“Sausages are ideal comfort food, and they don’t come much more comforting than these. Hick Cajun Sausages are huge and bursting with spicy flavour. They’re great barbecued and stuffed into a roll, and they also make a wonderful sausage stew – Cajun coddle for the 21st century. Great texture and taste.”
So began the very first Pricewatch column which appeared on these pages 20 years ago this month.
It was 2004 and smoking was suddenly out – or at least banned in pubs, restaurants and night clubs, which were still a thing.
It was the year we got a glimpse of Dublin in the rare auld times as trams reappeared on the streets of the capital, while £26 million disappeared from a bank in Belfast the very same year.
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George W Bush stayed in the West Wing and Bryan McFadden left the Westlife lads. The first Electric Picnic happened and Bertie Ahern wore an electrifying yellow jacket on a beach when – as taoiseach of the country which held the EU presidency – he got to hang out with the G8 leaders, much to all our shame.
And then into the fray, unheralded, entered this page.
It has, by any measure, a humble origin story. Truth be told, it was all something of an accident.
Back in the autumn of 2004 Pricewatch, in its human form, was working exclusively on The Irish Times website – then based out of the Ballast Office on Aston Quay – and had little (nothing) by way of expertise in either product reviews, penny pinching or consumer rights.
And it didn’t give a rashers about any of it, with the call from the Features Department across the road in The Irish Times Mothership coming as a something of a surprise.
The voice on the other end of the line asked if we might write a four-week series of product reviews that would fill less than a quarter of a page in the features section every Friday in September, kind of as a stopgap until the more serious journalism and journalists made an autumnal return.
The as yet unchristened Pricewatch said yes without giving the question much thought, and away we went without being given much by way of guidance as to what we might review.
“Just make it 400 words, all in,” was the word from the Features Department.
So, in the first instance we chose something close to – if not necessarily good for – our hearts: sausages. The Hick’s sausages finished top of the pile that week.
On week two we reviewed orange juices, and for reasons as mystifying as they are gratifying, the mini reviews – written very much from the perspective of a non-food expert – piqued some readers’ interest and prompted a handful to email in with suggestions of products we might review.
Some of our early correspondents also highlighted the scandalously high prices they’d seen in Irish supermarkets.
[ Why is Ireland such an expensive place to live?Opens in new window ]
There was no Rip Off Republic back then – or at least there was, but we weren’t talking about it with Eddie Hobbs still but a gleam in an RTÉ commissioning editor’s eye – so our decision to highlight these high prices and include some price comparisons for all manner of products from at home and abroad was quite novel.
And then, before long, we were giving out about rip-offs and fighting on a weekly basis with businesses big and small and at home and abroad on behalf of our readers.
That early version of the column, which made up less than a quarter of a page, became an actual quarter of a page and then a half page and then a full page. And, ultimately, it spawned more than 1.5 consumer-tinged million words and thousands of product reviews as well as countless consumer complaints and concerns highlighted – and often – resolved.
So, what have we learned in all that time?
1. It’s rarely the price you pay for something that matters most, with the value you get from it of far more importance. A gold-and-leopard-print three-piece suit designed by Gucci selling at a discount of 99 per cent is still bad value if it is never worn. The key questions to always ask yourself are: Will I use it? Do I need it? And can I afford it?
2. The exception to this rule of prices is energy, when the only question you need to ask is: How much does it cost? That is because the gas and electricity sold by every single provider in Ireland is absolutely identical and there is no risk of a discontinuation of supply. And you will save money by switching.
Despite the endless bleating of Pricewatch, many people still don’t routinely switch and have been paying more than they need to for donkey’s years. How much more? Well you are not going to believe this but if 50 per cent of Irish households have not switched since this page first appeared, the cumulative waste of money amounts to a conservative – wait for it – €3 billion.
