Cross the sea for ferry savings

SOUNDING OFF: Ripped off? Stunned by good value? Write, text or blog your experience to us

Jane Halligan and her family are in the UK after taking the Stenaline ferry from Dún Laoghaire to Holyhead. "I was pricing the trip using my son's laptop. I had Googled Stenaline and, as his Google toolbar is (for some reason) the .co.uk version, I was brought to the UK Stenaline website."

On the site she was told that the price for the round trip - sailing economy from Dún Laoghaire on the fastcraft at 11.30am on August 7th and returning from Holyhead at 3pm on August 19th, again on the fastcraft - came to £333 (€421).

"Happy with this price, I then had to use the desktop to make this booking so I could print off the receipt. I again Googled Stenaline but on our desktop the Google toolbar is the .ie version, so I was brought to the Irish Stenaline website."

She proceeded to book the trip as described above, but the total price in euros this time was €487 - an extra €67. "I presumed I had made a mistake and went back on the UK website but there was no mistake." By booking via the UK website, she says she saved at least €65 "just for typing .ie instead of .co.uk after the name."

She wondered if the UK site would accept her booking without a UK address and found she had no problem in making the reservation. "One can reserve a Stena Plus Seat for £14 on the UK site or €21 on the Irish site, so they are just calculating the exchange rate as a 50 per cent increase on the sterling price. Another exchange rate rip-off. Please pass on to the readers the savings they can make by logging on to the UK site."

We contacted the company and a spokesman told us that the prices for things such as port costs, dock workers' wages, suppliers costs and the like are fixed in each of its markets at the start of the year. He said that because sterling was Stenaline's predominant currency, the effect of a strengthening euro had implications for its Irish cost base.

He said that the company had tried to absorb as many of the cost increases as possible but said it was "difficult to factor in temporary, pendulum-like fluctuations in exchange rates between currencies". He said the company was reviewing the situation and would try and look at ways to mitigate against this in its next pricing review. In the meantime, Pricewatch suggests you look to the stenaline.co.uk website for some instant savings.

Cutting key costs

Jennifer Lewis got in touch about the varying price of getting a key cut. "I had to get copies of a standard key cut for a front door, and was quite amazed at the variation in prices, ranging from €11 in Cornelscourt, €8.30 in Blackrock, to Woodies in Bray at only €4.50, where the man there apologised for that price!"