Supermarkets are lying about their opening hours, and we want the Prime Minister to put a stop to it!

This is just brilliant. I took this photo last year at the Tesco’s in Hackney central, which (since moving this summer) I gladly don’t have to see on my way home anymore. Every time I cycled passed this sign I couldn’t help have an inward rant about the sheer nonesense of its message. It clearly says, “We’re open 24 hours”, which I knew was a lie because I’d seen them closed of a Sunday evening. And sure enough, in the small print, it gives their opening hours – they close early Saturdays and Sundays. So OK, they don’t say “We’re open 24 – 7” but that’s what they’re leading us to believe right?

Now it turns out that I’m not the only one to feel enraged at being lied to by a big supermarket. Luke Green has taken it upon himself to submit a Petition to Number 10.

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Stop large supermarket stores claiming they are open 24 hours when they are not.

I’ve come across these E-Petitions before – I’ve even signed a few of them, but I hadn’t been aware of quite how trivial they could get. I can’t imagine it really helps more important petitions get taken seriously, especially when they only need to have 200 names on it before it gets forwarded to a government official – in this age of viral marketing 200 views is nothing. Still, if you feel as incensed over misleading sign’s like this one here, or just fancy taking another stab at big supermarkets, why not put you name on the list – its just a click away!

Incidentally, Number 10 has recently redesigned their website – it is now relaunched as a Beta. This is a term usually associated with the first release of a new web application (like a social networking site) to indicate that they might not have fixed all the bugs yet (so don’t all complain at once!), but in this case it looks to be a blatant use of a Web 2.0 gimmic to make them look oh, soooo cool.