Ireland is the fourth most expensive place in the world to live and shop, according to an international price comparison survey, details of which appeared in The Irish Times this moring. According to pricerunner.co.uk which carried out the study we are up two places from last year and are number one for pricey condoms. Go us!
Do you think people should shop locally “in the national interest”? Siptu does. For years we have been ripped off and charged 30, 40 or even 50 per cent more than people living in the US and the UK for exactly the same products and had little choice but to pay up. Now, that times are harder, Siptu, is trying to guilt people into rejecting the allure of New York and Newry and buy Irish this Christmas.
“We know how hard pressed families will find it to make ends meet in these particularly difficult economic circumstances and they will rightly be looking for value for money, Siptu’s Jack O’Connor said today. “Buying Irish this Christmas is in the national interest in a very definite economic sense as well as being patriotic,” he claimed. “The cost of not doing so is far greater than the short term benefit from any particular price differential.”
He joins the Lord Mayor of Dublin Eibhlin Byrne who recently urged people to “show civic patriotism and make a special effort to do some focused shopping in the city.”
Hmm, while obviously widespread job losses brought about by a massive transfer of business overseas would be disastrous, it’s hardly fair to expect hard-pressed consumers to continue to pay very high prices if bargains are to be easily found elsewhere. Surely the responsibility lies with retailers to drive prices down, even if it is as the expense of diminished profits in the short term?
MONDAY UPDATE irishtimes.com poll question today is asking: Do you think it is fair to ask consumers to forgo better value in the North or overseas in order to support the Republic’s retailers during the recession?
So far, the answer is a fairly comprehensive no…
When people complain about higher prices in Ireland, they tend to focus on groceries and clothes and, while the discrepancies in the cost of identical products between this jurisdiction and others in these areas can be pretty hefty, there are, at least, some ways to economise.
By shopping in the Aldis and Penneys of the retail world, consumers can undoubtedly cut costs and by swapping overpriced but instantly recognisable brands in favour of generic own-brand alternatives, a packet can be saved. There are, however, other areas where the price gaps between here and almost everywhere else is as great, if not greater, but consumer choice is significantly reduced and the ability to shop around almost non-existent.
While it won’t come as a shock to many people to learn that Irish consumers pay considerably more than those living in other jurisdictions for many medicines – both over the counter and prescription – the extent of some of the price differences are truly shocking.
(more…)
After returning his car late one evening to a Spanish airport in what he thought was pristine condition, a Pricewatch reader who contacted us recently was surprised when a member of staff took the keys and crawled under the car with a torch. There was a dent under the car, a dent which would cost him serveral hundred euro.
He was mystified as to how she knew exactly where to check for damage and was deeply suspicious that the damage had been done before he’d taken possession of the car. His insistence that he was not responsible for the dent fell on deaf ears and, because he had already signed a form agreeing to cover any damage, there was very little he could do to stop the money being debited from his credit card account.
(more…)
More bad news about prices today comes from the Central Statistics Office with the latest inflation figures hitting five per cent. What’s even more depressing is that the rate of inflation for food and non-alcoholic drink was 0.9 per cent last month which equates to over ten per cent annually. The news will come as no surprise to Irish shoppers with a keen eye on the price of their goceries.
The prices of basic foodstuffs here has soared in the last 12 months. Bread is up around 23 per cent , flour is up 40 per cent, the cost of milk is approximately 30 per cent higher and eggs, butter and biscuits – all the things that are to be commonly found in Irish shopping baskets – are also significantly dearer.
There was a time when we could blame price increases like this on profiteering and greed on the part of the retailers but that doesn’t appear to be the case in this case – at least not entirely. The problem of rising food prices is a global one and it is only going to get worse. In this the first time in decades that we have seen such sustained global price rises.
(more…)
Galway is Ireland’s most expensive city for hotel rooms, according to the hotel price index (HPI) published today by website hotels.com. Guests paid a fairly steep average price of €137 for a night in a Galway hotel – a 4 per cent rise on the previous year. Cork is the second most expensive city with prices of €125 per night while the average cost of a night in a Dublin hotel was €116.
Mark Crowther was at a business meeting in the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Santry recently and was shocked by the high cost of WiFi internet access there.
(more…)
A reader from Dublin who frequently does her grocery shopping across the border rang us after making some notes on the pricing in Tesco in both jurisdictions. In the North she found a 100g Tesco own-brand of organic instant coffee with a price tag of £1.87 (€2.50). In Dublin, she says, the same jar was selling for €4.48. A 150g pack of Tuc crackers which cost €1.99 in Dublin cost 95 cent in the North while Jacob’s crackers were selling for 88 cent up there and €1.60 down here. “That is virtually double,” she says. She cited a range of other examples, including Bisto and Jus-Rol puff pastry, which had similar price discrepancies. “I don’t buy the argument about higher overheads and different VAT rates,” she says. “How is it that other retailers such as Marks & Spencer’s prices north and south of the border tend to be much closer if the overheads and VAT rates are so different? Something should be done about it, I really feel the public is being ripped off.”
