Pricewatch »

• Make it stop!

  February 28, 2008 @ 8:25 pm | by Conor Pope

  I don’t know how it is for any other bloggers out there but there are days (like today) when I feel like I’m drowning under the deluge of spam which is posted to this blog. I log on and am told by WordPress that there are dozens of comments waiting to be moderated. Giddy with excitement I follow the link to the moderation queue only to find 24 posts containing links to some very, very unsavory sounding porn sites, ten posts offering me cheap Viagra and six more telling me how I can get my hands on some Vicodin. It has me driven to distraction. Does anyone know if I can stop the spam or is it something I’m going to have to live with?

• Numbers which gave me a headache

  @ 2:41 pm | by Conor Pope

  Have you ever wondered how the mobile phone companies make so much money? (Apart from charging us a lot more for the iPhone than people in other jurisdictions are being asked to pay – thanks a lot O2) One of the ways might be by charging us seriously over the odds to send text messages. I came across this article in the splendidly bolshie Consumerist recently. It says that mobile companies in the US mark up the cost of text messages when compared to the rates for data transfer services by over 7,000 per cent. And of course the same thing is happening here.

  Once you’ve used up your Vodafone bundle, for instance it costs you 11 cent to sent an SMS message. A text message 160 characters and at 7 bits per character, that’s 1120 bits or 140 bytes.

  That means it costs 0.000785714 cent per byte. (Warning – my maths is pretty terrible but I reckon if you multiply 0.00078 by 140 you get 0.11).

  Now when it comes to data transfer, Vodafone charges people around €9.99 for 500 MB per month (in fact it’s cheaper for many people now). So 500 MB equals 512,000 KB = 524,288,000 bytes. So when it comes to data transfer it costs 0.000000019c per byte. If you were to just send 140 byte messages on the 9.99 data plan you could send 3,744,914 messages. To send that many SMS messages once you’d used up your bundle would cost €411,940.54. And aren’t all messages be they SMS or MMS or whatever just a collection of ones and zeros?

  Now I have to go lie down. My head is sore.

• Shock as O2 secures Irish iPhone deal

  @ 11:53 am | by Conor Pope

  In news which will come as a surprise to absolutely nobody at all, O2 has just announced it is to be the sole partner for the Apple iPhone in the Republic of Ireland. The phones will go on sale here on March 14th. The handsets are going to cost €399 for the 8 gigabyte version and €499 for the 16 gigabyte one – that seems a bit steep to me but maybe I’m just bitter because I’m tied to the Vodafone network and won’t be able to get one. Three new iPhone tariffs will be available from O2, starting at €45, all of which will include anytime minutes, texts and a 1GB data bundle (Data use in excess of the 1GB allowance will be charged at 2c per MB excluding roaming, thanks to Justin for correcting my earlier mistake). People signing up will also have to commit to an 18-month contract.

  Here are the price plans from the 02 presser

  Monthly charge
  €45
  Anytime minutes included
  175
  Texts included
  100
  Data
  1GB
  Additional calls
  20c
  Additional texts
  10c

  Monthly charge
  €65
  Anytime minutes included
  350
  Texts included
  150
  Data
  1GB
  Additional calls
  20c
  Additional texts
  10c

  Monthly charge
  €100
  Anytime minutes included
  700
  Texts included
  250
  Data
  1GB
  Additional calls
  20c
  Additional texts
  10c

• Putting brakes on garage’s charges

  February 26, 2008 @ 7:13 pm | by Conor Pope

  LAST year, while giving her VW Golf a quick once over ahead of its first NCT check, a Galway reader discovered that the centre seatbelt in the back was jammed.

  “I was unaware that there was a problem as the seatbelt had never been used,” she says. She brought it to Western Motors on the outskirts of the city, figuring it would cost around €80 to be repaired. She was taken aback, then, to be quoted €320 for the job.

