I get at least one a week. An email from a dissatisfied customer wanting a refund, or to exchange a product, from the Ann Summers sex shop chain.
Just last week, this: "I recently purchased a small, pink bullet vibrator. Today, I went to use it for the first time, however the battery does not seem to be working …"
![The sex shop business has become so mainstream – at least in Britain.](/web/20161225160214im_/http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/g/p/2/1/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtgo91.png/1482455028706.jpg)
I have long been used to sharing a name with well-known people. There's Buffy Anne Summers the Vampire Slayer and there's the Anne Summers thanked in the Acknowledgments to A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book who many people generously assumed was me. But having to deal with this is not only new, it is extremely irritating.
I get it that my name is a joke in Britain.
![The Ann Summers store in Cardiff.](/web/20161225160214im_/http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/g/p/j/e/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtgo91.png/1482455028706.jpg)
I've seen the smirks of the Immigration officers at Heathrow and the raised eyebrows of snooty Londoners. The most honest reaction was from Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, who laughed uproariously when I was introduced to her at a function in Sydney a few years ago.
And of course I've known about the sex shops. I'd learnt to feign enthusiastic surprise when yet another friend returned from a trip with a photo: "You'll never guess what I saw in London …"
I even went into one of the shops back in the 1970s. It was a dingy furtive place patronised mostly by men literally in raincoats. I'd brandished my passport, to show them that my name really was the same (though I have an "e"), and asked if my friend could photograph me under the sign "Ann Summers for greater sexual satisfaction". They threw me out.
These days there are 140 shops. They are big and bright and usually located on the high street and they sell an astonishing range of sexy lingerie, sex toys, bondage implements, costumes ("naughty" nurses, that sort of thing) and other products that, quite frankly, I have no idea what one would do with.
![Jacqueline Gold, the chief executive of Ann Summers, was awarded a CBE earlier this year.](/web/20161225160214im_/http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/g/o/b/x/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtgo91.png/1482455028706.jpg)
Their best-selling product is the Rampant Rabbit vibrator with sales of at least 2 million a year. I remember being startled when I visited the multi-storey Covent Garden store some years ago to see brightly-lit shelves displaying dozens of these in various vibrant colours.
These days there is nothing furtive or discreet about this enterprise.
![Illustration: Cathy Wilcox](/web/20161225160214im_/http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/g/x/0/8/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gtgo91.png/1482455028706.jpg)
In fact, its website boasts: "Unlike any other business, our 10,000 colleagues go to work every day because we sell orgasms. Not many businesses can make that claim."
Apart from the stores, and the Ann Summers home parties which are based on the Tupperware concept and which apparently are attended by 22,000 women a week, there is the online empire – and that's where I come in.
"I recently bought a Morgasam Toy for my girlfriend which is under your money back guarantee, as this failed to impress her or more unfortunate bring her to climate (sic), I have returned it to you, within the week of purchasing it, as instructed by the lady in your branch and your website," a man wrote to me two weeks ago. He went on: "I am slightly worried since I have not heard back from you since postage on the 17th October 2016. I have as requested proof of post to your free postage address. Image attached."
Now I have been to their website and Ann Summers does offer a Money Back Guarantee on its range of Moregasm products (check it out yourself if you are curious about what these are) and it provides very detailed instructions on how to return items and get a refund so I am mystified as to how so many people end up contacting me.
My email address is nothing like their customer service address and yet the emails flow in.
I've had one woman wanting me to fix her order because she somehow asked for a 12 when she meant to buy a size 10 in the "mai bikini lace top". Then there's the woman who was sent a size 42F bra when she'd explicitly ordered a 42G and after returning it was sent the wrong one – again! Or Chantelle, who had some kind of a sexual emergency, and needed her products by Friday.
I ignore these mails as I do not consider them to be my problem but they have piqued my curiosity about the sex shop business and how it has become so mainstream – at least in Britain.
Ann Summers chief executive Jacqueline Gold was awarded a CBE, conferred by the Princess Royal in July this year, for her services to entrepreneurship, women in business and social enterprise. "There is nothing greater than being recognised for something you are passionate about," she said.
Which is not to say there have not been problems. My Google alert told me there was opposition to the Derby store opening on Sundays and in 2006 Britain's Muslims were outraged when Ann Summers launched a new blow-up doll called "Mustafa shag". Gold responded that the objections were "political correctness gone mad".
Thank goodness that was before the emails to me started.
Twitter: SummersAnne
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