Tuesday, 10 January 2012

Little things

Sometimes I wonder if all the random missives I send off to companies (to which I don't usually receive a response!) make any difference -- here's one case where it did:

My original email sent to Arriva Trains Wales after perusing the At Seat Catering menu on their web site:

> Have you considered offering Fairtrade coffee and tea on your trains?

I then received the following response:
> Please note that all our hot drinks on Our trains are Fairtrade and have been for over 3 years.

Okay, so I then replied:
> Very glad to hear that!  How about putting that information on your web site and menus and promoting it a bit so people know?

Got the following wordiness in reply:
> As a catering company operating on board trains our opportunities are limited however all our cups that contain Fairtrade products carry the FT logo - as I'm sure you are aware this is not an easy thing to achieve. Also as we are a Welsh company operating mainly in Wales we signed up to being part of the Welsh FT movement that culminated in Wales being declared the first FT country some 3 years ago. That said if you would like to offer some further advice please forward it.

So I suggested the following no-brainer:
> Following on from the below conversation I had with somebody from the company your catering is contracted out to, how about putting the Fairtrade logo on the page on your website where the catering menu is displayed next to the relevant items?

And magic presto, it got done:
> Thank you for your recent email about putting the logo on our web site.  Please see below.  Please feel free to forward any further comments or idea’s.  I have uploaded the Fairtrade logo to the At Seat Catering page http://www.arrivatrainswales.co.uk/AtSeatCatering/ for you with some supporting text. 

One only just wonders why they didn't think of it themselves...!

1 comment:

Noah said...

Excellent work!