We've Got Mail:Aidan Daly from Dublin has been in touch after getting wind of a very unusual and seemingly unfair practice which he says has been adopted at a top Dublin hotel.

"A friend of mine went into the Herbert Park Hotel on Sunday, Jan 14th, and enquired about booking for lunch for a group on Friday, Feb 16th," he writes. "She was quoted €25 per person. On mentioning that the lunch was in honour of her daughter's confirmation, she was informed that the price for the same lunch for a confirmation was €45." Daly says the hotel could not explain the price difference as the menus appeared to be exactly the same. He is, understandably, quite shocked by this - particularly as his own daughter is making her confirmation on the same day and he was planning to bring the family to the hotel for lunch.

We contacted the hotel. First we called looking for a lunch reservation for eight people on February 16th. Giving no reason for the day out, we asked about the set menu and were told there were two options - two courses for approximately €21 or three courses for €25.50.

Minutes later we called back and made the same request only this time we said our party of eight was celebrating a confirmation. Sure enough we were told the set lunchtime menu for parties celebrating confirmation (and communions) was €45.

We contacted the hotel a third time to see if they could explain why their confirmation lunches were so much more expensive than the everyday lunches. A spokeswoman for the hotel said that while the price difference was as our reader outlined it, the regular lunchtime menus and the confirmation lunches were "totally different". She said that for confirmation lunches the dishes on offer were "superior" because it was "a very special occasion, a big family day out". We questioned whether the cost of the food on the confirmation menu could really be €20 per person higher and were told that not only were ingredients pricier but the cost of hiring staff to cater for the confirmations was higher.

The spokeswoman said that while the hotel restaurant's regular lunchtime opening hours were from 12.30pm to 2.15pm, confirmation lunches would often be booked for outside normal opening hours and could continue until 5pm. "We have to keep staff on and a lot of the time you're talking about agency staff so there is a higher cost," she said.

A thorny problem with Blackberry phones

A reader from Sligo recently purchased the Nokia E61 Blackberry-enabled mobile phone from a Vodafone outlet in the town and after trying and failing to get it to connect to his Bluetooth headset he returned to the shop for assistance. He was flabbergasted when an assistant politely told him that he was not in a position to help. "He told me that while they were quite happy to sell the product they could not service it or offer anything by way of advice." The assistant provided a Nokia call centre number. Figuring the shop assistant must have been mistaken, our reader phoned Vodafone customer service. "I was told that they too were unable to offer any advice on how to deal with my problem over the phone. They also gave me the number of the Nokia help desk," he writes. Our reader called the number and was dismayed to learn it was a premium rate number. "This means I'm going to have to pay to get help with the phone," he writes.

Pay in time or pay the price

Morgan Crumlish contacted us to complain about NTL's controversial decision to impose a €2 charge on customers who do not pay their bills by direct debit and to hit people who pay their bills late with a fine of €7.68. "Is such a charge on which payment method you use legal?" he asks. He also says that, while he initially had no problem with the late payment charge, imposed if you do not pay up within 14 days of the date on your bill, on closer inspection he noticed "the bill was dated the 28th of December and it arrived on the 9th of January, leaving me three days to pay it", he says.

NTL announced both the new charge for people who do not pay by direct debit and the late payment fees in the run-up to Christmas. At the time a spokeswoman for UPC Broadband, the company which owns both NTL and cable providers Chorus, said Chorus was already operating a late payment fee so it was being introduced to NTL to standardise operations. She also said the charge for not using direct debits would not apply until April and promised the company would be "mindful of individual cases" where direct debits would cause hardship.

The chairwoman of the National Consumer Agency, Ann Fitzgerald, criticised the company. "Forcing consumers to go the direct debit route has very serious implications for poor and vulnerable people who do not have a bank account," she said, adding that although companies were entitled to recoup money for late payments, €7.68 was "very high".