Pricewatch

• Singled out for supplement

  June 30, 2008 @ 10:55 am | by Conor

  A reader contacted us last week to complain about the single supplement costs attached to holidays for single people. “I recently tried to book a three-day trip to London and Oxford with the Travel Department and was informed that I had to pay an additional €199 for travelling on my own,” she writes. “As this is my first time to book a holiday on my own I was shocked to learn this. I am unsure if people are aware of this. I think it is discriminatory against single people and it should not be allowed to happen. Why is it like this? Is this fair? Has Ireland really gone crazy with overcharging or even simply charging people for being single? This is maddening. I am very angry about this and I think this issue needs to be addressed.”

  While we can completely understand this reader’s frustration, the single supplement is not new. Many hotels and tour operators’ price deals are based on a per person sharing basis and rates are not halved if selling to a single person. It is tough to avoid the supplement but not impossible. Shopping around is important. Some big operators use their buying power to negotiate lower single supplements, some hoteliers waive single supplements off-peak and some don’t charge single supplements at all.
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• L-plates don’t pass test

  @ 10:47 am | by Conor

  The day many drivers have dreaded has dawned. Since midnight, no provisional licence holders are permitted to drive unless they are accompanied by a qualified driver who has had a licence for more than two years. Despite a concerted push by the Road Safety Authority (RSA) to reduce wiating lists, nearly one in seven drivers - over 300,000 people - will find themselves in a driving limbo in the morning.

  The reforms, aimed at improving road safety, have been broadly welcomed, but question marks hang over many aspects of the new law, most notably how it’s going to be effectively policed by an overstretched Garda.

  A perhaps easier question that Pricewatch readers have been asking of late is, what are the factors driving the cost of lessons, and how can substantial price discrepancies between neighbouring instructors be explained?
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• So, what do you think?

  June 29, 2008 @ 8:30 pm | by Conor

  Our new (gloriously free) site is live, but you probably already know that if you’re reading this post! I’d be interested to know what people think about it (the site, not this post).

  Comments (34)

• irishtimes.com to be free for all

  June 28, 2008 @ 8:38 am | by Conor

  From Monday morning access to the new-look Irish Times website will be free and the address will change from www.ireland.com to www.irishtimes.com. The editor explains the thinking behind the move in this morning’s paper and highlights some of the developments that can be expected in the coming months. I hope you think it’s good news, I certainly do.

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• Tinned sausages and beans recalled

  June 25, 2008 @ 6:59 pm | by Conor

  Tesco has recalled a range of its own brand tinned beans and sausages because small pieces of rubber from a production line have been found in a number of cans. I would have thought that the inclusion of a piece of rubber in the tin could only have made them more wholesome. Mind you while I might turn my nose up at them now, when I was small I thought sausages and beans in a tin were the absolute business. They were up there with Knorr instant mash and dehydrated vegetables as magical, space age foods which I could never get enough of. I could never understand why my mother was so reluctant to buy them.

  Anyways, I’m off to win the Lotto now.

  UPDATE: Inexplicably, I have failed to win the Lotto, again. On a more positive note, however, no one else won it either so it’s going to be €20m on Saturday.

  Comments (2)

• Down with this sort of thing

  June 23, 2008 @ 1:16 pm | by Conor

  I got a Bluetooth-delivered ad to my mobile phone this morning, a 19-second promo clip from UPC. Getting ads sent to my phone is intrusive and spam like and apart from anything else, I have not signed up to receive advertising clips to my mobile, so how are the company not in breach of data protection legislation? I must find out more.

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• Pet hates about prices

  @ 10:06 am | by Conor

  It used to be that when your family pet got seriously ill, dangerously cranky or just plain old 20 years ago the only realistic option was to “send it to a farm in the country”. Times have changed, however, and dramatic advances in animal medicine have made it possible to treat many animal ailments that used to spell curtains.

  Instead of a swift boot, today’s overly aggressive mutt might be offered behaviourist therapy at a cost of €150 per session. A dog’s orthopaedic surgery following a car crash will set you back €1,500 while an elderly Fido is just as likely to be offered an MRI scan followed by a hip replacement, cataract surgery and an extensive course of expensive antibiotics at a combined cost of several thousand euro before the “farm” option is even discussed.
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• Does Penneys deserve its media pounding?

