July 3, 2009
This is an old e-mail from a ValueIreland.com that I just came across recently:
I was wondering if you could possibly offer me some advice or guidance. My partner and I recently visited New York and got engaged. Whilst we were there we purchased an engagement ring from a jeweller on 5th Ave. Since we have returned back to Ireland the ring ( $3.000) has broke (11 days later) and we are somewhat dishearten by the whole outcome. I emailed the Jeweller asking them for some advice and guidance on how to rectify this situation and was hoping they may offer some option on how to get the repair paid for. They replied
“I apologize for that crack you mentioned in the ring and our jeweller is excellent, but sometimes things do happen with wear etc. I suggest you take it to any local jeweller and they should be able to easily repair it there in Ireland for you.”
My argument is, the responsibility of repairing the ring lays with them and not me. Personally we feel as if the jeweller was happy to take are money and now we are back in Ireland its a case of hard luck. I’m sure your probably inundated with similar request for advice, but we would be really grateful for any professional guidance on how to rectify this situation and what if any consumer rights we may have.
Unfortunately, my response probably wasn’t what the reader was hoping to hear:
I appreciate the difficult situation that you find yourself in at the moment, but I think unfortunately you’re finding now one of the potential pitfalls when purchasing items abroad.
I’m not familiar with consumer legislation in NYC, but I guess that if you were to return in person to the jeweler themselves in NYC, I presume that they would be more than happy to assist with any repairs. If you were to look at things from their perspective, they could feasibly not expect to have any responsibility to look after someone who buys something and then leaves the country.
I appreciate that this doesn’t meet your requirements, but unfortunately I don’t believe that there are any consumer regulations (either here or in the US) that could force the jeweler to repair the ring in the current situation.
Have you tried to see if there is any half way arrangement that might satisfy both sides? It could be worth asking what they would do to resolve the issue if you did actually show up on their doorstep with the broken ring. Would they fix it then? Would they do it for free, or would they charge you?
If it is the case that they would repair the ring at their expense if you arrived on their door-step, maybe you could get agreement from them that if you paid for it to be fixed here that they would refund you the costs. They might want to see a quote for the fixing before going ahead with this to make sure it won’t cost them too much.
As I said, it’s unfortunate that you’re finding the downside now of buying cheaper abroad, but consumer legislation here doesn’t cover such situations, so I think that the best you could get is to try to come to some sort of agreement with the New York jeweler.
July 3, 2009
There is an interesting controversy breaking in the consumer affairs / grocery prices area in Australia at the moment.
There, the government had set up and funded a grocery price comparison website called Grocery Choice. The site was originally set up in 2008 with the aim of helping “consumers compare the general price levels of supermarket chains in their area”.
The Australian equivalent of the Irish Consumers Association of Ireland, Consumer Choice, was contracted by the government to take on the running of the site once it was set up. Consumer Choice was tasked with improving the relevance and performance of the site and its contents.
The Grocery Choice website is available here and details of their methodology is available here.
Essentially, the Grocery Choice website is the Australian equivalent of the Irish National Consumer Agency grocery price comparison surveys but with key differences.
The Australian survey is carried out monthly instead of twice a year here in Ireland. The Australian survey provides a regional breakdown of prices as well as a breakdown by supermarket chain.
The reason for the controversy – the Australian government has cancelled its support and funding for this Grocery Choice initiative.
And the reason for the closure of the site? It’s not up to date enough – despite being monthly and surveying more than 600 stores. So, while our government and the National Consumer Agency are proud of their 6-monthly grocery price comparison surveys carried out in 13 stores out of which they take significant meaning and importance, yet according to this article, the Grocery Choice website was closed because:
The website immediately attracted criticism last year. Information was updated only once a month and price comparisons were broad and generic.
Mr Emerson (Australian Consumer Affairs Minister) had said from the outset that it was not feasible to publish reliable, timely information on grocery prices for consumers, a view held by many critics.
“The fact is that in Australia, there are thousands of supermarkets and even more thousands of grocery items,” he said.
“The information requirements would have been enormous and they’re just not feasible, in my view.”
The last NCA grocery survey was published last February, for prices in December 2008/January 2009. I guess, therefore, we can expect another survey soon enough.
There is a growing campaign in Australia calling for the government decision to be reversed with certain quarters questioning the motivations behind the closure of the site. The site was actually due for relaunch within 5 days of its closure and it was believed that the enhancements to the site for that relaunch would have made it more useful and would counteract some of the criticism mentioned above.
The closure is a roll-back on a government election campaign promise, but some are saying that it’s the undue influence of the larger grocery chains and their requirement for less price transparency that’s behind the decision.
