YOUR CONSUMER QUERIES:MICHAEL NASH has a problem with Ticketmaster. He bought three tickets for a concert – for his brother and his two friends – and paid a service charge of €3.50 for each ticket but the tickets never arrived.

“I phoned Ticketmaster and was told that the tickets had been dispatched weeks ago by normal post. I was told my brother needed to collect them at the box office and would have to bring a photocopy of my credit card and ticket receipt,” he writes.

“I don’t have time to spend on the phone, so I have been trying to email them regarding the service charge. My Ticketmaster page had a message saying that my tickets were being processed. I wanted to request some evidence that the tickets were in fact posted out. For €3.50 I would expect more than normal post.

“I also wanted to ask why I wasn’t emailed an alert indicating the tickets were posted, so that I could look out for them,” he says. “However, they don’t seem to have an email facility which is strange in this IT age.”

He points out that he paid €3.50 for each ticket in service charges and is baffled as to what the service was.

“The service failed on three occasions – once for each service charge on each ticket. I just want to know why the service I paid for three times didn’t work. What did I actually pay €10.50 for?

“I’m sure this is not the first time you have had problems with Ticketmaster, but I thought I’d let you know about my experience with the service and the problem of emailing them to try and get some answers.”

Ticketmaster has stoutly defended its service charges on these pages and while we didn’t hear back from it yesterday, we would expect the response to be no different on this occasion.

One-way and return prices don't add up

A READER called Bláithín contacted us looking for help with an issue she has with Aer Lingus.

She bought one-way fares to Boston for herself and her husband with a departure date in June, as they did not have definite return dates and assumed that two one-way fares going to and from Boston would be roughly the same as if they booked a return fare.

"In fact, Aer Lingus have two different fare structures, one for one-way trips and one for returns," she writes.

She says the airline advertises the prices for one half of a return fare as a one-way price, which she believes to be misleading.

"I tried to amend these fares to convert them to return fares, but cannot do so, and Aer Lingus is insisting I can only book two more one- way fares to come back from Boston, even though I am also travelling outbound with them.

"This price difference between two return fares, and four one-way fares is significant, in the order of €700, and we are now considering cancelling one flight as we cannot afford to pay this prices," she says.

She describes herself as "a loyal customer of Aer Lingus over the years, but will reconsider my loyalty in light of this practice and their lack of response".

We contacted the airline to see what it had to say and at the time of going to print it was still investigating the matter for us. We will return to the subject next week as soon as we've heard back from them.

Hold the mayo recipe

BOBBY MacLAUGHLIN was less than impressed with our recent review of DIY mayonnaise. We rated home-made mayonnaise as being bothersome – taking 15 minutes to prepare – and not cheap, at €6 a litre.

"Whoever wrote this badly needs a different recipe. I've been making my own delicious mayonnaise for decades.

"The current cost is 93 cents per half litre and it takes about 60 seconds to prepare.

"I'd be delighted to provide exact instructions to anyone interested."

Bank fees

LAST WEEK, we carried an item on bank charges in which we said that with Bank of Ireland to avoid charges, "you have to maintain a balance of €3,000 in your current account for the duration AND run at least €3,000 through the account per quarter (say, your salary), as well as contrive to manually perform nine payments, to qualify for free banking".

This is not actually the case. To qualify for free banking with the bank you need to lodge at least €3,000 in a current account AND make nine debit payments from that account using 365 Phone and/or Online over the course of a fee quarter.

There is no requirement to maintain a credit balance at all.

Customers who maintain a permanent credit balance of €3,000 do also automatically qualify for free banking but the bank's primary offer is for customers to simply lodge and use its direct channels for payments.