There were only 250 record shops in the entire BMRB panel out of over 6,000 shops. In fact it was very easy to identify the chart shops for record reps. Reps just needed to go into the store and look around, especially the office area. They only needed to see that the shop had a BMRB diary. In many cases the store would have this close to the till. It was also a practice for the BMRB to pester shops for the diary as many shops were late sending them in. However the record companies would also phone up posing as BMRB people to get the shop to admit it had a diary!
Since the function of the paid for hype was to get it into the top 50 between 50 and 41 in most cases, you didn't need to sell a lot of copies. 60 copies for the week would ensure a place between 50 and 41. It follows that 100 to 150 copies in known chart shops would result in enough copies making it to the actually shops used by the BMRB that week. Since this could amount to as little as 10 purchases at the branch in Sheffield, even if the records were not included in the chart, it amounted to only a small loss for the record company.
I also thought at one time that Bradleys the shop and the record company were the same thing. However on another thread on this forum, it was shown that the two were entirely separate from each other and were not connected at all. Apart from the fact that the shop would sell the record company's product.
I also spoke to one person who claimed he worked for various shops. He told me it wasn't just the record companies that would fiddle the charts. For example if a record company had managed to convince many record stores to stock a record on the strength that the record would sell a lot and then didn't. The shops would then enter the numbers into the diary to say it had sold when it had in fact sold none. Of course once in the charts it sold a lot. Thus getting shut of unwanted stock. How widespread this practice was is of course not known. I did question the chap about it, pointing out that the other shops wouldn't show sales of it. But he said that the shops would have done the same. From what I know about business practices it would sound feasible, the old boy network, with shop mangers etc attending sales conferences and getting on the phone to each other, saying are you going to stock this record by Dog Face (made up name) that CBS are pushing? But I can't say if they would then tell each other to enter false sales in the BMRB.
What I can tell you that from 1969 onwards only the top twenty was genuine sales, but even then it wasn't an accurate reflection of the Country due to the fact Woolworths didn't take part till after 1976. If you remember that year the entire chart softened in tone as Glam Rock just died. Was it in part due to the more broader range of people who bought records from Woolworths.