A spokesman for Tesco said that, across the full range of around 20,000 products stocked by the store, the price differential between stores in Northern Ireland and the Republic was between 10 and 15 per cent. “Occasionally there will be larger gaps” which, he said, could be explained by certain products being on special in one jurisdiction but not in the other.
Opening the paper this morning made for depressing reading. Hardly a page went by without some story or another warning of dramatic price hikes catching my eye. First there was the Ryanair story which I mentioned yesterday. Then there was the news that the price of milk has increased dramatically – by around 12 cent a litre, in fact – over the last couple of weeks as retailers passed on “soaring” costs on to the consumer. “Glanbia carried these costs for many months which have now been passed on to ensure that margins return to sustainable levels,” a Glanbia spokesman said adding that the price rises were a “measured response” to unprecedented cost increases. And then there was the head of the ESB warning that price increases could be expected too. We can look forward to higher electricity bills as part of a new (and probably quite wise) policy of linking domestic prices more closely to the cost of producing electricity. “The big issue is how we get people to reduce their demand by 20 per cent. Overall, bills will not increase if this target is met,” said CEO Padraig McManus.
Richard in Naas got in touch with a money-saving tip which has shaved a fair amount off his annual grooming bill. He saved more than €9 on a pack of eight Gillette Mach 3 Turbo razor blades by buying them on eBay. “Tesco, which appears to be the cheapest retailer for them, sells the razors for €19.49,” he writes. “I got them off eBay for about €10, including postage.”
The remnants of the celebratory champagne had barely gone flat when consumers received their first new-year dose of bad news. On January 3rd the price of a barrel of crude oil finally reached and briefly passed the milestone mark of $100 (€68) on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Global oil prices have been climbing steadily for months – the price of Brent Crude has almost doubled since the beginning of 2007 and increased fourfold over the past four years, so the breach of $100 was as inevitable as it was depressing.
(more…)
I got a letter from Quinn Healthcare this morning telling me that my health insurance policy was due for renewal. In honeyed tones it thanked me for my business and assured me in big bold letters that there was No Need to do a thing. “We would like to inform you of a number of changes that may (may!!!) affect your policy,” it said. The first thing was that the cost of the policy was increasing – the letter did not bother telling me by how much – either in percentage or actual terms. Then I was told that “in line with Government recommendations” Quinn Healthcare was introducing “a standard, transparent and uniform price through the removal of discount schemes. ‘Hmm, that sounds a bit worrying,’ I thought. The letter went on to say that if I paid by instalments “a 3 per cent credit charge will now apply”.
“We are committed to keeping prices competitive and compared to other insurers in the market we have kept this increase as low as possible” the letter concluded.
As low as possible!!! They have just increased my premiums by 18 per cent! I’m not sure what bugs me more – the five per cent price hike, the abolition of the discount I got for being a member of a credit union, (something they blame the Goverment for), the 3 per cent credit charge for paying by direct debit (isn’t it weird how NTL penalise people for not paying by direct debit while Quinn penalise them for paying by dd?) or the fact that the correspondence seemed to go out of its way to avoid telling me by how much they were increasing my policy.
I wonder how much Vivas is charging…
Oh, and apologies for losing the run of myself with all the exclamation marks, I’m fuming.
Bad news in today’s paper for motorists and for people who like to stay warm:
Petrol will increase across the board by about 2.3 cent a litre plus VAT of 21 per cent, bringing the rise to about 2.8 cent and adding €1 to the cost of filling the average car’s fuel tank.
Home heating oil products are likely to jump by more than one cent a litre, increasing the cost of filling domestic heating fuel tanks by about €100.
Diesel will go up by anything between 0.6 cent a litre in Maxol forecourts and 1.06 cent a litre in Shell and Statoil service stations.
The good people at the National Consumer Agency have objected to plans to charge motorists almost 60 per cent extra to cross the M50 when barrier-free tolling is introduced next August. The NCA has called the charge “excessive” and has accused the NRA (that’s the national roads authority and not the national rifle association for any understandably confused Americans reading this) of imposing hidden toll charges in the form of administration charges, top-up thresholds and minimum top-up amounts.
A survey comparing Tesco prices in Ireland and the UK caused a bit of a stir when it was released by a rival supermarket in Britain last week.
It showed that Tesco stores in the Republic were on average 15 per cent more expensive than in the UK. The reaction from anyone with even a passing acquaintance with Irish prices probably stood somewhere between “Only 15 per cent?” and “So what’s new?”.
(more…)
Ryanair has announced that it is to make its web check-in free. Hurray you might be forgiven for shouting until you read further down the breathlessly written press release to the bit where they say they are also to introduce charges for people who don’t use the web check-in service. From September 20th, the simple act of presenting yourself at the check-in desk is going to cost you €3. It absolutely beggars belief. If Ryanair could charge you for the air you breath on board their flights they would.
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.
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.
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.
(more…)
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.
(more…)
