Pricewatch »

• Post no bills…

  October 25, 2010 @ 4:38 pm | by Conor Pope

  Not a great day for O2 in The Irish Times. First there’s the post below this one… and then there is this story about the mobile company’s e-billing practices. ComReg has told O2 it cannot bill customers electronically without their consent and has given the company a month to sort out its non-compliance. In August, O2 wrote to customers in a jaunty fashion saying “If it’s okay with you, your next bill will be online instead of in the post”. The letter also carried guidelines on how people could opt out. This forced customers to opt out of the change rather than giving them a choice. This has been handled in a ham-fisted fashion by the company but as long as people are given a choice – rather than foreced to accept online billing – such changes should be welcomed. It is cheaper, envoromentally friendly and more up-to-date that the old paper trails.

• The puzzling case of the phantom iPhone

  @ 4:30 pm | by Conor Pope

  Recently Sinead Twomey tried to purchase a 32gb iPhone from O2 but was told the company was out of stock both online and in shops. “No one could tell me if or when they were going to be back in stock. I was told to just keep ringing and checking online.” She was told that O2 was at the mercy of Apple and there was nothing it could do about it. “The phone is fairly limited so I was told it would be very hard to get.” She happened to call into a Vodafone shop and asked what the story was with the iPhones. “I could have purchased the phone there and then.” She contacted O2 and told them “and they still had no response except to say check online and ring the stores. I was sick of it and to be honest all I wanted was to move to Vodafone. I can’t do this though because I have 11 months left on my contract.
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• The rugby ticket rip-off

  @ 9:23 am | by Conor Pope

  HOW WOULD YOU like to see the rugby giants of New Zealand run riot this autumn? With tickets costing between €32.50 and €55 (or just €11 for a child), it seems like excellent value and we have to take our hat of to the rugby authorities for pricing the tickets so fairly in the middle of the darkest recession in more than 70 years.

  Sadly, it is not the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) who deserve the kudos for this enlightened pricing strategy. All praise should be directed at their counterparts in Scotland. The upcoming match in Murrayfield is operating under a three-tiered pricing system with tickets selling for £45 (€54.99), €25 (€30.55) or €11.26 (£10) for schools.
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• Aldi’s spin is ridiculously tiresome and unnecessary

  October 19, 2010 @ 3:21 pm | by Conor Pope

  Dunnes Stores is Ireland’s cheapest supermarket when it comes to branded baby care products while Tesco is the most expensive, according to a survey published by the National Consumer Agency (NCA). The story is published here.

  But what interests me right now is not that but the fact the Aldi were so quick to issue a press release which is, I think, just a little cheeky.

  This is what I got from Aldi a few minutes ago:
  

  “National Consumer Agency survey confirms Aldi offers best priced baby care products in Ireland

  Aldi’s baby products provide Irish shoppers with the best value in Ireland, according to the latest survey from the National Consumer Agency (NCA).

  The NCA’s Baby Care Products Price Survey compared a basket of six own brand baby care products such as nappies and baby wipes across retailers, and found Aldi to be cheaper than its competitors, with its basket totaling €30.20.”

  However this is not the full story by a long shot. The comparison of the six common own-brand products including nappies and baby wipes in Lidl, Tesco and Aldi revealed an identical total price of €30.20 between the German discounters while Tesco worked out slightly more expensive at €31.07, a difference of 2.9 per cent.

• Happy days…

  October 12, 2010 @ 10:53 am | by Conor Pope

  

  So, just how long would it take for a McDonald’s happy meal to rot? Well, according to the Daily Mail this morning, a very, very long time indeed. They have a story about a Manhattan artist, Sally Davies, who photographed the meal of fries and burger every day for six months and so far there is no sign of mould or decay. Yum.

• The rise of the savvy shopper

  October 11, 2010 @ 10:40 am | by Conor Pope

  BACK IN 2005, most of us – particularly those of us with access to cheap and easy credit – were still thrilled skinny to be the economic envy of Europe. We were assured by our political masters that the good times would keep rolling and even if they didn’t, we had the softest of soft landings to look forward to.

  Fast-forward five years and an almost impenetrable black cloud sits over the country. We have moved from being Europe’s economic powerhouse to its basket case and the soft landing we were promised disappeared faster than a truckload of money poured into the coffers of Anglo Irish.

  While there is undoubtedly much to be glum about, at least we can take some comfort from research carried out by the National Consumer Agency (NCA) which indicates that the hard times have knocked some sense into us when it comes to spending money.
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