Messages from extraterrestrials

SOUNDING OFF: Roger Hurley got in touch with a query about the postal service: "Mail arrives from the UK, or even from Ireland, bearing a label which suggests it was dispatched from Sweden, or Germany, or from even further afield. How do these services work?"

His wife recently received a utility bill relating to a flat in England. It was dated March 6th, but only arrived in Ireland on April 17th. "The reminder bill, dated March 25th, arrived by the same post," Hurley writes. "Both appear to have been dispatched from Belgium by a company based at Brussels Airport. They had no priority airmail stickers, nor any postmark with a date to show when they were dispatched. I have a subscription to a UK magazine - a recent issue appeared to have been sent from New Zealand, for goodness sake!"

Hurley says that even if it is cheaper for the companies to use the contract service, this doesn't make it more effective from their customers' point of view, "not to mention the air miles involved".

We contacted An Post to see if it could shed any light on this issue, and it could - the system is all the fault of extraterrestrials, apparently. A spokeswoman explained that the UK has a fully liberalised postal market and any postal service can set up there and tender for business, usually bulk-mail deliveries, under its own name - and that these businesses are known as extraterrestrial offices of exchange. So while a magazine or catalogue originating in the UK and destined for the Republic of Ireland might have a postmark from Sweden or New Zealand, it has actually been posted in the UK. There could be, the spokeswoman explained, several reasons why one of our reader's utility bills took so long to arrive while the other made it over from England in a comparatively short time. Many companies tendering for bulk international mail wait until an order is sufficiently large before dispatching it, often because the mail is not particularly time-sensitive. "It could also be that the company is using a postage rate which is appropriate to the UK but not to the rest of the EU," she said.

If mail is underpaid coming out of the UK, then it gets the slowest possible service, we were told. So mail which does not have a proper stamp is left languishing until there is enough post to fill a container, after which it is sent on the slowest boat to Ireland. Many Irish customers see mail with a UK first- or second-class stamp and assume that should be sufficient, when in fact an EU tariff is what should have been applied. The spokeswoman suggested that our reader should contact the utility in question to let it know there is a problem.

Border differential

A reader from Gorey visited Northern Ireland recently, and popping into the Tesco outlet in Banbridge, was "absolutely astounded" by how much less some products were selling for. He bought Ryvita for 63p (79 cent), the same crackers that are selling for €1.89 in Tesco in Gorey. Colman's mustard, which costs 70p (87 cent) in the North, is €1.83 in the south-east, while Tesco's own-brand sensitive-skin shaving foam, which costs just 59p (74 cent) in the North, has a price tag of €1.99 in the Republic.

He points out at least 10 other "absolutely laughable price differentials". When our reader showed his local Tesco manager the Banbridge receipt, the manager was unable to explain what was going on.

"He advised me to contact head office, which I did, and I am still waiting to hear back from them. None of the products in the NI store were on special," our reader says. "I spent £110.24 (€137) in the North and exactly the same shopping would have cost me in excess of €200 at home. There is something desperately wrong here."

We contacted Tesco about the price differentials - and not for the first time. A spokesman said that our reader may have confused shaving gel with shaving foam, a product which sells for

66 cent in the Republic - 8 cent cheaper than the North. With regard to the crackers and the mustard, he said they were "long-term price cuts" in the UK. We pointed out that a basket of goods at Tesco in Banbridge was still vastly cheaper than the same basket in the south. He accepted that there was "an exchange rate differential" and promised that customers south of the Border could "expect to see the benefit of that sooner rather than later".

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