Mummy Buzz

Jul
13
2012

Supermarket Sells Black Doll For Less

Corporate Racism or Mere Pricing Discrepancy?

Imagine this mom's shock when she went to buy a doll for a friend's hospitalized daughter in her local supermarket. Not only did she find a black doll and a white doll, but the Caucasian doll was more expensive than the black doll! 

The white version of My Lovely Baby was priced at £5.96 while the black version was just £4.97. When 22-year-old mom Holly Beckett complained to staff, she was told the discrepancy was down to a simple pricing error. Beckett, of course, had her doubts and suspected the variation was due to ethnicity, as evidenced by the pictures on the boxes depicting a white girl playing with the white doll and vice-versa.

A week later, Beckett returned to the store in Dudley, England, and found the prices unchanged. 

“I think it’s disgusting I have to pay one pound more because it’s a white baby," said Beckett. “At first I reported the price difference because I was worried about what people would think about Tesco."

As a former employee of Tesco, Beckett was horrified. Instead of remedying the situation, staff allegedly tried to sell the mom a white doll at the same price as the black one.

A spokesperson for Tesco explained the difference in pricing, saying the black dolls went on sale after the white ones, thus were being sold at an “introductory” price.

Can you smell the B.S. all the way across the ocean, or do you think the store's reasoning is legit?