  June 22, 2008 @ 3:50 pm | by Conor

  At the beginning of June an intriguingly titled documentary called The Devil Wears Primark disappeared from Channel 4’s schedule. It had been promised the programme would shine a light into dark corners of the Indian rag trade, where people are employed by unscrupulous contractors to work long hours in intolerable conditions for a pittance. The show reportedly went undercover at clothes suppliers and subcontractors and exposed a dangerous, filthy world where unpaid overtime, verbal bullying and even child labour were rife.

  Within hours of the show’s no-show, Channel 4 issued a statement denying speculation that a threat of legal action from Primark, which trades as Penneys in the Republic, had forced it to pull the programme. The station said it had been rescheduled for a more prosaic reason. It wasn’t finished.
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• Dubliners paying more

  June 19, 2008 @ 11:18 am | by Conor

  Dubliners continue to pay more for goods and services than consumers in the rest of the country and the gap has increased in the last six months, figures released by the Central Statistics Office this morning have shown.

  An average basket of goods in Dublin costs 4.9 per cent more than outside the city as of last month, compared to 4.3 per cent last November, the latest survey by the CSO shows.
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• NCA cross border price survey

  June 18, 2008 @ 6:45 pm | by Conor

  Say what you like about the National Consumer Agency, but they’re great at producing timely surveys to rattle the big retailers. The one published this morning is particularly good as it puts to bed one of the myths that retailers like to perpetuate that the only reason prices are so much higher in the Republic than in the North is because overheads and taxes are that be higher.

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• Is your cover healthy?

  June 16, 2008 @ 1:22 pm | by Conor

  WHAT’S THE STORY WITH HEALTH INSURANCE? At the formal launch of Hibernian Health last Monday, a reporter asked what the waiting period was for someone who switched from one of the other health insurance providers in the market. There was a pause from the podium before it was pointed out that there was no wiating period and that people were free to move from one insurer to another without incurring any penalty, or even a momentary gap in their cover.

  Although the reporter should have known better, the person was not alone in being a little confused about how health insurance in this country works. According to a recent survey carried out by the Health Insurance Authority (HIA), the regulatory body governing the sector, 25 per cent of people are unsure about their switching rights, while another 15 per cent labour under the misapprehension that they cannot move without losing some degree of cover.
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• An unholy amount of money

  @ 1:06 pm | by Conor

  Just got a presser from the Ulster Bank about communion money. According to a survey it’s carried out (to promote savings accounts, in case you care), the average amount of cash given to a child making their first communion in 2008 was €463. Now that seemed like a shocking amount to me but I read on growing more wide-eyed by the second - almost a quarter recieved between €500 and €1,000 and 1 child in 20 was given over €1,000. A thousand quid!!! Me? I got a tenner and spent the lot on Tonto and Subbuteo stuff.

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• Not wanting to be picky but. . .

  June 15, 2008 @ 9:18 pm | by Conor

  I lost my Laser card over the weekend and only realised it today. So I called Bank of Ireland’s Banking 365 number – an 1890 number incidentally - to cancel it. I was put through to credit card services and when I asked if they could check if anything untoward had happened on my account since it went missing, I was told that wasn’t possible because Bank of Ireland people don’t work on Sundays. Now, I don’t want to be pedant or anything but if they don’t work Sundays should the service not be called Banking 311.

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• Can we get back to the prices now?

  June 14, 2008 @ 7:00 pm | by Conor

  Erm, right, this seems to have inadvertently become a place where people from across Europe come to say a big Thank You to the people of Ireland (well, some of them) for rejecting the Lisbon treaty. My single-sentence post from yesterday morning has generated more comments than the longest and most hilarious of posts from Twenty Major or the rantiest of Radiohead rants on Jim’s Blog. While everyone, from German communists to former Tory MPs, are certainly welcome to stop by and say hello, I’m not sure this really is the best place for such an outpouring of gratitude about the referendum for a whole raft of reasons. Mind you, some of the comments have been fascinating – one poster wants us to return all the money we’ve ever got from the EU and leave immediately – yep, I can see that happening alright, but most have declared their intention to make Guinness and/or whiskey their drink of choice in honour of “plucky little Eire”. And at least one member of the charming UKIP has called us Micks in what, I think he may think is a term of endearment.

  Anyhoos, this lady – let’s call her Rosemary MacCabe – went looking for a copy of Vogue in Dublin earlier this week and was less than impressed with the variation in prices she came across. Top marks for all that shopping around though.

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• Oh No

  June 13, 2008 @ 12:01 pm | by Conor

  It looks like the Lisbon Treaty has been rejected – does that mean we’re going to have to do the whole thing again come the autumn?