3. We’re too often on our own when things go wrong and the watchdogs we have rarely bare their teeth. Pricewatch has lived through multiple iterations of the State-funded consumer body, from the days of the Office of the Director of Consumer Affairs to the equally snappily named Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CPCC).
We have lost count of the number of mails we have received from readers who have been mistreated who begin their missives by saying they have been in touch with the consumer body, looking for help. While the CCPC – and what came before it – has done the State some service, it is not empowered to help individual consumers. The Consumers’ Association of Ireland was never able to help individuals either.
Financial regulators, the Ombudsman and ComReg do have more powers, and there is always the Small Claims Court, but the processes are slow and not always consumer friendly. We lack an authority that can put manners on companies in a timely and effective fashion. Mind you, if there were such a thing maybe this page wouldn’t be so busy.
4. As consumers, we still don’t really understand the rights we have and don’t have. And far too often companies exploit that lack of understanding and hide behind nonsensical terms and conditions and irrelevant warranties to deny us our rights. Our world would be a better, more informed and empowered one if Home Economics was considered a core subject in secondary school. It certainly has a more practical and enduring impact than many of the subjects Irish students are compelled to study.
[ What Irish consumers need to know about their rightsOpens in new window ]
5. We are routinely ripped off by big multinational companies because we are small island with comparatively little buying power. In the early days of this page, many of the complaints that came in highlighted the stupid price differences between here and the UK on all manner of products. The price discrepancies could never be explained by currency fluctuations or tax differences. And 20 years on we still get complaints and queries as to how the products on shelves in Dundalk can cost so much more than they do in Newry. Is it any wonder big British retailers have referred to this part of Ireland as Treasure Island?
6. We are not great complainers. Americans, Germans and British people seem to be much happier complaining than we are. Too many of us would be reluctant to give out about the quality and service in a restaurant even if the waiter serving us spat in our soup at the table. We just don’t like to cause a fuss. Until we do – and then we can explode in paroxysms of rage, often complaining to the wrong people.
Typically, those working on shop floors or in call centres are the worst paid, least empowered people in a company and shouting at them achieves nothing other than making everyone’s day that little bit worse. Terms and conditions are the refugee of the scoundrel – and far too often we have heard stories from readers who have been let down by a business because they failed to read the 30,000 densely typed Ts&Cs.
7. Private label products will save you money. When we started out on our Pricewatching journey, reviewing own-brand products was a fraught business. Own brand was cheaper for sure, but it was frequently – what’s the word we’re looking for here? – oh, yes, disgusting. Things have got a lot better over the last 20 years and a huge number of own-brand offerings can easily go toe-to-toe with branded products.
8. It is trial and error though. There are many own-brand products that are bad and spending money on them still represents terrible value for money – see point one.
9. Lidl and Aldi have been a good-news story for Irish consumers and many small Irish businesses. They have kept the more mainstream retail chains on their toes when it has come to pricing, and we love the often mental array of stock to be found in the middle aisles even if we only ever used the pink heart-shaped waffle maker once. They have also earned themselves a good reputation when it comes to dealing with artisan Irish producers, with many of the products on their shelves coming from relatively small local businesses.
10. Businesses hate bad press. People are sometimes amazed at how quickly Pricewatch can get a resolution to problems that have driven them to distraction for months. While we would love to make people think we’re simply amazing, the reality is most businesses will rover over like a bold puppy as soon as an email from Pricewatch arrives because they don’t like the glare of negative publicity. It helps that, generally speaking, they don’t have a leg to stand on.
11. Some companies are more combative than others. One quite well known Irish company springs to mind. And yes, it is Ryanair. A long time ago we were writing about bags going missing and said something along the lines of “for all its faults Ryanair has a pretty good record when it comes to lost luggage”.
We considered this to be a compliment, but some senior folk in the airline did not consider it thus and a senior executive wrote not only to Pricewatch but also the editor of the paper and the managing director of the paper demanding to know what Pricewatch meant by “for all its faults”. We handed the question over to readers, who happily filled a full column with what they considered Ryanair’s faults.
