I don’t get premium rate services at all. The idea that people will spend over a euro a message to get lame jokes or horoscopes sent to their phones fills me with bafflement. The only time I’ve used a premium rate service was for a Pricewatch article earlier this year when I had my fortune told by Irish Psychics Live. I paid nearly 30 quid to be told that by the end of the year, I’d have me a new job, a new wife with some new children on the way.
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The old truism that people who are treated well by a business tell one or two others while those who are treated shabbily tell 20 has never looked as old-fashioned as it has in recent months thanks to the social networking revolution and the power it has placed in the hands of ordinary consumers.
With the help of Facebook, Bebo, YouTube, Twitter, the ever-expanding blogosphere and countless bulletin boards and discussion forums, people with access to a computer can complain to a potential audience of millions if a company displeases them.
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We all know that companies sometimes make ridiculous claims about their products to convince us to buy them, right? Maybe we should just sue the bejaysus out of the ones that most spectacularly fail to deliver on their promises of whiter teeth, shinier, thicker hair, flatter tummies and hypnotic sex appeal. Just like Vaibhav Bedi is doing. The 26-year-old single man from India is demanding nearly €30,000 from Unilever to make up for the “depression and psychological damage” caused by the absence of any Lynx effect in its products of the same name. According to Ananova the poor fella failed to land a single girlfriend despite using Lynx for seven years. Who would you sue first?
Over the last decade so many foods have promised to heighten our brain function, lower our cholesterol, raise our fibre levels, flush our arteries clean, steady our blood pressure, boost our immunity, toughen up our bones and our teeth, and help us develop razor-sharp concentration that it’s a wonder we still need doctors.
Manufacturers of high calorie products loaded with refined sugars can slap the term “low fat” on their packaging to create a false sense of wholesomeness while something made almost entirely with artery-clogging trans-fats and salt is free to boast about its “sugar-free” status.
There are also companies which bamboozle us with talk of hair and nail enriching vitamins and while such claims may, strictly speaking, be true in the sense that certain nutrients are important for the development of hair and nails, the reality is we already have them in abundance so the extra dose, available at a hefty price, is entirely unnecessary.
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You’d think that one of the few upsides of the downturn would be a dramatic improvement in customer service as retailers, restaurants and every other customer focussed business upped their games to keep themselves afloat. But, judging from the level of correspondence I have had in recent months, that has not happened and the roll of customer service dishonour keeps getting longer. What do you think? Are things improving for consumers or is it the same as it ever was? Or worse even?
A listener to the Ray Darcy show got in touch with me last week after being given a right run-around by Sky Television. He moved house at the end of 2005 and at the end of November of that year his wife sent a disconnection request to Sky. It was acknowledged and Sky said the account would be terminated on the 30th December 2005. The couple opened a new account in his name, with a different bank account number and they thought no more about it.
Until December 2007 when he noticed payments coming out of his account. He immediately contacted the company and it stopped the payments. Ever since he has been trying the money taken from him in error refunded. He has sent numerous letters and emails to no avail. Most recently he sent an email to customer relations in August which was ignored and a fax in September which earned him a terse response in which Sky said “we are unable to make a refund in relation to this”. There was no further explanation.
So, Sky effectively stole (or at least took without asking) over a thousand euro from an entirely blameless customer, ignored multiple requests pleading with them to resolve the problem and said they would not give him a refund without saying why.
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I’ve interviewed Georgina Campbell, who writes well regarded restaurant guide books, on a number of occasions, most recently in July. When I spoke to her then she said that during a very, very tough time for the Irish hospitality sector, consumers should be careful about applying too much price pressure on restaurants and hotels.
Speaking at the announcement of the 2010 Georgina Campbell Awards today she said that “many fine establishments have cut costs to the bone and their businesses are now literally hanging by a thread”. She claimed that “prices have often been reduced to an unsustainable level and yet there is constant pressure from the public to make even further cuts.”
She said that “if for no other reason than enlightened self-interest, we will no longer be able to enjoy our favourite places if they go out of business – consumers need to think twice before pressing for even better bargains.”
Is she right? Should we stop haggling or driving harder bargains in case we drive the restaurants and hotels that we like out of business?
What does Change for Good mean to you? The slogan was rolled out in a blaze of publicity by Tesco last May to promote substantial price cuts (averaging 22 per cent) brought in to stop potential customers in the northern bit of the south crossing the border to do their shopping.
The retail giant, while unveiling the cuts campaign, said its new low, low prices were long-term structural changes and not promotional ones. But yesterday the good people at Cheap Eats reproduced email correspondence between a reader who complained to Tesco about rising prices in the store and a customer services manager who said that because its “Change for Good” campaign had ended “you will now be noticing increases in our product prices”.
Tesco has since denied it was putting up prices across the board and said the mail from its manager was sent in error. The retailer said it had actually introduced a further 7,329 price cuts over the past month, on top of the 12,500 cuts announced in May as part of its “change for good” price-reduction strategy and said its customer service manager, based in Dundee, had made an unfortunate mistake.
Indeed.
A DISTRESSED reader contacted us recently after enduring two years of heartache with a wood pellet burner she had installed in her Mayo home.
Filled with the best of intentions when she was building her house, she decided to use a renewable energy source for her heating and was convinced by a salesman that a wood pellet burner was the way to go. The cost of the burner was €8,000 but a grant of just under €4,000 from Sustainable Energy Ireland (SEI) under its “greener home” programme took the sting out of the bill.
The greener homes deal gives grants to homeowners who install a renewable energy heating system such as solar panels, biomass stoves and boilers, and geothermal heat pumps. It has been a runaway success since it was introduced in 2006 with over 37,000 applications approved so far.
It wasn’t all hunky-dory for our reader, however, and the problems started almost immediately after installation. The burner belched black smoke into her shed and consumed pellets at a ferocious rate – she was spending €150 a week on heating her 139sq m (1,500sq ft) house for just four hours a day, she says. The company which sold her the burner went out of business and the owner disappeared.
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A new bill aimed at tackling “rogue service providers” in the telecommunications sector and stamping out premium rate phone service scams was brought before the Dail by the Minister for Communications Eamon Ryan yesterday.
While it allows for greater regulation of a sector which has been guilty of all manner of dodginess over the last 10 or 15 years, the new bill seems to have forgotten to include amongst its clauses, the power to force rogue traders to give refunds to consumers it has ripped off.
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Woohoo! Amazon.co.uk has introduced its free delivery service for Irish customers who spend more than £25.10 (no, I have no idea why they’ve chose such a bizarre sum either). The site has also introduced Amazon Currency Converter which will allow customers using a Visa or MasterCard issued in euros pay in euros. As long as they don’t hike the prices for customers shopping in the Republic, then it’s all good news.
Every Saturday morning throughout the mid-1970s, Irish children – at least those living in places where BBC TV was available – would gather to watch Noel Edmonds and Keith Chegwin help kids living in glamorous sounding locations, like Wigan and Hull, swap toys.
For three hours, as part of the Multi-Coloured Swap Shop , people phoned in offers and requests – badminton racket for alarm clock, stylophone for cuddly toy, guitar for Evel Knievel stunt bike – with the most headline grabbing swaps making it onto the top ten swap board. It was cheap, addictive TV for kids but, in the early 1980s as those kids grew up, the swapping stopped and the programme disappeared.
Well swapping is back in vogue and has been given a 21st century make-over. The credit crunch, enhanced frugality and easy web access have seen people swapping and bartering with a gusto not seen since global capitalism was a twinkle in Adam Smith’s eye.
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Country votes decisively in favour of Lisbon Treaty.
Cue trumpets: Vodafone is to sell the iPhone in Ireland and the UK from 2010, ending O2’s two-year market monopoly. In an effort to create a buzz around the announcement – which is hardly much of a surprise – Vodafone is now inviting its customers to register their interest in the iPhone through its website. The only interest I’d like to register is an interest in how much the phone will cost and how easy it will be to get. That information won’t be available for some time yet although if Vodafone have any sense, they’ll offer the phone at a knock-down price with tariffs significantly lower than those available through 02 and blow them out of the water. Can’t see it happening, mind you.
SHOPPING AROUND is getting easier and the days when canny consumers had to spend hours each week walking or driving from supermarket to supermarket scouring the shelves for the cheapest deals are fading into memory.
The last year has seen a raft of Irish companies and individuals using the web to offer regularly updated information on better value financial products, electrical goods and supermarket deals. We have cheap eats, savvy shoppers, deal hunters, bargain alerts and quote clubs all claiming to take the hassle out of finding the best value for money.
The question is: what took us so long.
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Just when the construction industry thought the news couldn’t get any worse, it suddenly did. Several reports published this week have painted a bleak picture for an industry already on its knees after the property sector meltdown. They indicate that prices for big and small construction jobs have fallen almost as dramatically as jobless numbers in the sector have risen.
Although homeowners will have sympathy for individual tradesmen who have lost their jobs, they will relish the consequential price drops and the sudden availability of tilers, plumbers and carpenters who could not be got for love nor ridiculous sums of money at the height of the boom.
“Builders were making money hand over fist for years and even at a 30 per cent discount they are still making money and don’t let anyone tell you any different,” one industry source unsympathetic to the plight of builders told The Irish Times this week.
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MODERN CARS are so highly evolved that it’s almost impossible for most of us to work out the cause of that not-quite-right sound the engine starts to make all of a sudden unless, when we lift the bonnet, we find a snooker ball rattling around inside. In the unlikely event of not finding a snooker ball, we can’t tell if the problem is going to cost €150 or €1,500 to fix.
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This youtube clip has been causing quite the stir in recent days and has now been watched by over one million people. That’s one million people who will probably never open a banana ‘the wrong way’ again.
IT’S BEEN a tough year for organic food producers. As if convincing people to spend a little more on food in the middle of a full-blown depression wasn’t hard enough, they’ve also had to combat a headline-generating scientific report which was published this summer casting doubt on the nutritional benefits of their produce.
Researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, acting at the behest of the British government’s Food Standards Agency, found that consumers were paying higher prices for organic food partly because they believed it had health benefits. After carrying out a review of 162 scientific papers published over 50 years, however, the researchers found there to be no significant difference.
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Can I just say that while I love the idea of the new bicycle rental scheme which will – finally – be launched later this week, I fear for the well-being of the bikes. How long will it be before they are kicked to death by the stout-hearted citizenry of the city?
A week?
A month?
They are, we have been reassured, “damage resistant” but unless they are made of solid iron, wheels and all, they’ll be no match for the booze fuelled gobshites who are sure to feel compelled to take them on or take them home in the coming weeks.
Remember the lovely Cow parade. One cow had its ear and then its head ripped off. A second had its wings clipped (actually, they were also ripped off) and virtually all the other cows which had been dotted around the city to lend to the gaiety of the country was daubed in mindless graffiti before being put out to pasture.
The shame.