I’m going to come back to this topic in the near future as I believe neither of these methods of grocery price comparison are sufficient, but also because I know that (in the face of certain potentially large difficulties) there is an eminently more effective, up to date, and accurate grocery price comparison methodology possible at relatively little cost to set up and with very little ongoing maintenance costs.
July 2, 2009
Recently, I asked the question here as to whether Irish consumers should expect a better level of consumer advocacy and protection than is currently provided by either the Consumers Association of Ireland, the National Consumer Agency or other consumer related agencies, quangos and other supposedly responsible organisations.
In the past few days, on a slightly related note, we’ve also seen a number of calls for retail or grocery ombudsman. Whether or not this would add to the protection provided to the consumer, or would just become another useless quango organisation set up to give the impression of something being done, but actually isn’t, remains to be seen. My two (initial) cents is that it’s a ridiculous idea based on what I’m seeing proposed at the moment but I’ll come back to that in the coming days.
Maybe the solution to all our consumer woes here in Ireland can be seen in the framework currently being proposed in the UK where there are moves afoot to provide what’s being called a “consumer tsar”?
According to an article in The Guardian, National consumer champion to help people get their money back , the British consumer will benefit from a proposal that:
A high-profile national “consumer champion” is to be appointed by the government to help people get their money back when things go wrong and fight for redress over personal finance problems such as unauthorised overdraft charges.
Whilest this proposal is amongst a raft of other consumer related legislation being proposed to help out the British consumer, this particular proposal interestingly came about:
After recognising the valuable role of newspapers’ own consumer champions in exposing bad practice by financial companies and publicising key issues of consumer concern, the government is to appoint a new “consumer advocate”.
A key feature of this proposal is that the consumer be educated to help them fight for their rights and to get their own money back. Though, as pointed out by the Guardian Money Blog, maybe it’s the businesses that are screwing the customers who need to be educated rather than the consumer. As I’ve found with many of the e-mails I receive at ValueIreland.com, Irish consumers know their rights and what they’re entitled to in many cases, but they just struggle to get them from many businesses.
By the sounds of things, what’s being proposed in the UK is almost an institutionalisation of the BBC Watchdog programme – a high profile consumer advocate taking on big business on behalf of consumers.
Would this work in Ireland? In name at least, it does sound like the “Consumer Rights Enforcer” that was proposed some years ago by Fine Gael. (Though, upon reading that legislation proposed, that role proposed by FG was no more than the National Consumer Agency with a different name but appointed in a different way).
On the basis that, as I have opined many times here already, consumer advocacy and protection in Ireland needs to be completely shaken up in order to truly advance the cause of the Irish consumer, and not the vested interests supposedly protecting them, then maybe a well thought out position such as this could work here.
What do you think? Who could do this – Eddie Hobbs? Or based on the journalistic slant of the UK proposal, how about Charlie Weston? Or Conor Pope?
July 2, 2009
You’d think that in these straightened times that businesses would be trying to get as much custom as they can, but given some of the conversations I’ve had recently with people, it doesn’t always seem that that’s the case.
Even in my own personal experience, I’m currently dealing with a service provider who are proving to be so useless and incompetent it doesn’t seem believable. I can’t actually believe that a company that is revealing itself to be so crap can remain in business if every customer is treated in the same way.
As time goes on, I am starting to come to the conclusion that because I’m a bit of a difficult customer that they’re treating me badly so that I’ll get pissed off with them enough to take my custom elsewhere.
And only for the fact that my investment thus far, plus the lack of feasible competition, means I can’t immediately switch, I’d be gone already.
Has anyone else found this kind of situation?
July 2, 2009
I guess that most people know this, but I heard about an interesting talk given by Bobby Kerr of the Insomnia Coffee chain recently that gave great insight into how much coffee chains actually make on selling a cup of coffee.
We all (should) know that we can buy a jar of coffee in the supermarket for the same price as we’d pay for one coffee in a coffee shop. Yet we’ll still sometimes (maybe frequently) spend that money.
Mr. Kerr was talking about the success and failure of the special offers they’ve been offering recently. I’ve mentioned them here in the past.
The first offer was their “coffee and a sandwich” for €5 which at the time was pretty successful. Insomnia then moved on to offer “3 for the price of 2″ in all their stores, and according to Mr. Kerr they got hammered.
When you think about it, it makes sense. So much so, that you’d wonder why they actually went ahead with that offer.
If most people go into coffee shops on their own, offering a 3 for 2 deal means that they’ll most likely get an extra piece of food or snack rather than a second coffee.
When your profit margin is mostly on the coffee rather than the foods and snacks, you’d rather that they take the coffee where the loss can be more easily absorbed. But to their cost, Insomnia hadn’t considered the reality, and the offer didn’t last very long.
