Wetherspoon pub drops price watch poster

Licensees in a small northern town have forced their local Wetherspoon's to drop its "price watch" poster campaign after protesting over the company's tactics.

Publicans at three pubs in Westhoughton, near Bolton, had been happy to oblige after the licensee at the nearby Robert Shaw pub asked for information on their drinks prices, claiming he had been ordered to put up his own prices to bring them in line.

But they were outraged a week later when they realised that the Wetherspoon's licensee had no intention of increasing his prices, and wanted to highlight how much cheaper drinks were in his pub on a price watch poster.

Now the Robert Shaw has dropped the posters after two days, as a gesture of goodwill.

Mike Williamson, licensee of the Wheatsheaf, told The Publican: "I am very bitter, very humiliated and very angry. We struggle as it is against Wetherspoons and when they use an underhand tactic like this it just infuriates me even more."

"As if this wasn't enough the information displayed on its board outside the pub was incorrect and four of my prices are actually wrong."

Ruth Cowan, licensee of The Red Lion was also furious. She said: "It's only a very small town - not even really big enough for a Wetherspoons - and we already struggle to keep up with them because of their cheap drinks prices. Only two out of the ten of our drinks prices displayed were correct!"

Kieran Walch, licensee of the Victoria, was also unhappy. "It's very underhand the way the manager said he was just doing a price check. We are all Punch licensees and are unable to discount our drinks prices because we cannot buy outside our tie."

Julian Kent, the licensee at the Robert Shaw, denied that he had used underhand tactics to get the prices.

"I was just comparing our prices - sometimes we put our prices up as a response and sometimes we don't," he said.

"The posters were up for two days and we have now taken them down as a neighbourly gesture to the other businesses."

Eddie Gershon, spokesman for Wetherspoons, said if the prices displayed on the board were wrong, he could only apologise.

"The price watch campaign is a very effective way of highlighting good value for money but it can only work if the figures are correct."