the rubber goods was full, now just need the male tourists

Didn't the early relief packages have condoms?

No only crates of 285 blend special water arrived in the emergency packs, many went missing .

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

It was a tale of two (different) markets in the past couple days...

Made one trip to Big C Onnut, and they were short or missing stock on a lot of different things, particularly a variety of beverages... cartons of fruit juice and bottled teas particularly short... Same with beers, had some Leo and San Miguel Light and Asahi, but missing most including Heineken and Singha...

Had decent stocks of bottled water, but only the imported and more expensive variety I saw from Malaysia... 17 baht for a 1.5 litre bottle.

On the other hand, visited the Gourmet Market at Siam Paragon yesterday, and their overall stocks looked much improved from past days... And staff from the store were busy working in the aisles unboxing and shelving lots of items.

The one thing I did notice missing was soft drinks, all varieties... Perhaps it's because the government supposedly has the soft drink bottlers busy bottling water. But there wasn't a 1.5 litre bottle of soda pop to be found on the shelves, no Coke, Pepsi, Sprite, etc. that I could find. But they did have water.