Hence you’re seeing the 3 new offers offering a “coffee plus….” deal instead where the large markup on the coffee can absorb some of the losses more comfortably, but also increasing appeal to customers. According to Mr. Kerr, these offers are likely to go on for some time given their success.
July 1, 2009
In the last few weeks I’ve been looking for well priced hotels for planned trips both within Ireland and in the UK. Here’s the sequence that I go through in my searching, but I’m interested to know how you go about finding a cheap, but decent, hotel?
Post your tips in the comments below.
- Firstly I check Hotels.com - I’ve used this site most in the past, and keep going back mainly out of loyalty.
- Cross reference with TripAdvisor.com - If I find a hotel that I’m interested in, I’ll check here to see what others have to say about it to make sure it’s okay.
- Check with the hotel website - Next I’ll go to the hotels website to see if they have any special offers and to get more details on facilities and so on.
- Ring the hotel directly - Finally, I’ll give the hotel a call to see if there’s any better offers available, or maybe see about getting any extras for making a booking.
Is there anything else I should be adding to this based on your own hotel searches?
July 1, 2009
If you’re a user on Twitter, here are a few people/organisations you could think about following if you’re interested in consumer affairs related information:
Ireland
- ValueIreland.com (me, obviously)
- Conor Pope - Irish Times PriceWatch
- Eddie Hobbs (not sure if the real Eddie Hobbs or not)
- GoodBuy.ie
- BargainAlerts
- ThriftyPages.ie
- CheapEats.ie
- SayNoTo1890.com
- Irish Consumer Tips
- The Savvy Shopper
- BeThrifty.ie
UK
US
Others
If I’ve missed anyone from the above listing, let me know and I’ll update accordingly.
June 30, 2009
Irish News of the World
May, 2009
Diarmuid MacShane
Broadband on the Move
In doing some research recently, I came across the mind boggling fact that there are 117million mobile broadband users in China – about 40% of all interest users. Even more extraordinary is that these Chinese surfers are doing so without the benefit of the superfast 3G mobile broadband technology.
By contrast, there are about 9million mobile broadband users in the whole of Europe, with 250,000 in Ireland.
Ireland has one of the biggest take ups of 3g mobile broadband of all European countries with almost 25% of all Irish broadband users now accessing the internet using their mobile phones according to ComReg.
Mobile Broadband
Mobile broadband is sold in two ways – directly on your phone through a data “add-on” package, or a separate broadband modem with a SIM card that you can use to connect your laptop or netbook to the internet no matter where you are.
All 4 main mobile providers in Ireland will sell you a mobile broadband package, but like their other products, there are loads of choices which can confuse you into picking a package that isn’t really suitable for you.
Unfortunately, the CallCosts.ie website doesn’t yet provide a mobile broadband comparison functionality in the same way that they allow you compare phone call or text costs.
While mobile broadband can be brilliantly useful and convenient where it’s available and reliable, there are some pitfalls with mobile broadband that you should watch out for as otherwise you could end up costing yourself hundreds, if not thousands of euros.
Add On Data Packages
As I’ve highlighted before, mobile phone companies seem to specialise in providing product options designed to confuse the consumer. They do this with phone calls and text messages, and broadband data packages are no different.
So, the first thing to ensure you save your hard earned cash is to make sure you pick the right package.
If you’re a pay as you go customer and you just want a data bundle on your phone to access broadband internet data, then you’ll get the best value for money by using one of the daily packages provided by Meteor, O2 or Vodafone if you’re only going to have a small amount of usage every day. These will cost you €360 per year.
If you’ve larger usage, you could go for the Three monthly package which gives you 10gb of data usage for €300 per year.
You should avoid the Three weekly and daily packages as these could cost you between €200 and €1500 more than the other packages.
As a pay monthly customer, the data packages on your mobile are far poorer value across all 4 mobile companies. The problem with these packages is that they charge you per month, but they provide you with very small amounts of data per month.
The worst value is the Meteor €9.99 per month package which will cost you €120 per year, but for only 3GB of data – O2 provide the same package for a saving of €30 per month – but it’s still poor value for money.
If you need more data per month, then either Meteor or O2 provide 10gb data bundles for €360 per year. The best value is the Three €19.99 package for 10gb per month – which at €240 for the year is a saving of €120.
Broadband Modem Packages
The biggest focus for the mobile companies at the moment appears to be the mobile broadband modem market where you must buy a standalone “dongle” (or broadband modem) that will allow laptop users connect to the internet while on the move. This broadband modem has it’s own SIM card for connecting to the network and you then pay a monthly contract to connect to the internet.
As a pay monthly customer, you’ll get the best value for money when it comes to getting broadband from the mobile companies. The best value for money out there is the O2 basic modem package where you’ll get 120gb of data for the year for €379.