  They asked her for a deposit, which she paid. She collected the car and did the NCT, which it passed. A few days later however, she lowered the back seat to increase the boot size and when the seat was returned to the upright position, the seatbelt jammed again. She realised the belt had jammed simply because she put down the seat and rang Western Motors to complain.
  (more…)

• How to get through to the right person

  @ 7:13 pm | by Conor Pope

  Joe Hanahoe got in touch to share some tips for getting a response from customer service lines. “Do anything to get around the standard customer service line. Get an e-mail address from any employee and use its structure and the MD’s name to get directly at him/her,” he suggests.
  (more…)

• Pouring money away

  February 25, 2008 @ 10:03 am | by Conor Pope

  We like to complain about rip-offs in this country, but sometimes we only have ourselves to blame. Last year, Irish consumers spent hundreds of millions of euro on 135 million bottles of water while everywhere, outside a handful of blackspots, good quality drinking water flowed freely from taps.

  The average price of a litre of bottled water in Ireland is around €1.50 – and it sells for several times that amount in many restaurants and cinema foyers. It is not just financial cost but bottled water’s environmental impact that is making a growing number of people uneasy, as the BBC’s Panorama programme showed last week when it put Britain’s love affair with the bottle under its microscope.
  (more…)

• This has to win

  February 22, 2008 @ 2:35 pm | by Conor Pope

  I can’t honestly think of a better way for my licence fee to be spent than sending this turkey to the Eurovision. It’s in your hands people. Sadly there’s no video here, just the tune, but it’s generally dementedness should keep you entertained in the absence of moving pictures.
  Saturday Night Update: Yay! Dustin is on his way to Serbia, with a song that is vastly superior to ‘Here’s to you Ronnie Drew’ by all accounts!

• Roger Melly reciept

  February 20, 2008 @ 4:35 pm | by Conor Pope

  I might complain a lot about bad customer service but at least I have never been insulted by my reciept unlike ten friends in Staffordshire who found an abusive, sexually-explicit message on their bill at Joe Delucci’s Italian restaurant in Lichfield. One of the diners said she thought the message might have been written by staff after the group had complained about slow service. The restaurant owner has apologised and promised an investigation. The diners are looking for an apology, which is fair enough, and compensation which is not.

• Technical headache

  February 19, 2008 @ 11:29 am | by Conor Pope

  Vincent Hargaden moved house in August 2007 and decided to shop around for a new phone and broadband provider. He opted for BT’s Broadband & Talk package. “The appropriate confirmation of service and router duly arrived, at which point the grief started. I was able to get a dial tone on the phone, but on pressing the fifth digit on any outgoing call, was disengaged. Incoming calls had a ringing tone, but not in the house,” he says.

  Over a six-week period he had many calls logged with BT customer service but they never seemed to have any history of his previous complaints and failed to come up with a solution. Having spoken to some third party telecoms engineers, he realised the problem was at the exchange.

  “But BT technical support didn’t want to know. When I threatened to terminate my contract, I got a supervisor, who was apologetic but basically shrugged her shoulders and said there was nothing she could do. I promptly cancelled my contract in writing and requested my bank to cancel the direct debit.”
  (more…)

• Unsure about insurance

  @ 10:50 am | by Conor Pope

  As the last rites are murmured into the Celtic Tiger’s ear, the dying beast might be forgiven for casting a half-closed eye over our shambolic health service and wondering where it all went wrong. Despite Ireland becoming one of the richest countries in Europe, seriously ill people are still to be found sitting for days on hard plastic chairs and lying on trolleys in A&E units waiting desperately for a bed.

  Many of the 1.5 million people who pay an average of around €700 each year in health insurance premiums hope that, by virtue of these policies, they will be protected from such miserable and potentially life-threatening indignities. The reality is that health insurance offers absolutely no protection in such circumstances. Once you enter the system through an A&E unit – which is how around 70 per cent of people are admitted – you are placed in whatever type of bed is available, if there is a bed available.
  (more…)

• The Internet can be a very scary place if you’re not prepared

  February 18, 2008 @ 11:38 am | by Conor Pope

  

  Here’s an old clip that came to mind this morning when I was thinking about Max.