We should point out that – for all its faults – we do get fewer queries and complaints about Ryanair than we do about some other airlines we won’t mention here. And when it comes to making Europe more accessible at prices which are more affordable, no one has done more than Ryanair. And it still has a pretty good record when it comes to lost luggage.
12. Cybercrime used to be funny. In the early days of Pricewatch, scams amounted to spam emails from the “daughters” of dead African despots offering us suitcases full of blood diamonds in return for absolutely nothing at all except for our bank details. The wheezes were ludicrously transparent and equally illiterate. They are not like that any more.
But things have taken a much more sinister turn in recent years, and a growing percentage of the correspondence we get comes from readers who have lost hundreds or thousands of euro to criminals in romance scams, smishing and phishing scams, investment scams and a whole lot more.
[ Scale of cybercrime is ‘breathtaking’Opens in new window ]
13. While scams are bad now, things are on the cusp of getting much worse. There is a lot of talk of artificial intelligence (AI) of late and how easy it is – or soon will be – to deploy the tech to simulate voices and images and speech patterns. Sure as anything, the criminals are all over it, and it won’t be long before they start deploying AI to make their scams even more believable.
Can you imagine the “Mam I have broken my phone” text message scam delivered using the actual voice of your child, with AI deployed to give the voice the capacity to respond to your questions in real time?
14. Banks spend a lot of time and money trying to convince us they are on our side. They are not on our side. There are good people who work in banks, people who are genuinely concerned about the welfare of their customers, but at an institutional level they are pretty awful.
From their reckless lending of the boom years, lending that saddled us with debts we will paying for decades, to the tracker mortgage scandal that destroyed the lives of some who were deceived, to the diminishing level of service and the casual disregard they sometimes show to customers in difficult circumstances, too often they have let us down.
[ Bank of Ireland hit with record €100m fine over tracker mortgage scandal Opens in new window ]
15. Things are getting harder for people. Soaring house prices and climbing rents are a huge drain on people’s fortunes, and the price of everything has climbed in recent years – and it’s not like we lived in a low-cost economy before the current cost of living crisis. Many of the people who are doing well now and living in big houses in leafy suburbs are doing so not because of their own financial acumen but as a result of blind luck and timing.
16. DIY holidays are not always the best value, but it is always worth looking pricing up the DIY option and the tour operators’ deals if you are planning a trip somewhere lovely. And if you do go with a tour operator, go with a local one. They are much easier to contact and more inclined to support you if things go wrong.
17. Travel insurance always represents great value for money. You may never make a claim, but far too often we get mails from readers who would have had no need to contact us if they had simply spent 30 or 40 quid on travel insurance the moment they booked their holidays.
18. Handling customer service agents on the phone is a dark art. It is getting increasingly hard to talk to a human being and that is only going to get worse. There is no point in asking to speak to a supervisor or a manager – they are never around – or shouting. Saying you want to make a formal complaint and asking for a complaint number so you can highlight it with a regulator might be a better approach.
19. We have never had as many options when it comes to spending money as we have today, with Amazon and Temu and a million other online platforms selling directly to our doors from all over the world. But we still love to shop local. At the height of the Covid crisis when Irish retail was locked down, we started listing the local retailers doing business online. That first list grew to 400, with the story becoming one of the most read of 2020.
We would all do well to support the businesses and enterprises embedded in our local communities. There is no point mourning the death of a shop, cafe, restaurant or pub if we didn’t support them when they were open. Shopping local sometimes – but not always – costs more, but it has many positive impacts, with the money we spend circulating in the local economy over and over and over again. And while we are talking local, credit unions and libraries deserve our support too.
20. Ultimately, the only real power we have as consumers is the power of choice. If a company – big or small – treats us shabbily, we have to take our business elsewhere. Failing to do that emboldens bad actors and makes our lives harder.