Vodafone and Meteor provide cheaper deals, around €235 per year, but you only get half the amount of data – 60gb.
Downloading abroad
The simple piece of advice here is to not use your data package when you’re abroad. The European Commission is addressing the high costs that mobile phone companies charge their customers for data when they’re roaming, but until then, it’s best to completely avoid this.
As a comparison, in Ireland you can get 50mb of data for 99c as a pay as you go customer. If you’re roaming abroad, that same 50mb will cost you €14.58 in Europe and €30.28 in the rest of the world if you’re a Vodafone pay monthly customer. 50mb of data is the equivalent of about 2 albums of music
Out of Bundle Usage
The worst scare story of someone getting caught out using their mobile phone for data while abroad was one person in the UK who came home to a bill for over £22,000.
Going over the top
The third key thing to watch out for when you’re using your mobile broadband – on your phone or through a modem – is to make very sure that you don’t go over your data limits.
If you have a package that gives you 500mb or 10gb, it will prove very expensive for you to go over those limits.
ValueIreland.com has been told horror stories by readers of getting nasty surprises from their mobile bills from going over their data package limits. Sometimes, if you’re very early on in your usage, the companies might let you off if you tell them you didn’t understand the pricing, but most times, you’ll end up paying. Some people have ended up paying from €200 extra to €1200 extra for one month because of this mistake.
Most companies charge an extra 2c for each kb that you use over and above your limit – that’s the equivalent of an extra an extra €60 just to download one extra music track to your phone, or nearly €500 for one album.
This just shows the importance of picking your correct tariff when you sign up in the first place.
Don’t pay at all
If you’re keen to have your internet and e-mails with you on your mobile phone, then the final tip for you is how to not pay at all.
Many phones these days provide a connection will allow you connect to a WIFI internet connection. If you’re smart, you can now find places all around the country that provide free WIFI which therefore get your broadband internet on the move, but at zero cost.
Click here for a link that will provide you with information and links to a map of Ireland that shows where the free WIFI hotspots are around the country.
June 30, 2009
This e-mail came through to ValueIreland.com recently.
I wish to bring to your attention the Aer Lingus Gold Circle Club. Aer Lingus does not state on it’s fare before purchase wether the fare qualifies for Gold |circle points. At one stage points were only given for trips with checked in baggage( I found out because I only checked in baggage one-way on a U.K. return trip and only got half points.
I think Aer Lingus does not award points or is giving a wrong booking class for earning points on flights that are not promotional, therefore one should be earning points. It seems points are not given now at all on flights to from U.K. and Ireland, expect on the expensive Flexi-fares option.
Are there many people who are still members of these kind of reward programmes? I guess anyone still lucky to be getting business flights paid for by their company would be.
Bearing in mind that the Gold Circle Club is a benefit that Aer Lingus provides that costs them money to maintain, they’re entitled to assign points and benefits as they so chose - we can’t have any complaints about that.
However, checking out the Aer Lingus Gold Circle Club web pages, it seems pretty unclear as to when people can earn points, and when they can’t. This is the information provided:
Gold Circle Points are awarded as per the table below when travelling on any valid Aer Lingus scheduled flight in the following eligible booking classes J, C, D, Y, B, L, H, K, M, V, N, X, S and R. Flights not qualifying for points do not appear on your statement. These classes are identified as “W” “Z” and “A” class.
Yet, as you’re booking a flight online, it’s well hidden as to what “booking class” you’re flight that you’re paying for actually is.
For future reference, when you’re asked to check the box to confirm your agreement to the Terms & Conditions, there’s a link there that brings you to a page in a new window. At the bottom of that page is the booking class for the flights you’re trying to buy.
In short, from what I can see, any LOW FARE fare class doesn’t give you any entitlement to points.
June 29, 2009
Irish News of the World
May, 2009
Diarmuid MacShane
Haggling for a Discount
In boxing terms, you should never hit a man when he’s down, yet when you’re adversary is struggling; it is the perfect time to take advantage.
The same could be said when it comes to getting value for money when you’re out shopping – particularly if you’re buying bigger and more expensive items.
We’ve heard that shops are struggling with a reduction in the number of customers as a result of the recession, and that even what customers there are spend less.
So if you’re in the market for a “big ticket” items for whatever reason, it’s worth bearing this in mind when trying to get yourself a good deal, and maybe even a few extra quid off the price.
With all the sales that are happening at the moment, despite it being a cliché of “rip off Ireland” it’s definitely worth shopping around to see what’s on offer.
If you find a shop offering the product that you like, and a price that’s competitive, then talk to them about doing business. Ask what their best offer is – is there any extra discount for cash? Will they throw anything extra in it for free? Maybe free delivery?
It costs you nothing to ask, but could save you a few extra quid if you do.