• Bullying bloggers

  February 17, 2008 @ 9:57 pm | by Conor Pope

  So Max, the would-be blogger on his gap-year jolly through India and south east Asia, has been driven off the Guardian’s Comment Is Free site after just one single post following a sustained onslaught by posters, incensed that some degree of nepotism might have seen this middle class teenager about to embark on a typically middle class pursuit getting such a high profile platform to document his trip. Now, I read his debut entry last Thursday and didn’t really think a whole lot of it – in fact it was pretty dreadful – but even so, I reckon the vicious response it got was wildly excessive and the decision to shut it down in the face of all the ‘cyber-bullying’ made for a mildly depressing Sunday afternoon read.

• Ireland expensive, report finds

  February 15, 2008 @ 1:33 pm | by Conor Pope

  A report published yesterday by ForFas confirms something that most Irish consumers have known for a very long time which is that pretty much everything seem to cost a whole lot more here than elsewhere.

  I think many people might have had a hope when the single market became a reality 18 years ago that there would be broadly similar pricing across the EU. So the pair of Camper shoes in Madrid would cost the same as a pair Camper shoe in Dublin. Of course that hasn’t happened at all and those shoes are still nearly half the price in Madrid while wine, food cosmetics, cars and clothes all sell for significantly less everywhere but here.

  As part of the study a sample basket of 40 goods was filled. This sample basket cost €89.30 in Ireland and €70.94 in the euro zone – a gap of 25.9 per cent. Even when the effects of differing VAT rates were removed, there was still a gap of 22.3 per cent.

  (more…)

• Value for money: Juicers

  February 13, 2008 @ 2:04 pm | by Conor Pope

  I am glowing with good health after a week of testing juicers. Actually, that’s a complete lie. I’ve been struck by a grim cold and hit with a bug my child brought home from the creche last week so have never felt less healthy. Still, imagine how bad I’d feel if I hadn’t been drinking beetroot and carrot juice. (more…)

• The Skeff

  February 12, 2008 @ 11:01 pm | by Conor Pope

  Why are they so pleased to be closed, I wonder? And I should point out that while the bendy picture makes it look like the hotel is on some class of wide and wonderfully designed crescent, it’s actually on a pretty straight bit of dull road. I know this because I caught the bus home from school outside this hotel everyday for six long and rainy years.

• We’re a trillionaire!

  @ 11:06 am | by Conor Pope

  Congratulations to us, our household wealth has passed the €1 trillion (that’s a million million) mark for the first time, according to a report from the National Irish Bank. The study found that the average Irish household boasted a wealth holding of €674,000 at the start of the year. When owner-occupied housing is taken out of the equation the figure was €352,000 – with the corresponding level of household debt at €127,000. So, if you don’t have in excess of 350 grand knocking about the place, not including the house you live in, then shame on you for bringing down the national average.

• Can we help you?

  February 11, 2008 @ 8:28 pm | by Conor Pope

  It costs approximately five times more to win a new customer than it does to keep an existing one happy, which makes some companies’ shoddy treatment of those they have fought so hard to get completely baffling.

  While many continue to treat their customers with disdain, some at least are starting to recognise the foolishness of such policies. Almost half the speakers at a mortgage conference in Dublin earlier this month talked about the importance of service.

  The conference heard over and over again that the current international credit squeeze and interest rate hikes had made it difficult for providers to compete on price, which put customer service centre stage as the single most important differentiator between the various institutions.

  This won’t have come as much of a surprise to Tony Brennan, the Irish director of the Institute of Customer Service (ICS). He tells Pricewatch that organisations who viewed the provision of an adequate customer service as purely a cost are the ones who do it badly. “Companies who treat customer service as an important differential are the ones who deliver excellent customer service and consequently generate more profit per employee. They have higher staff morale, a lower turnover – which significantly reduces training costs – and they have a greater number of customers acting as advocates on their behalf.”
  (more…)

