A Dublin reader is infuriated at the casual way online music store play.com seems to be taking advantage of Irish customers when it comes to exchange rates. “For the past six months I have noticed the euro/sterling exchange rate sliding wildly out of kilter with the actual current fx rates,” he writes.” I doubt Play doesn’t notice that they have been holding back the recent strength of the euro against sterling to their benefit,” he adds.
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The head of the National Consumer Agency, Ann Fitzgerald, is in a hurry. On at least six occasions over the course of a biref interview, conducted to mark the agency’s first birthday, she complained that change was happening too slowly and admitted that she’d like to have achieved a lot more during her first 12 months in office.

Her impatience is easy to understand. Every day, she and the agency she runs confront misleading pricing, dreadful customer service, anti-competitive behaviour, fraudulent practices, antiquated public services and the bully-boy approach of some companies that seem to believe the customer is always wrong.

At least the NCA is making some progress. Calls to its helpline have doubled to 70,000 a year and Fitzgerald says it is increasingly recognised as the agency which will defend consumers’ rights. (more…)

I was sad to hear of the death of Nuala O’Faolain this morning. Although we both worked for the same paper for many years, I only met her once, more than ten years ago at a press event which had the aim of bringing senior journalists from north and south together and getting them very, very drunk - although to what end, I can’t really remember and what I was doing there, I’ve never known. All the journalists from the south sat at one table while those working for papers and broadcasters on the other side of the border sat at another - so I’m not sure if the aim of fostering togetherness, if that was the plan, was achieved.

Anyways, I ended up sitting beside Nuala and her buddy Marian Finucane at dinner on the first night. She was hilarious, instantly engaging, interested in other people’s stories and wonderfully indiscrete, (direct might be a better word ) particularly when it came to winding up the editor of ireland.com, Seamus Martin, about the low rates which the people working on the website (including myself) were then being paid. She was one of very few journalists working on the big paper to show solidarity with the web journalists at the time and for that I’ll always think of her fondly. Like many people, I found her recent interview on the Marian Finucane show compelling and moving, if very difficult, radio, and I am glad, for her sake, that she did not suffer the slow lingering death that had filled her with completely understandable dread.

Habitat went out of business in Ireland yesterday afternoon. “Slow sales and high costs” were blamed for the store’s collapse. I’d say slow delivery and high prices are the more likely explanation, frankly. While I’ve bought my fair share of Habitat tat, I really used to hate the way they’d make you wait months for delivery of even small pieces of furniture and make you pay through the nose for stuff while almost identical furniture and lamps and cutsey candles and the like were selling in Ikeas everywhere else in the world for a quarter of the price. Even though I hadn’t bought anything there in ages, I reckon I’ll still miss it now that it’s gone.

A third of us who book airline tickets online are being “ripped off, misled or confused”, the European Commission said today. Consumer Commissioner Meglena Kuneva has threatened to take action against airlines and tour operators for what she says are “serious and persistent” consumer problems, including misleading advertising in relation to online ticket sales. Misleading pricing is the biggest problem and was recorded in 58 per cent of the sites under investigation while in 49 per cent of the sites, there were irregularities related to contract terms. Problems with non-availability of advertised offers also appeared frequently.

Britons throw away 4.4 million apples, 1.6 million bananas, 1.3 million yoghurt pots, 660,000 eggs, 550,000 chickens, 300,000 packs of crisps and 440,000 ready meals, according to a British government-backed report published today. And most of the food waste is made up of untouched food inluding whole chickens and chocolate gateaux that lie uneaten in cupboards and fridges before being shamefull dumped. I wonder what the numbers are like in this country? Not great, I suspect.

Well, I’ve just been on the change.ie website where I spent ages calculating my carbon footprint. I dutifully answered all the questions and according to the site I am responsible for exactly 0.0 tonnes of carbon emissions every year. I reckon that’s pretty good seeing as how I leave all my lights on all the time, burn mountains of coal in my back garden and spend way too long on my computer logging on to sites that fail to deliver on their promise to work out my carbon footprint.

From today’s paper. . .

Martin admits he cannot ban credit card surcharges
MINISTER FOR Enterprise Micheál Martin has withdrawn a plan to ban credit surcharges because, he says, the move would not be compatible with EU law.

The U-turn has been strongly criticised by the Opposition and consumer groups who said hopes that unpopular surcharges were to be outlawed had been raised unnecessarily and unfairly.
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In May, Minister for Enterprise Micheál Martin, ushered the long-anticipated Consumer Protection Act (CPA) through the Dáil; and one of the key elements of the new law was a ban on traders hitting people with extra charges depending on how they chose to pay.

The ban, when implemented, would stop businesses penalising their customers for using credit cards to make bookings (Ryanair) or for paying by direct debit (Quinn Insurance) or for not paying by direct debit (NTL).

Delight at the surprise inclusion of a particularly consumer friendly clause in the bill was tempered, however, when it became clear that Martin had decided against introducing the ban immediately after fierce lobbying from the travel industry and certain operators from within the telecommunications sector.
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The Consumer Protection Act is nearly a year old and I was wondering if anyone has felt any more protected since it came into force? And has the National Consumer Agency, which was set up under the Act, done a good job in its first 12 months of official existence?

