With the help of Facebook, Bebo, YouTube, Twitter, the ever-expanding blogosphere and countless bulletin boards and discussion forums, people with access to a computer can complain to a potential audience of millions if a company displeases them.
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Manufacturers of high calorie products loaded with refined sugars can slap the term “low fat” on their packaging to create a false sense of wholesomeness while something made almost entirely with artery-clogging trans-fats and salt is free to boast about its “sugar-free” status.

There are also companies which bamboozle us with talk of hair and nail enriching vitamins and while such claims may, strictly speaking, be true in the sense that certain nutrients are important for the development of hair and nails, the reality is we already have them in abundance so the extra dose, available at a hefty price, is entirely unnecessary.
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Until December 2007 when he noticed payments coming out of his account. He immediately contacted the company and it stopped the payments. Ever since he has been trying the money taken from him in error refunded. He has sent numerous letters and emails to no avail. Most recently he sent an email to customer relations in August which was ignored and a fax in September which earned him a terse response in which Sky said “we are unable to make a refund in relation to this”. There was no further explanation.

So, Sky effectively stole (or at least took without asking) over a thousand euro from an entirely blameless customer, ignored multiple requests pleading with them to resolve the problem and said they would not give him a refund without saying why.
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Speaking at the announcement of the 2010 Georgina Campbell Awards today she said that “many fine establishments have cut costs to the bone and their businesses are now literally hanging by a thread”. She claimed that “prices have often been reduced to an unsustainable level and yet there is constant pressure from the public to make even further cuts.”

She said that “if for no other reason than enlightened self-interest, we will no longer be able to enjoy our favourite places if they go out of business – consumers need to think twice before pressing for even better bargains.”

Is she right? Should we stop haggling or driving harder bargains in case we drive the restaurants and hotels that we like out of business?

The retail giant, while unveiling the cuts campaign, said its new low, low prices were long-term structural changes and not promotional ones. But yesterday the good people at Cheap Eats reproduced email correspondence between a reader who complained to Tesco about rising prices in the store and a customer services manager who said that because its “Change for Good” campaign had ended “you will now be noticing increases in our product prices”.

Tesco has since denied it was putting up prices across the board and said the mail from its manager was sent in error. The retailer said it had actually introduced a further 7,329 price cuts over the past month, on top of the 12,500 cuts announced in May as part of its “change for good” price-reduction strategy and said its customer service manager, based in Dundee, had made an unfortunate mistake.

Indeed.

Filled with the best of intentions when she was building her house, she decided to use a renewable energy source for her heating and was convinced by a salesman that a wood pellet burner was the way to go. The cost of the burner was €8,000 but a grant of just under €4,000 from Sustainable Energy Ireland (SEI) under its “greener home” programme took the sting out of the bill.

The greener homes deal gives grants to homeowners who install a renewable energy heating system such as solar panels, biomass stoves and boilers, and geothermal heat pumps. It has been a runaway success since it was introduced in 2006 with over 37,000 applications approved so far.

It wasn’t all hunky-dory for our reader, however, and the problems started almost immediately after installation. The burner belched black smoke into her shed and consumed pellets at a ferocious rate – she was spending €150 a week on heating her 139sq m (1,500sq ft) house for just four hours a day, she says. The company which sold her the burner went out of business and the owner disappeared.
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While it allows for greater regulation of a sector which has been guilty of all manner of dodginess over the last 10 or 15 years, the new bill seems to have forgotten to include amongst its clauses, the power to force rogue traders to give refunds to consumers it has ripped off.
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