• Money saving tips

  February 10, 2008 @ 9:05 pm | by Conor Pope

  Got any? I am very nearly finished a short little book on how to save yourself anything between €500 and €3000 a year by being just a little smarter with your spending. It’s not the ultimate penny pincher’s guide to thrifty living. If that’s what you’re looking for, you’ll be glad to know that there are already dozens of such books on the market, filled with thousands of ‘money-saving tips’ which, if followed religiously, will see your annual spend fall dramatically.
  In front of me now, I have Mr Thrifty’s How to Save Money on Absolutely Everything, Thrifty Ways for Modern Days and The Penny Pincher’s Book Revisited – so good they wrote it twice.
  Mr Thrifty tells me that I should make contact with contact-lens research labs and volunteer to test their products in clinical settings – and in so doing save myself a fortune when it comes to actually buying lenses. Anxious to turn me into a medical experiment, Mr Thrifty also thinks that it would be a fine idea to have my teeth seen to for free by trainee dentists in a nearby dental hospital (presuming there is one nearby) and to get in touch with drug manufacturers to see if they’re trialling any products I might find useful for treating any ailments I may have – like the stress-related ulcer caused by the endless worrying about my new role as a human guinea pig and the sudden onset blindness brought on by faulty contact lenses, perhaps. On top of that, he thinks it’s a good idea to make friends with a pilot for jaunts abroad and to wear flip-flops all year round to save on the wearing and washing of socks.
  Mr Thrifty is quite clearly bonkers.
  Then there are the Penny Pinchers, a lovely couple in their late sixties whom I spoke to for a feature in The Irish Times recently. They are not mean at all, the nice lady told me repeatedly, it’s just that they never spend any money on anything unless they absolutely have to. No store-bought treats ever darken their doors, no designer labels are ever worn, and no holidays or weekends away in posh hotels are ever taken – although they do like to drive for a few days in one direction in their battered old car before turning round and driving home again. Fun times!
  The Penny Pinchers tell me that a dead bird swinging silently from a tree at the back of my garden will serve as an excellent – and free – bird-scarer. They don’t tell me why I might want to scare birds, or where I get my dead bird, or what happens if a cat eats my dead bird, or what I am supposed to use to scare the cats off? A dead cat, presumably and before you know it I’ll have become a latter day old lady who swallowed a fly. The penny pinchers also suggest that I keep my tights (how did they know?) and candles in the fridge to stop them laddering and burning too quickly, and use egg white as glue and beeswax as a cheap chewing-gum replacement.
  The Penny Pinchers are quite clearly bonkers. Lovely, but bonkers.
  Thrify Ways, meanwhile, is edited by Martin Lewis, a serious-minded British journalist who always has money on his mind. This particular book – which, I should point out, is unlike most of his serious-minded journalism – is made up of homespun tips and tricks posted by readers of his website. This has culminated in page after page of headache-inducing ways for me to can clean and fix my house for nothing, feed my family for peanuts, and dress for buttons.
  My book is not that sort of book. It is much simpler.
  I’m nearly done with it and would like to include a section with ideas from other people, Pricewatch readers and Today FM listeners, maybe. So if you have any ideas which you think might work just post them here… Everyone whose tip gets included in the book gets a free copy of it once it’s finished. Assuming I get it finished. If you don’t want a copy of the book and your tip is included then you get €100. No, that’s a joke – you only get a free copy of the book whether you want it or not. Thank you kindly!

• Eco-friendly bags

  February 7, 2008 @ 9:00 pm | by Conor Pope

  I can’t decide if this a good thing or not but the people at slashfood are very exited by bags of milk. Apparently they are all the rage in Canada and are becoming more common in other countries but I’ve never come across them before. The bags use 75 per cent less plastic than plastic bottles more commonly found on our shelves and are easier to store by all accounts. I’d imagine they’d be an absolute nightmare to open and drink out of after a night in the pub mind you. I wonder how long it’ll be before someone designs a bag like an udder, complete with teats so we can milk our milk directly into our cornflakes every morning.

• Predatory prices? Us?

