SOUNDING OFF:Brian Heffernan contacted us with a good news story and a bad one. First the good news: he bought a bottle of red Faustino in a Tesco Express in Inchicore recently. It had an advertised price of €9.99 but when he went to the cash register he was charged €10.49. He mentioned it to the manager "more just to inform them of the discrepancy", he writes. "As it turns out they have a 'no-quibble policy' for this type of issue which meant I scored the vino gratis."
He was less impressed with the XBox Live service to which he is currently signed up. It is a web-based gaming platform run by Microsoft on which you can buy games and other pieces of software and compete against others. "They make it really easy to sign up and amend your payment details online," he writes. "However, I recently tried to cancel my account with them. They provide the following number online 1-800-4MY-XBOX to call which is a bit annoying in itself. I suspect the number is American so I got nowhere with it," he says. What really bugs him is how it is made so easy to join or amend or buy something from the service online "but it seems to be really awkward/impossible to cancel your membership".
Wallis removes the tags
A reader by the name of Helen was shopping in Wallis recently when she noticed they had torn off the sterling price, which had been attached to the price tags on the clothes along with the euro price - not the only shop operating in both the Republic of Ireland and the UK that has adopted such a policy in recent months.
"We all know that we are being ripped off in the Republic - the mark up between the sterling price and the euro price is blatantly obvious, even though the euro-sterling exchange rate has been trading consistently at around €0.78 for the past year. By tearing off the sterling price, does Wallis think that we won't notice we are being ripped off?"
She suggests that, as the euro has got even stronger against the dollar in recent weeks "and the path to Newry has become more tempting, shop-owners in the Republic will cop on and reduce their prices accordingly".
One shop that still carries the sterling and euro prices is Laura Ashley on Grafton Street. The wife of a reader from Waterford was shopping there recently when a coat caught her eye. It cost €220 and she bought it. "At home she realised the sterling price was also on the coat - £125," he writes. "At today's rate of exchange that would equal €152. She rang the shop to find out why the price in the Republic was €68 dearer but she says she made little progress and was told that "prices are not decided in the branch itself."
The green grass of home?
We get a lot of e-mails, phone calls and letters from people who are weary of the high cost of living in Ireland and there seems to be a consensus that things are that little bit worse for consumers here. This is why the mail we got from Alan Fairbrother last week stood out. He has an entirely different take on the matter.
"If consumers here believe they are been ripped of by retailers without taking all the economics into account, such as pay, taxes, rates," he writes, and if they "do not want to pay for Irish television, then why do they live here and keep moaning? Why don't they leave to where the grass is greener on the other side. By the time they realise all the other taxes people in other countries pay, they will discover their money will not go any further than here," he concludes.
