Discovering where Fraser's discounts have gone to

The House of Fraser's failure to deliver at the cash registers the discounts promised on the rails has prompted a Dublin reader to get in touch. The reader, from Dublin 16, was in the Dundrum store recently where a top and a pair of trousers in the Linea range caught her eye.

"The shop had a rack full of the same tops and another rack full of the trousers," she writes. "On top of each rack there was a notice saying that there was an extra 20 per cent off the last marked price." The hangers also had cardboard tags which repeated the offer.

However when she brought the items to the checkout she was charged the marked price without the extra 20 per cent discount. When she queried the price discrepancy with a supervisor, she was informed that the correct price was the price that came up at the till. "Customers put items back on wrong hangers sometimes, so you cannot rely on the cardboard dangling from the hanger," she was told.

"I brought the sales assistant to the rack and showed her the fixed notice promising an extra 20 per cent off. I said that I accepted that hangers can get mixed up but it is very unlikely that customers had stocked the racks as they had a neat row of tops and bottoms, all identical Linea items," our reader writes. "I am aware that items can be put on wrong racks, but it was not the case here as these racks had no other items on them apart from Linea tops and bottoms."

She was in House of Fraser again two days later, this time in the perfume department where she spotted a display of various aftershaves in gift boxes. "Blue and white cardboard signs were attached to the display promising an extra 20 per cent off the last marked price. It turned out again that the price charged was the marked price without an extra 20 per cent," she says. She wants to know who in House of Fraser is responsible for this? "I feel that the store was misleading its customers and making promises which were not true."

We contacted the store to find out what happened. Jean Ann Taylor, general manager of House of Fraser, tells us that she has already been in contact with our reader to discuss her complaint. Taylor says that over four days at the end of July thousands of customers had availed of the additional 20 per cent discount which applied to sale items and our reader was the only one to have had a negative experience.

"When the 20 per cent discount did not automatically come up, the sales adviser should have contacted a supervisor and it should have been manually done."

Taylor says she contacted our reader last Monday as soon as she became aware there had been a problem and she had HoF vouchers sent to her by way of compensation.

"We really do try to look after our customers here," she adds. "We are very, very conscious of it and I handle every complaint myself."

The high cost of memory

Alan Malone from Carlow went shopping recently for a memory card for his digital camera. All he wanted was a 512mb card, modest by any modern standard. But the price he was asked to pay was anything but modest. He says he was charged €80 for the card. He looked in one of his photo magazines and found the same card for sale in the UK for £15 (€21.97).

"I have seen rip-offs but I believe that is the worst I have seen yet," he writes. "When I made a comment to the lady about the price, I was told 'That's rip-off Ireland for you.' " PriceWatch compared the price of 512mb memory cards last year and while €80 might seem like a lot, we were able to find a number of retailers who were selling the cards for that much and more. Prices ranged from €58 to €89 for the cards with John Gunn's Camera Shop, on Wexford Street in Dublin, being the cheapest.

Money-saving refuelling stops

Bridget Dwyer from Cork sent in a text message reminding readers hiring cars in Britain to make sure to top up the petrol tank before returning it or face a ridiculous extra charge. While a litre of petrol in petrol forecourts costs approximately £1 (€1.48), a car hire company charged her £1.50 a litre and then levied VAT on top of that.