  Comments (253)

• July 11th date set for iPhone 3g

  June 10, 2008 @ 11:37 am | by Conor

  O2 today announced that the iPhone 3G will be available in Ireland on July 11. It will be subsidised and priced according to which of the existing three iPhone tariffs a customer chooses to sign up to. The subsidised device prices will start from €49. Existing iPhone customers will be able to upgrade to the new device.

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• Learning to drive. . .

  June 9, 2008 @ 5:05 pm | by Conor

  Here’s an interesting post from a reader by the name of Aoife. I reckon she’s being very optimistic if she thinks she’ll have any change from a grand once the whole process is over.

  I’m starting out learning to drive and am shocked at the cost of doing so. My particular gripe is the vast difference is prices schools of motoring are willing to charge for single or block booked (pre-paid) lessons. I’ve only researched the lessons in my area (Terenure) and have come across a difference of €100 for a block booking of 10 lessons between the worst and best quotes (from €300 to €400). There is a similar difference in the prices for single 1 hour lessons too (ranging from €35 to €50). All this on top of (here goes);Official Driver Therory Question Bank Book €17.99, Driver Theory Test €36.50, Sight Test €15.00, Provisional Lecence Application Fee €15.00, Driving Test Fee €38.00, Full License Fee (10yr) €25.00. Then there’s the cost of insurance, L-plates, passport photos and any repeat tests that may need to be taken. I’m left wondering is this the govnerment’s new strategy for reducing the number of people commuting by car. Make learning to drive pricy to put people off. I’m nearly 30 years old, in full time employemnt and it gauls me to fork out what will amount to at a minimum €500.00 I can only imagine how students or unemployed people who need to be able to drive to get a job may feel about the cost involved.

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• Most unimpressed with FedEx mess

  @ 8:07 am | by Conor

  A reader from Dublin got in touch with us with a cautionary tale about using FedEx, after the courier lost a ring worth nearly €3,000. She bought the ring as a 30th birthday present to herself, but the amethyst stone had come loose. She contacted the designer in Milan to have it repaired under warranty. She decided to return the item for repair using the jeweller’s FedEx code, the third time she had needed to do so in about 18 months.
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• Growing your savings

  @ 6:57 am | by Conor

  There’s money to be made in trend spotting, once you’re good at it. US futurist Gerald Celente has been making predictions with Mystic Meg-like zeal for more than 20 years and has had some notable successes. He was years ahead of the game in predicting the popularity of bottled water, organic food and gourmet coffee in the 1980s, so it’s worth listening to what he says today about tomorrow.

  Surprisingly, one of his latest predictions looks more to the past than the future. Earlier this year, he expressed the conviction that kitchen gardens will blossom in the next five years. He believes patches of land once reserved for lawns and low-maintenance trees will soon be converted into food-producing plots by people seeking to grow their own, not because of any economic downturn, but because they want access to the freshest food possible. “Buy a bag of fertiliser and grow your own greens. This sense of self-sustaining is on the rise,” he has said.

  Judging from the interest on the faces of the 60,000 people who filed passed the beautifully maintained vegetable plots at the Bloom garden festival in the Phoenix Park recently, he’s right on the money. The garden sector, already worth in excess of €2.2 billion to the economy, looks to set to bloom as a recession bites and people look for cheaper pastimes and ways they can save themselves a few bob.
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• The finest pamphlet of the campaign so far!

  June 7, 2008 @ 5:38 pm | by Conor

  I came across – and by came across, I mean someone submitted it as a comment under my last post - A Spoofer’s Guide to How to not vote no by Jason O’Mahony. It is unashamedly pro-Treaty and funny, a combination I haven’t come across before in this campaign.

  Here’s one excerpt I liked

  Who is against the Treaty. A lovely bunch of people, and they’ve been right about so much before!

  Gerry Adams
  Sinn Fein used to be against the EU, but have now changed to wanting to reform it, so that every decision is made by unanimity, that is, never. Am I the only person who finds it ironic that they pretty much want to model the EU on the Commonwealth? Sinn Fein also want (Pay attention, this is tricky) to bring Northern Ireland into the Euro, and once in, bring the whole island out of the Euro together. Huh? Apparently it is something to do with 19th century concepts of national identity. Maybe they’ll give us all an acre of land, a bucket and a donkey each too. Sinn Fein say the EU is too pro-business, too capitalist, and does not give enough rights to EU workers, whilst at the same time condemning the EU’s interference in the rights of Irish workers. Finally, and this is my favourite, Sinn Fein believe that the EU is too militaristic and are concerned about the EU using weapons to achieve its political ends. I’ll let that sentence just sit quietly there, as I leaf through the November 2007edition of Black Pots and Kettles Monthly.