  @ 2:36 pm | by Conor Pope

  I reckon the farmers have a seriously uphill battle winning support from the public for the “Campaign for Honesty in Food Pricing”. Yesterday the IFA ran ads in the national press accusing Tesco, Superquinn, Aldi and SuperValu of predatory pricing and selling food as a loss leader. The supermarkets immediately dismissed the allegations as groundless and called on the IFA to bring any evidence it had of such tactics to the Competition Authority immediately. It seems to me that all the protest has managed to achieve so far has been to give the big retaillers an opportunity to say how much they care about the consumer and how committed they are to low, low prices which is hardly what the farmers can have wanted.

  “The IFA ignores the consumer, but the retail sector cannot as it depends on the consumer for its very existence,” a spokesman for Retail Ireland, representing Tesco and Superquinn said. A rare media statement from Aldi said its current promotions were “providing great value on fresh food to Irish customers, and Aldi is paying normal prices to its suppliers, including Irish farmers and processors with whom it has long established relationships, for this produce”. Meanwhile, Musgraves, which owns SuperValu and Centra said its “focus on providing top quality Irish produce to consumers we have a vested interest in ensuring the sustainability of the Irish agricultural sector and are committed to ensuring that Irish farmers get a fair price for their produce”.

• Booze prices

  February 4, 2008 @ 3:34 pm | by Conor Pope

  Is it just me or is there something a little suspect about the submission from the drinks industry to the Government, Alcohol Advisory Group in which it claims that the way alcohol is promoted and priced is at least partially to blame for irresponsible drinking and anti-social behaviour? Apparently drink is too cheap and too accessible for the Beverage Council of Ireland’s liking. It says that 75 cent bottles of beer selling in supermarkets is leading to “irresponsible” amounts of booze being bought by some consumers.

  While only a fool would argue that there wasn’t a serious alcohol problem in this country, I don’t think the low prices in some outlets are in any way to blame for that. I spent a long time living in Spain where beer and wine was a whole lot cheaper than it is here and I don’t remember ever seeing anything even close to the levels of drunken violence and vomit that are commonplace in every town and city in this country every single weekend. And anyways does the vast amount of serious binging not take place in pubs where drink prices are anything but cheap, yet the high prices there have acted as no deterrent at all.

• Till you’re blue in the face

  February 3, 2008 @ 10:17 pm | by Conor Pope

  After reaching the top of a long lunchtime queue with her pasta salad, a woman asked for a fork. “Nah, we don’t have any,” mumbled the bored till operator. She asked if he was sure (it was a large supermarket, after all) and pointed out that, without a fork, the salad wasn’t much use to her, but he’d already moved on to serving the next customer – Pricewatch, as it happens.

  She briefly considered making a scene, or at the very least asking for her money back so she could spend it elsewhere, but, after a moment’s hesitation, decided against it and walked out into the rain, no doubt fuming at his uselessness and her inability to stand up to it.

  Bad customer service experiences, from petty incidents such as this one to considerably more frustrating and financially damaging ones, are what have prompted most Pricewatch readers to get in touch over recent years. And it’s hardly surprising there are such high levels of discontent. According to an EU-wide study of customer service conducted last year on behalf of the Institute of Customer Service (ICS), the Republic of Ireland was to be found languishing in the bottom quarter of the table when it came to providing adequate levels of service.
  (more…)

• I don’t want one of those

  February 1, 2008 @ 11:18 am | by Conor Pope

  Shane has got word of a fantastic sounding new cocktail which has arrived in the most exclusive of Dublin venues, the kind of places I’m never to be seen, sadly. It’s called the elit Martini, has been designed by Ireland’s leading mixologist (we have a leading mixologist?) and is made with Ireland’s most expensive vodka (pictured right). Included among the ingredients are hand picked olives and caviar which has been “harvested from the largest and rarest sturgeon in existence” – at least these nearly extinct fish can take some comfort, when they’re being pulled from the Black Sea, that their soon-to-be harvested eggs will be put to good use. All the ingredients have been dropped into the crystal glass by a Mother of Pearl spoon (does the spoon you use to add ingredients really make a difference? I never knew) And the cost – around €55 but for that price you also get a guaranteed pass through the gates of hell.