Pricewatch »

• Apples for all

  September 29, 2009 @ 10:06 am | by Conor Pope

  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.

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• Compare comparison sites

  September 28, 2009 @ 6:31 pm | by Conor Pope

  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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• Builders? You can afford them now…

  September 24, 2009 @ 4:40 pm | by Conor Pope

  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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• Getting a fix on the price of repairs

  September 21, 2009 @ 11:39 am | by Conor Pope

  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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• ‘My whole adult life, I never knew the right way to open a banana’

  September 19, 2009 @ 10:18 pm | by Conor Pope

  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.

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• Organic: is it worth it?

  September 14, 2009 @ 12:58 pm | by Conor Pope

  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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• I want to ride their bicycles

  September 10, 2009 @ 10:01 am | by Conor Pope

  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.

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• Buyer beware

  September 9, 2009 @ 10:52 am | by Conor Pope

  Over half of all websites which sell electronic goods within the EU are breaking consumer law, according to an investigation carried out on behalf of the European Commission. The breaches include a widespread failure to comply with rules on clear and unambiguous pricing, failure to include physical addresses on websites and, crucially, the omission of details regarding returns.

  While many canny Irish people take to the web when buying electronic goods in order to avoid the sometimes inexplicably high prices on our high streets, another often overlooked advantage of online shopping is that it gives people more rights than they have when they shop in old school stores thanks to EU distance selling rules.

  When you buy online, you have the right to return the goods within seven days without giving any reason and the retailer is obliged to issue you with a full cash refund and not try and pawn you off with credit notes or vouchers. If a product you buy online is faulty you are entitled to a repair, replacement or refund and the seller is obliged to cover postage costs.

  This fairly simple message does not seem to have got through to the majority of retailers who sell electronic goods via the web. The Commission-backed survey of 370 companies by enforcement agencies across the EU – including our very own NCA – found that 55 per cent showed irregularities.

  The online electronic goods market is worth nearly €7bn in the EU annually but a third of all complaints about the online retailing sector now centres around the digital market. Apparently six potential problem sites in Ireland have been identified but the NCA has thus far declined to say who they are.

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• “Totally ruthless” Tesco?

  @ 10:12 am | by Conor Pope

  Paul Cullen has an interesting story about Tesco being held responsible for the near total collapse of a large-scale vegetable co-op earlier this year. An Oireachtas committee was told that Tesco withdrew its business from the Dublin Meath Growers (DMG) just two months after it opened a €5 million facility to meet demand from the retailing giant. Employment at the co-op subsequently fell from 80 to just two or three voluntary members after Tesco pulled out. At yesterday a representative of the co-op accused the the multiple of being “totally ruthless”. Tesco rejected the claims and said DMG had simply lost out to a competitor.

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• D4 store war

  September 5, 2009 @ 11:25 am | by Conor Pope

  IT MIGHT SEEM to be straight out of a Ross O’Carroll-Kelly book, but the story of one-time billionaires opening a discount shop in a Dublin 4 hotel to challenge Lidl is not fiction but a sign of our cash-strapped time.

  Last week Gayle Killilea, the wife of financially troubled property developer Sean Dunne, lifted the shutters on what she describes as a low-cost shop in the grounds of the D4 Ballsbridge Inn (formerly Jurys Inn Ballsbridge).
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