  Margaret Thatcher & The Tories
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• Countdown to cataclysm

  June 6, 2008 @ 2:49 pm | by Conor

  Interesting poll in The Irish Times this morning which makes it clear the Yes side is in serious trouble. It seems to me that the Government has made a complete pigs ear of the campaign by spectacularly failing to explain in simple terms why people should back the treaty. And they have not done their cause much good with the response to the poll which has verged on the hysterical. The comments from ministers today are filled with dark threats about the cataclysmic consequences if we reject the treaty. Mind you the No side are no strangers to the dark, and frankly ridiculous, threat themselves. And who ever came up with the notion that “if in doubt vote no” needs to go stand in the corner and think about what they’ve done. If in doubt, don’t vote, I’d say.

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• Hurray for LA

  June 5, 2008 @ 7:33 pm | by Conor

  In a move which could give cable TV companies everywhere, pause for thought, even Ireland where they are exemplary when it comes to customer service (ha!), the city of Los Angeles is to sue Time Warner Cable for causing “major havoc and distress” to its customers. The lawsuit claims the company violated its franchise agreement with the city by having subscribers spend hours on hold with customer service representatives and allowing excessive repair work delays. “Hundreds of thousands of Los Angeles residents were ripped off,” the city’s Attorney General said in a statement. “Time Warner must be held accountable for its promises.”

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• Stop your whinging

  @ 9:54 am | by Conor

  The Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan yesterday refused to withdraw his assertion that consumers and businesses should stop “whingeing” about rising fuel prices”. While he may well have a point about the futility of complaining about global price rises, accusing people of whinging at a time when the economy is in recession slowing down and food and fuel inflation is rising dramatically is not, perhaps, the most astute or diplomatic thing he could have done.

  This from this morning’s Irish Times.

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• Does anyone care about Radiohead anymore?

  June 4, 2008 @ 10:08 am | by Conor

  Months and months ago I bought some tickets to see Radiohead play in Malahide next Saturday. Turns out I can’t go (for reasons which are far too dull to relate here). So, after trying to pass the tickets (for face value, might I add – I’m no tout) on to friends and colleagues without anyone showing even the vaguest glimmer of interest in spending €140 on the pair, I turned to ebay.

  My old friend eBay. It’s never let me down before. I put the tickets online last week and waited for bids to mount (the concert is sold out after all so I figured that interest would be high). Guess how many bids the tickets attracted before the auction ended this morning?

  Four. Four miserly bids in five days. And the final selling price was less than €50 for the pair. I’ve decided not to sell them at that price – I’d rather give them away to someone I know rather than sell them to a (possibly) undeserving stranger at a third of their face value price, frankly.

  Sigh…

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• Food prices increase faster and faster

  June 3, 2008 @ 1:00 pm | by Conor

  A front page story today says that the price of food rose last year by 8.4 per cent - twice the rate of inflation . Dairy products such as milk, cheese and eggs registered the biggest increase, jumping 22.2 per cent, while the price of oils and fats rose 14.9 per cent and bread and cereals increased by 11.9 per cent, according to a Europe-wide survey published yesterday by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.

  In response Fine Gael’s Leo Varadkar has called for a Dáil Committee hearing on rising food prices while Labour’s Brendan Ryan wants the National Consumers Agency to investigate. Now, far be it from me to criticise, but have rising food prices not been a problem for months. Did this pair only wake up to it this morning?

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• In Bloom

  June 2, 2008 @ 10:20 pm | by Conor

  Was at the Bloom garden festival in the Phoenix Park on Saturday. I’d say the Bord Bia organisers still can’t get over how lucky they got with the weather. The place basked in glorious sunshine for the whole weekend and it really made a difference. I was there last year when it was cold, grey and wet and I left thinking it was a bit dull. This year, though, it was great – packed (but not too packed) with picnicking families and gospel singers and brightly coloured giraffes posing for photographs and market stalls offering tastes of some great sausages and cheeses (and some pretty revolting smoked eel). Every silver lining has a cloud though and I was horrified by the €2.50 I had to spend on a bottle of coke (it costs a euro in Tesco), the freshly squeezed juice which cost a fiver and the sausage roll I shelled out six quid for. Don’t know why I was surprised, mind you. Ah well, never mind.

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