My computer is hot and I’m bothered. It’s a Sony Vaio which is, as I type, almost too hot to touch - way, way too hot to touch. Is that normal? Should I be concerned? What do you reckon the likelihood is it will burst into flames before I finish this post and take me with

Mairéad Ní Cheallacháin got in touch with us looking for help to get NTL/UPC to stop cold-calling her trying to sell her services she doesn’t want. “I have had a number of service problems with NTL in the past, none of which was dealt with even remotely satisfactorily, and if I could think of an alternative TV service I would switch in the morning.” She says a detailed account of her various grievances, which she sent in writing a year ago, remains unacknowledged and unanswered.
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THE SPIRALLING PRICE of food has been big news in recent weeks, with simmering tensions boiling over into lethal violence in Haiti, Egypt and the World Bank and the IMF issuing dire warnings about the impact the current food inflation will have on at least 33 other countries in the developing world.

The problem of rising food prices is being felt the world over. Global warming, poor growing conditions in major cereal-producing countries, oil reaching record highs and greater affluence in parts of Asia have all combined to create this perfect storm which has put enormous pressure on food prices over the last 12 months.

Unsurprisingly, Ireland has not been immune to the price hikes, and while a year ago people here thought they were paying over the odds for groceries, it is now clear the worst was yet to come. This month’s figures from the Central Statistics Office showed inflation hitting 5 per cent and the rate of food inflation at 0.9 per cent or an annual rate of close to 10 per cent.
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Aer Lingus cancelled the bookings of over one hundred customers who booked business class return tickets to the US yesterday for nominal prices, saying that the low, low fares had been made available in error. The tickets for flights to New York and Boston were made available ranging in price from nothing at all to a fiver. The tickets normally sell for €1,775 one-way. The offer was withdrawn a couple of hours later after which passengers who thought they had made reservations received sheepish emails from Aer Lingus saying that “due to a technical error in our reservation system a small number of bookings were priced incorrectly” and that the booking was cancelled. We’ve a story on our breaking news site with more details. I’ve spoken to the airline today and it seems there is no chance at all it is going to honour the tickets.

Except maybe it will be forced to. Seconds after I wrote that last sentence, I got a strong statement from the National Consumer Agency. “Blaming a technical error in their booking system in not good enough,” said the Chief Executive Ann FitzGerald. “Aer Lingus formed a contract with the consumer at the stated fare and cannot simply walk away from their obligations”. The National Consumer Agency has been in contact with Aer Lingus this morning and is seeking a meeting with senior management in the company with a view to reaching a fair deal for those customers affected.

Keith Duffy and his da are going to re-open Frawleys. The Liberties landmark is going to sell clothes in “larger sizes” apparently.

Fair City’s Jimmy is caught in a love triangle.

The Bachelor Inn is changing hands.

Poorly made rivots made the Titanic sink faster.

The inhabitants of a small Argentinean village where the ‘domino affect’ Guinness ad was filmed don’t really like Guinness.

And romantic opportunities will soon be coming my way

Yay! The cheapest product comes out on top against all the odds!
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SOMETIMES IT’S THE simplest scams that catch people out. Forget the widows of West African dictators and their suitcases of blood diamonds, or the surprising Spanish lottery wins that come your way without you having to buy a lottery ticket; a number of scams which have been doing the rounds in recent months are a lot less elaborate and maybe just a little more convincing than that. Scammers have taken to posting bogus ads on legitimate websites offering cars at knock-down prices - the only problem being that these bargains don’t exist. A number of people who have contacted Pricewatch in recent weeks have had first-hand experience of this particular scam; one came within hours of being taken for nearly €4,000.
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Joseph O’Reilly from Booterstown has another issue with the same store. He was recently walking around Superquinn in Blackrock for the first time in a while and noticed a large number of promotional signs on a number of different products which were emblazoned with the phrase “Price Match”. “The sign caught my attention as a potential promotional item which I should investigate further. It went on to list the price of the item in Tesco, Dunnes and Superquinn as exactly the same.” He thought it was odd that Superquinn was trying to sell him the product by claiming their price was exactly the same as at Tesco or Dunnes.

“It occurred to me that such evidence in any other business would be seen as ‘cartel-like activity’ and anti-competitive. An alternative view on this ‘Price Match’ approach is that Superquinn is really trying to tell its customers that all products without this sign are in fact over-priced in comparison to Tesco or Dunnes. Which is it?”

We contacted Superquinn again and on this occasion recieved the following short statement: “It is important that we offer our customers value across our ranges. The price match communication in store is to reassure our customers that we do offer them value.”

Visiting his local Superquinn in Limerick, David O’Connor was surprised to see two large carousels full of cuddly toy dogs with a big sign overhead saying, “FREE, bring one home today”. Being very sceptical of free offers, he looked more closely at the offer and discovered it came with conditions written in small print “on a small card in a small holder attached to the carousel”. In the checkout queue he saw a young mother with a toddler in her arms clutching a free cuddly dog, he says. “Behind me was another mother with a four-year-old, sans cuddly toy. The mother with the toddler put her free dog on the line with her groceries, and was informed it was not free but conditional on her buying €250 worth of goods.”
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A yong girl can look forward to getting a lump of coal this Christmas if she’s lucky after she threw all her unfortunate parents savings out the window of their 17th floor flat in the Chinese city of Shenzen. The poor little girl threw the equivalent of nearly €1000 out the window while her parents slept. When they woke up and noticed the cash missing they asked her what had happened, but she denied any knowledge of the missing money, as you would. It wasn’t until the owner of a restaurant on the first floor of the building told the couple that money had been raining down on to the street, and that passers-by had gone crazy trying to catch it, that they realised where their savings had gone. The couple are now hoping the kindness of strangers will see the money returned to them.