Duty Free Drama at Wellington Airport

[haydensydney]

Today I received this email - seems like the claws are out. It appears that JR/Duty Free are being unreasonable with their fee increase. I'm still trying to get my head around what exactly a "passout charge" actually is

Dear Hayden

It is with regret that I announce we will soon be ending our duty free service for passengers arriving or departing at Wellington Airport.

JR/Duty Free, who operates the duty free concession at Wellington Airport and the passout facility we use to distribute goods at the airport, has increased its charges to us by 240%. This means the cost to us of handing out the average bag of duty free at Wellington Airport will increase from $13 to $44. Unfortunately this increase means that our service is not sustainable.

This has been a hard decision for us to make as we have had a 25 year association with Wellington Airport, firstly as an on-airport duty free provider from 1986 to 2009, and latterly by offering our pioneering online duty free service.

We are disappointed that Australian-based JR/Duty Free has decided to take this action.

Over the time we have been in the duty free industry, passout charges for duty free and tax free items at all New Zealand airports have been around $13 for an average bag of duty free goods. In Auckland and Christchurch airports, where the airport companies run the passout facility (instead of the duty free operator), those charges remain at around $13. JR/Duty Free believes they can justify a charge of $44 simply for placing our goods on a shelf for our customers to collect. We do not believe this is an acceptable charge. In fact in many cases this charge would exceed the duty being saved by the customer.

We are investigating all our options in an effort to find a way to continue servicing Wellington Airport and our Wellington customers. This includes making a complaint to the Commerce Commission. We have also asked Wellington Airport to provide us with a separate passout facility at the airport. Wellington Airport has been a strong and vocal proponent of competition in the aviation sector and our hope is that they will apply this same logic to the duty free sector and come forward with a workable solution.

As from today we will stop accepting orders for Wellington Airport for any travel date after the 28th of February. All orders that we have already processed will be available for pick up at Wellington Airport. Orders for Auckland and Christchurch Airports remain unaffected.

If you have any questions regarding your orders, please contact our customer service team at [email protected]

What can you do to help?

If you feel strongly about competition in the duty free industry then you may wish to make your feelings known by writing to the following people:

Wellington Airport CEO - Steven Fitzgerald
[email protected]
Wellington Mayor - Celia Wade-Brown (Wellington City Council is a one third owner of Wellington Airport)
[email protected]
Commerce Minister – Simon Power
[email protected]
Yours sincerely

Grant Archibald
CEO
Duty Free Stores New Zealand

 

[moa999]

A charge for operating the booth and 'passing-out' the prepaid and prepacked duty free.

 

[Mal]

Today I received this email - seems like the claws are out. It appears that JR/Duty Free are being unreasonable with their fee increase. I'm still trying to get my head around what exactly a "passout charge" actually is

Perhaps the increase is reasonable, perhaps it isn't... I don't really know. Many factors come into play including lease costs, staff costs, and of course "giving a free kick" to a competitor.

Presumably they looked for other options - but perhaps was unable to find one, or wasn't able to find one at a competitive cost.

But it's sad that I will no longer be able to pick up DF from them at WLG... will be missed for the times I'm over there.

 

[Andyzx]

Would have thought the commerce commission would have intervened against JR for use of monopolistic powers in a restricted selling market. It is generally pretty easy to get an interim ruling (well has been) to stop the charge from increasing:?: I suspect that there is more behind it and probably from Wellington airport itself as they need to pay for the renovations:arrow:

 

[serfty]

I only last month picked up a Duty Free pre-Order from WLG; it was surprising to do so from the JR collection counter within the D/F "store" (which by the way, is a compulsary 60 metre meander after emigration. The actual costs to JR would be minimal as the facility already exists for JR customers.

No, JR want to screw passenger and maximise their revenue and can only do so without competition.

I too received the EMAIL, I have picked up over twenty orders from "Duty Free Stores" in AKL/CHC/WLG over the last two years.

JR is owned by the "Nuance group"; they have been trying to take over NZ duty free operations for several years. There was a huge kerfuffle a year or two ago when they contracted to be the sole seller at AKL; this was blocked by the commerce commission.

They just about control Duty Free Sales into and out of OZ and most know what prices are like here.:evil: