Pricewatch »

• Frustrated about a bed in a box

  July 30, 2007 @ 3:15 pm | by Conor Pope

  Having your bed made is not that easy if you buy it from House of Fraser in Dundrum, as Sarah-Jane Larkin recently learned. She ordered a bed frame from the store and paid a deposit. Once it was available for delivery from the UK, the full amount, including a delivery charge, was debited from her credit card. “At the time of purchase we had been told that the delivery people, coming from the UK, would assemble the bed,” she writes.

  At that time she also told the sales person that she wouldn’t have the keys to her new house until July and was told this wouldn’t be a problem. It seems to have been, however, and throughout June she had to field repeated phone calls from the delivery company threatening to charge a storage fee unless she was prepared to accept the delivery immediately.

  Eventually she got the keys to her new house and delivery was arranged for early this month. The delivery men arrived with the flat-packed bed but said they were not responsible for assembling it. They dropped off four boxes and left.

  She said that House of Fraser initially responded to her complaint by saying it had had problems with its delivery service, but since that initial contact its customer service department has been reluctant to take her phone calls. They have told her she will have to wait until the next delivery to Ireland in four weeks to have her bed built.

  “Meanwhile they are refusing to refund us our money, saying that we are in possession of the goods. What we have are four boxes of wood – not the bed frame we paid for weeks ago.” She says House of Fraser is retailing premium furniture products without appropriate support. “Luckily, while waiting to get this sorted we have a mattress to sleep on ordered and delivered without any fuss from a local Irish company.”

  The store said that, following our intervention, the matter had been resolved with our reader. In a statement, House of Fraser said it assembled all furniture as part of its delivery service. “In this instance this did not happen as it should have done. We pride ourselves on the standard of service we give our customers and are reviewing our procedures as a result of this incident.”

• A strange exchange in Dunnes

  @ 3:14 pm | by Conor Pope

  Last week we featured correspondence from a reader who attempted – and eventually succeeded – in paying the sterling price for some clothes in his local Dunnes Stores on a point of principle, as he felt the dual pricing was misleading euro shoppers.

  It was just one of many queries and complaints we get about the practice some stores have of putting both the sterling and euro prices on items. The central complaint is generally about the ludicrous exchange rate the stores employ – almost always to the euro shopper’s disadvantage.

  When questioned as to why the sterling and euro prices bear little or no resemblance to the actual value of each currency, retailers inevitably claim that the Republic of Ireland price is higher because of higher overheads here and the need to set their in-store exchange rates months in advance.

  Last week a reader sent in a price tag that sets a new record for outlandish exchange-rate application – and it comes from Dunnes Stores, a company that does the vast majority of its business in the euro zone. A pair of “cheapo trainers”, as our reader calls them, were priced at £5 and €15. We checked and, based on last Tuesday’s exchange rate, £5 would equal about €7.45. We contacted Dunnes to ask how a pair of trainers that cost the euro equivalent of €7.45 in Newry had a price of €15 in Dundalk.

  We contacted Dunnes Stores but no one was available to explain to us how the store had arrived at this most unusual currency conversion.

• Home sweet holiday?

  @ 3:12 pm | by Conor Pope

  If you don’t fancy spending €4 on four minutes of go-karting, a tenner on a child’s chicken nugget dinner or 20 cent on a single marshmallow for your hot chocolate, then maybe you should consider taking your holidays somewhere other than Ireland this year.

  While high prices and bad service are with us all year, it’s only when we holiday at home – with little else to do but moan and look for a break in the clouds through rain-spattered windows – that it becomes really clear how hard it is to find good value.
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• Now you know

  July 25, 2007 @ 5:13 pm | by Conor Pope

  An interesting, if hardly surprising, survey was published by the National Consumer Agency today. It has found that shopping in convenience stores can cost over 20 per cent more than shopping in one of the main supermarket multiples. Its pilot price check survey looked at what it termed the common branded grocery products available in thirteen Irish supermarkets and shops.

  It found that Eurospar was 7.4 per cent more expensive and Centra and Spar were 10.8 per cent and 20.2 per cent more expensive respectively than the three multiples. “By publishing this research we aim to empower consumers to allow them to make informed decisions when carrying out their day to day grocery shopping. I would urge consumers to review the information and shop around to avail of the savings that can be made,” said NCA head honcho Ann Fitzgerald.

• Shout out for rip offs

  July 24, 2007 @ 12:19 pm | by Conor Pope

  I need your help. We all know that Ireland is an expensive place to go on holidays but I am looking for examples of bad value and bad service for a series that we’re running in The Irish Times throughout August. Actually I am also looking for examples of good value and good service now that I think of it.

  It seems to me that if you manage to find cheap accommodation – and there are certainly bargains out there, particularly when the weather is so dreadful and cancellations are stacking up – you can expect to be screwed when it comes to eating, drinking or doing anything at all that could be considered even remotely fun.

  Although I have not been there, I have been reliably informed that a day-pass covering all the rides in Disneyland costs €28 – compare that to the four euro I recently spent on a four minute spin on some pretty useless go-karts in one magical kingdom of a resort town in Ireland. And I came last in my race too. Then there was the €35 per hour cost of going bowling, the silly price of swimming pools and as for the cost of eating out. Jesus wept!

  For an evening meal in an ordinary restaurant a family of four will have little change out of €100 – a figure which includes no booze (okay, maybe two pints) and children’s portion of chicken nuggets and chips for at least half the group. Then there is the reader who told me that they were charged 40-cent for one extra marshmallow for their hot chocolate.

  Where will it all end. . .

• It’s enough to drive you from drink

  July 23, 2007 @ 9:53 pm | by Conor Pope

  Eamonn Gallagher was pretty pleased with himself when he happened upon a genuine bargain in Tesco recently. Between July 6th and 8th there was a 30 per cent discount on any six bottles of wine, he writes. He bought 12 bottles on July 7th and his dinner guests that night enjoyed these Australian wines so much that he returned to the store the following day for more. “I filled a wine-carrier with six bottles only to be told Tesco had dropped the offer,” he writes. “When one thinks of the countless millions in profit that Tesco takes out of Ireland each year this seems to be a very mean way to treat their customers and, of course, very poor PR; on principle I will not buy any more wine in Tesco,” he says.

  We contacted Tesco and a spokesman said there had been a technical hitch on the Sunday of the promotion in some Tesco stores, so the promo had to be scrapped. The spokesman reminded us that the store had published ads in national papers on two separate days last week in which it apologised for the hitch and announced it planned to re-run it last Sunday.

• Warsaw wins wireless wars

  @ 9:52 pm | by Conor Pope

  Gavin O’Sullivan was moved to send us an e-mail late one night while waiting for a flight out of Warsaw airport. He sent us information on the cost of one of the many wireless internet providers in the airport, where 900 minutes of broadband costs about €4. “Compare this to Eircom’s (the only available service) charges at Dublin airport,” he writes.

• Sterling work

  @ 9:51 pm | by Conor Pope

  Philip Tobin from Dublin was shopping in Dunnes Stores in the Nutgrove Shopping Centre recently when he noticed most of the items were marked in sterling and euro. “The sterling price was in a rather larger typeface than the euro price,” he writes. “I felt this was misleading the customer, who might only find out at the cash point (of no return).”
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• Something in the water

  @ 9:48 pm | by Conor Pope

  In recent years, our supermarkets have been flooded with waters flavoured with everything from apple to passion flower, as major producers and upstarts seek to capitalise on a diminished appetite for high-calorie soft drinks and increasing boredom with regular bottled waters.
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• Don’t worry, a committee has been formed

  July 17, 2007 @ 2:56 pm | by Conor Pope

  The ruckus about Saturday night’s Barbara Streisand concert continues to rumble on with news today that MCD is to set up a “specialist committee” to carry out “a thorough examination of the issues affecting concert goers”. Those issues, in brief, were massive traffic delays and a mudbath of a car park. Stewarding was said to be inadequate. Large numbers of fans were stuck on the motorway when the show started. Only one of the four gates into Castletown House was open for general access. When some fans eventually got to the arena they found their seats didn’t exist. Others found their seats but couldn’t sit in them because they’d been taken by others. And when the concert ended people struggled to find their cars in a poorly-lit field and many got stuck in the mud. Oh, and Twink apparentlly ruined her runners and had to throw them away.

  The concert’s promoters, MCD said today it had so far received 127 complaints (it has only given out a postal address – no phone numbers or email address) from the 17,000 people who shelled out big money to see the funny girl do her turn. The National Consumer Agency has weighed in and wants a meeting with MCD – it has also asked consumers with complaints to contact the its helpline on 1890 432 432 or log onto the website www.consumerconnect.ie or write to the National Consumer Agency, 4 Harcourt Road, Dublin 2.

  Actually ignore that last sentence. The NCA has just released a statement in which is asks Streisand fans upset by the goings on to contact MCD directly and CC it on all correspondence. MCD has apparently agreed to give the NCA a weekly update on progress by the committee and to stay in close contact with the consumer group on the issue.

• Park strife in the Herbert

  July 16, 2007 @ 12:12 pm | by Conor Pope

  Last weekend, Aideen Waters took her daughter and her friend to the Justin Timberlake concert in the RDS. She decided for security “of the children rather than the car” to park in the Herbert Park Hotel car park. “As you go through the barrier and, too late to turn back, the pricing board shows €2.75 for the first two hours and €6.50 for subsequent hours,” she writes. The total cost to her was a hefty €32.
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• Hanging on for the telephone

  @ 12:11 pm | by Conor Pope

  James Mulcare bought a phone from the O2 store in Cork in March and it worked fine until towards the end of last month, when it suddenly started freezing on him and switching itself on and off. “As it has been about three months since I bought it, I can’t find the receipt,” he writes. “I do, however, still have the original box for the phone and for the sim card.”

  With the boxes under his arm he dropped into the O2 store in Cork where he bought his phone to see if there was anything they could do to fix it. “The sales assistant asked me if I had a receipt. I told them I did not and produced the box instead. He informed me that there appeared to be a software fault in the phone and, as they were out of that particular model, he told me to go to the O2 Experience store on Patrick Street, where I should be able to get what he called a “swap out” while the phone was sent out for repair.”
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• The talk of the internet

  @ 12:09 pm | by Conor Pope

  We moan about high phone charges, but we really only have ourselves to blame when there is a world of free and dirt-cheap phone calls available to anyone with broadband access and a computer.

  Despite the fact that the internet offers simple ways to circumvent the sometimes ridiculous costs imposed by telecommunications companies for line rental, calls to mobiles and long-distance calls, a majority of Irish consumers continue to turn their backs on the money-saving technology.
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• Postcard from the edge

  July 10, 2007 @ 4:12 pm | by Conor Pope

  I have gone on holiday by mistake. I am in what is laughingly called the sunny south east right now, staying in a hilariously overpriced house just up a cliff edge from a windswept, wet and cold beach. It’s the first time I’ve been on a proper holiday in Ireland since I was in short pants and I’m not impressed. Without wanting to sound all grumpy, the weather is terrible, the prices are shocking and apart from a circus truck crashing into a supermarket, precious little has happened since we arrived. The owners of the place we’re staying in are managing to get away with charging thick tourists like me €1500 a week for their house which looks a whole lot better on the Web than it does in real life. And that doesn’t even cover the electricity which, they say, is going to cost me an extra €9 a day! Nine euro a day on top of the €214.28 they’re charging me daily to watch the rain lash down on the optimistically positioned solar panels on the roof. Christ knows what you’d need to do to use €63 worth of electricity in a single week. Even if I left all the lights on, the deafening tumble dryer going at full power and the Live Earth concert playing non-stop on the video recorder for the full seven days, I doubt I’d manage to use €63 worth of power but I’m awful tempted to give it a go.

• The pricy simple things in life

  July 9, 2007 @ 1:46 pm | by Conor Pope

  Kenneth Lyons sent a mail asking us to highlight the sometimes ridiculous price disparities for the “simple things” in Dublin city centre.

  “Take the apple as an example,” he writes. “A simple fruit, yet I was charged €0.79 in one Dublin city-centre shop and in another shop, just one minute’s walk away, I was charged €0.49 for the same product.”

  He says that such price disparities are becoming more commonplace. “In my opinion, it’s time for action and to name and shame these opportunists,” he writes.

• An inspector calls

  @ 1:45 pm | by Conor Pope

  In the 1970s, we were led to believe that a crack squad of TV licence inspectors who looked a bit like the A-Team were roaming the country in the back of a HiAce with sophisticated sensors in the back for detecting a license-less home from miles away. Some 30 years on and the machine seems to be on the blink, as one Dublin reader has discovered.

  George Partridge contacted us after being unable to shake off the TV licence collection people in his area. They have been in regular contact with him since the beginning of the year, despite the fact that he doesn’t have a television. He has received numerous letters and at least one surprise visit from an inspector, even though he gave his television away to a friend more than two years ago. He now uses his computer on the rare occasions he watches DVDs or downloads programmes from the internet.

  It was this flickering light which the TV-licence man saw when he called round recently. To try and bring an end to the saga, Partridge invited the keen-eyed inspector in, showed him the computer and the long-since disconnected TV cables and, as the inspector seemed happy with the state of affairs, assumed that would be the end of the matter.

  Not so – the letters keep coming, and he would like An Post to stop harassing him for money he does not owe them. Apparently, there is not much that he can do. While the site visit should ensure he doesn’t get a letter for a while, he can expect to get a letter asking whether he has a licence within six to 12 months. A spokeswoman said that such letters were automatically generated each year. “Once you are on the system the letters are automatically generated if you don’t have a licence. If he replies when he gets the mail, and says his circumstances have not changed, than that should be sufficient,” she said. But who’ll pay for the stamp, we wonder.

• Sky high prices for TV

  @ 1:44 pm | by Conor Pope

  Watching television can be a costly business. A 25-year-old who takes out an annual TV subscription with one of the main providers and diligently buys a TV licence every year could shell out in excess of €35,000 over the course of their lifetime.

  It’s a lot of cash by any definition, but it doesn’t have to be so bad – the same 25-year-old can, if they take advantage of a free satellite service, pay just under €10,000 over the same long life.
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• o2 to get first bite of Apple?

  July 5, 2007 @ 12:41 pm | by Conor Pope

  Could O2 be the company to clinch a deal to be the exclusive partner for Apple’s iPhone? According to reports from the UK this morning the Spanish company Telefonica, which owns O2 is in pole position to supply the network for the must-have gadget.
  A spokeswoman for Apple refused to comment on the reports. “We haven’t released or announced anything. We won’t comment on rumour or speculation,” she said. An O2 spokesman said: “There is no deal in place between us and Apple. Every operator has been speaking to them.”

• Greasy fry noodle fusion

  July 3, 2007 @ 1:50 pm | by Conor Pope

  The Supervalu on Aston Quay has recently started selling freshly cooked stir-fried noodle dishes which are pretty excellent although the portions are absolutely enormous. As well as the more traditional oriental (ish) fare that you might expect to find on the menu there is also the bizarre only-in-Ireland ‘breakfast noodles’ made with rashers, sausages and a fried egg. Can’t say what it tastes like but it sounds wojus.

• Air Supply

  @ 1:38 pm | by Conor Pope

  A listener to the Ray Darcy show contacted me – I’m the consumer agony uncle on the show ya see! – after a petrol station tried to charge him for air for his tyres. Initially I thought he was winding me up but no – the Maxol station in Dooradoyle in Co Limerick has installed a coin-operated air supply system. 50 cent will get you access to the pump for two minutes while the charge can rise to a maximum of €2 for 8 minutes.

  Maxol is running a trial of this air vending machine the garages and has been for the last few weeks. I rang them to find out just why they needed to trial something that my six month old daughter could tell them would be really unpopular. I spoke to them yesterday morning and a spokesman confirmed that the trial was ongoing. He was very upfront and accepted that even in Maxol they had mixed views about. They did recognise that the move would not be very popular but all that he asked was that we gave him a reasonable airing. And I said we would as long as he paid for it. Ha!

  He did say that at least people who bought fuel at the garage could get free tokens. So it was not as much a money making scheme for Maxol as a way in which to protect the air facilities which, generally speaking are amongst the most abused facility in any garage. They do tend to be chucked about the place by people so I can see why they would be broken frequently. However, this is, I would have thought, a cost that garage owners agree to bear when the open a garage and not something that we should suddenly start to pay for. He pointed out that while paying for air might be a new concept in Ireland, in other countries being charged to access the air facilities is the norm. Sadly, he is right and apparently up to 30 per cent of garages in the Britain are introducing or have introduced charges.

• A goji berry a day . . .

  July 2, 2007 @ 4:51 pm | by Conor Pope

  There was a time when all that was needed to keep the doctor at bay was an apple, but these days, if you’re serious about living as long as possible, you’ll have to find an increasingly exotic cocktail of fruit and vegetables.

  These magic bullets, in the shape of the blueberries, pomegranates and walnuts that are stocked high on our supermarket shelves, are supposed to combat cancer, fight obesity, keep your heart pumping, improve your skin and pep up your sex life. They taste good too. The only downside is the cost – a fruit considered “super” can cost almost 10 times as much as one with qualities that are held to be less heroic.
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• SuperValu, super service

  @ 4:51 pm | by Conor Pope

  We seem to spend all our time on this page giving out about rip-off prices and brutal customer service, so it is nice to draw readers’ attention to how it should be done. Joyce Puech from Dublin sent us a mail which allows us to do just that. Last Monday, she nipped into SuperValu in Churchtown to get milk and “of course ended up with a full basket, tempted as I was along the way”. She was not alone in her foraging and was accompanied by two wayward and wriggling toddlers, so the two-minute errand turned into a 20-minute expedition. It was, however, “rendered tolerable by the friendly and helpful staff who whisked us through the checkout in record time and carried my shopping bag to the car,” she writes. “Friends have enthused about this shop and I will be quick to recommend it to others. All it needs is an “e” at the end of its name,” she concludes.

• Post office boxing

  @ 4:49 pm | by Conor Pope

  It’s safe to say that in recent weeks readers, such as Helen Kahn from east Cork, have not been happy with some of the service offered by An Post. In recent years, she says, “the few post offices that are left” have taken to attaching “a little green gummed label to parcels addressed to places outside Ireland”. These labels are about two inches square, she writes, and are supposed to carry the value and description of the parcel’s contents plus the name and address of sender. “As it is almost impossible to get all this info on to the label, considerable time is wasted,” she says. Inquiries as to why this label is necessary are met with incomprehension or with the statement that it is necessary ‘for security reasons’,” she writes. “Does someone’s job security really depend on the recycling of customs declaration labels left over from the 1960s? I think I’ll sent Uncle Paddy in Boston his Semtex some other way,” she says.

• Not in such good taste

  @ 4:49 pm | by Conor Pope

  Kieran O’Hare went to the Taste of Dublin event in Dublin Castle recently and was underwhelmed by the overpriced fare he found there. He had admission-only tickets which cost a not too shabby €25 but once he was through the gates of Dublin Castle he started wondering what exactly he was getting for his money. To buy any food or drink, visitors first had to exchange their real money euro for fake money “florins” at a one-for-one rate of exchange.

  “The use of this currency saved time by reducing cash handling but it also made one less conscious of the amount being paid for produce,” O’Hare writes. Some people, perhaps, but not him. He and a friend decided to stop for sustenance at a Dublin wine bar stall, where he had the least expensive wine on the menu. First off he was appalled to be charged five florins for a 125ml glass of Côtes du Rhône. His friend selected the aged ham and rustic bread on offer. “The portion was meagre and he was charged seven florins,” O’Hare fumes.

  Another exhibitor was selling “a sub-fish-finger-sized piece of deep-fried fish, 5½ chips, and a thimble of mushy peas” for six florins. “Aren’t these events supposed to offer better than normal value to people as a way of giving them the chance to try haute cuisine without the associated haute prix?” he asks. “I appreciate that exhibitors probably pay handsomely to be at the event, but something is badly wrong if I spend €55 overall and leave feeling distinctly underfed.”