No sooner do I press publish on my previous post than my email pings with bad news from the front. Lorinda Freint, the Clapham Junction town centre manager, had also raised the issue of the store being nowhere near Clapham and got this reponse:

Thank you for taking the time to email ASDA regarding our Clapham Junction store.

I am sorry to learn of your disappointment as you believe we are incorrectly naming our store.

I have followed this important issue up with Mick Beck the General Store Manager, who has confirmed that the store has always been called ‘Clapham’. As the store is just off the Junction we believe it is valid to call the store by its current title. We also feel if we were to change the stores name, it would lose some of stores current identity.

I will happily pass your comments onto the Suggestions Team who can consider this matter further for you.

Thanks again for taking the time to contact us, please let me know if I can be of any further assistance.

Kind Regards
David Raggett
ASDA Service Team

The Stalinist approach to revising history is astonishing. Given that they themselves rebranded their store two years ago reveals a shocking lack of self-awareness.

They themselves have in the past accepted the store is in Battersea. They changed their branding. But now a new manager knows better.

I can’t help but find it incredibly patronising to be told by someone in Leeds that we don’t know where we are. As if local people, supposedly their customers, are so moronic we do not know where we live or what our area is called. Nor have memory enough to recollect (or just dig out the photographic evidence) that their assertion is at best a reflection of being too lazy to check and at worst a blatant lie.

If they can’t be bothered to even look at their own website to see that even they still refer to it as Clapham Junction in Battersea it makes you wonder how much effort they put into anything else. There’s clearly an attitude that the customer is always wrong, and a little tiresome.

It occurred to me that I’d not provided any update on the naming of the Lavender Hill Asda store.

And the updates are actually quite exciting.

I replied to the email to me that suggested that the store is in Clapham whatever I thought. I also spoke (via Twitter if that’s a real conversation) to one of their PR team (@dom_asdapr) who suggested that ‘Junction’ is implied, or at least it was when he lived in Tooting eight years ago. He further suggested that if there is concern they could put something about it on their blog and rename it based on the response.

If it comes to the latter, since geography is not a matter of fact but the opinion of the internet people, I’m going to campaign for it to be named after the ice planet Hoth. They’d need tauntaun parking too.

While I’ve not had any further responses several others who wrote to them have posted their, far more positive, responses on Streetbook.

Biscuit wrote asking exactly where in Clapham the store was (having seen their posters) because he wasn’t aware of any Asda stores in the Clapham area. They responded:

The poster was referring to the ASDA store at Clapham Junction, the store we have is in Battersea. We don’t have another store in Clapham.

Micky G and Gail both had the same response to their complaint:

The Marketing Team have come back to me regarding your complaint in connection with Clapham Junction.
This is an oversight on our behalf and the marketing will be changed immediately.

It seems there’s three different positions:

1. They are in Clapham
2. They are in Battersea
3. They don’t know and will ask

But option two is probably the winner. The responses that Asda is in Battersea were fairly clear, and I’m not you can put much store in a late night Twitter conversation with someone in PR (sorry people in PR). I’m just not going to say anything about the email I got.

Is it too early to call this a victory for the people of Battersea? I’m not sure, however, I’m impressed at what could be achieved by just a few people, with the facts on their side, getting together on a website and taking up an issue with a corporate giant may achieve. Dare I call it an example of the Big Society? Yes. Yes, I dare!