Pricewatch queries: Will nonpayment of water bill affect my credit rating?

“I need your advice,” starts an email from a reader, Dara. “I have always paid my water bills as it was the lawful thing to do. However, I held off paying my bill for April to see what government was formed and what was going to happen.”

He was sent a late-payment notice from Irish Water and he hates to be in debt on a bill. “The Government has issued no statement, and everything is up in the air. Will it be a blemish on my credit score if I don’t pay?”

He then adds something strange.

“My neighbour rang Irish Water to cancel her direct debit for the next quarter and they offered her a refund on the last-quarter bill. So why should I pay? What do you advise? I am sure other cash customers are wondering, too.”

There are a couple of things going on here. First off, Dara’s credit rating is very unlikely to be affected if he decides not to pay his Irish Water bill for April.

We would be loath to tell a person whether or not they should pay. But the bottom line is that, as things stand, there is nothing Irish Water can really do to compel him to pay. And many thousands of people who were paying have decided to cancel their direct debits or withhold payment in recent weeks.

We also checked with Irish Water and were assured it is not offering people who are cancelling their direct debits refunds on money already paid. Its position remains that it is still legally obliged to collect money until water charges are actually suspended.

Bags of strife if you forget your bag-for-life
"I was in my local Tesco recently and, not for the first time, I left my bags-for-life at home," writes a reader from Dublin. "I didn't have a huge amount of stuff, so I asked for a couple of the 22-cent bags only to be told that Tesco had stopped stocking them. All they had were heavy-duty bags for 79 cent."

The price seemed steep, so he asked for a box for his shopping. “There were no boxes available,” he says. “I know that the plastic bags are not good for the environment and I do my best to use them as little as possible. I also think the bag tax is a great idea. What I don’t think is such a good idea is Tesco’s sudden discontinuation of them.

“Will Tesco now sell more of its more expensive bags because foolish people like me forget to bring our own? And will it increase its profits? I suspect that it will.

“Consumers, on the other hand, aren’t so lucky, and we will now have to remember our own bags or be faced with a charge of 79 cent every time.”

We contacted Tesco and were told that “in line with most other retailers” it is in the process of “gradually phasing out our 22-cent bags. The popularity of these bags has been in decline in recent years with many customers opting to reuse bags instead. We made this decision following feedback from customers and requests from local councillors to help reduce pollution. This move will further support fewer bags to landfill and complete the journey that was started many years ago with the introduction of the bag levy.”

The spokeswoman added that it doesn’t tend to have many boxes “because the majority of our fresh food is supplied in green crates, which is more eco-friendly.”

Heated about lack of stove prices online
A Dublin reader asked if there was any chance we "could highlight the widespread and annoying practice of websites not displaying prices? I'm looking at websites for kitchen stoves and it would be easier to discover the Third Secret of Fatima than the prices of these stoves. What's going on ? I just ignore those sites. If others did the same, this nonsense might stop."

This reader gave us no more details, otherwise we would be naming and shaming the sites. Or at least doing our best to find our how much the stoves he wants cost.