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The European Consumer Centre, Dublin has a decent monthly newsletter containing consumer type information with a sometimes European slant, such as your rights when buying abroad, or when buying plane tickets.

You can sign up for the newsletter by accessing this page on their website.

I asked the National Consumer Agency back here as to why they weren’t presenting a Scam Awareness Month this month in Ireland as is being done by similar agencies elsewhere in Europe.

Nothing doing so far!!! Still!!!

Having slagged off a few companies here recently over their poor service, I suppose I should do the “fair and balanced” thing and praise those who provide good customer service.

And top of that list for this week is Creative, from whom I’d bought an MP3 player last year. Let me say straight up congratulations to Creative for their excellent customer care experience.

I had lost the original CD-ROM with their Media Explorer software but needed it to connect my player to a new laptop.

I checked their online help, and downloads section, but to no avail - there was nothing there. I sent a query to their online help asking for the location of the download. The initial response was a dodgy “have you checked our online help section”, but after a follow up I was told that I’d need to phone their Customer Support hotline.

With some misgivings, I range their number but immediately I was speaking to someone who was very professional in their approach, understood my problem immediately, and set about fixing the issue.

They told me they’d have to send out a new CD-ROM and that it would take up to 10 days. They confirmed my player type, and my delivery address, and gave me a reference number.

Within 6 days, I’d received my new CD-ROM, exactly as required. Fair play to Creative - an excellent customer service experience.

There was much coverage this morning in the Irish Examiner quoting from a CSO report about the price of groceries since the dropping of the Groceries Order last year. The gist of the article was that groceries prices have increased 16% since the removal of the Groceries Order.

There was a press release later today from the Competition Authority (who themselves supported the removal of the Groceries Order). I don’t really understand what they’re saying - have prices gone up or gone down. See if you can work it out. Here’s the contents of the press release.

It’s no wonder people don’t really care any more when they’re presented with this kind of information.

Abolition of Groceries Order has been good for consumers

Media reports today that food prices have “soared” since the abolition of
the Groceries Order are not borne out by official data from the Central
Statistics Office which show that in fact the opposite is the case.

Since April 2006, CSO figures show that prices of items covered by the
Groceries Order have fallen by 1.5% to their lowest level since December 2002.
Over the same period prices of items that were never covered by the Groceries
Order such as fresh meat, vegetables and fish have risen by 2.3%.

The price figures cited by the survey conducted by the Irish Examiner today
14February 2007 are based on sub-set of the grocery items checked by the CSO (73
items). But in fact the basket of consumer goods and services used to calculate
the monthly inflation figure comprises a total of 613 items. Some items are
further broken down into different varieties and in total over 1,040 different
varieties are included in the basket.

In its Consumer Price Index Press Release of 18 January 2006, the
CentralStatistics Office states that: “There has been a particular focus on the
removal of the Groceries Order and its effect on the CPI in 2006. The repeal
took effect from March 2006 and the first month in which post Groceries Order
prices were collected for the CPI was April. Bearing this in mind, it can
nonetheless be seen that items previously covered by the Groceries Order showed
an increase of only 0.1% in 2006, while groceries items which were never covered
by the Groceries Order increased by 2.4% in the year. This is a reverse of the
trend in the three years prior to the repeal of the Groceries Order, where
Non-Groceries Order items showed lower inflation than those covered by the
Groceries Order.”

This statement is based on the price data reported by the CSO in its
monthly Consumer Price Index press release, specifically “Table 21” of that
release. This table shows monthly price levels for items covered by the
Groceries Order and those not covered by the Groceries Order.
According to the Chairperson of The Competition Authority, Mr Bill Prasifka said today “The Competition Authority has a continuing role in monitoring the grocery sector and we believe it is important that we use the most robust data available based on a sound methodology.”

As per my post below, I sent a query to the National Consumer Agency to see if there’s any reason why we haven’t had a Scam Awareness Week like they have in the United Kingdom. No response yet.

Lots of coverage recently, mostly negative, about the chances of our new Consumer Protection Bill being passed through the Dail before the forthcoming general election. By the content of some articles such as this editorial in the Irish Independent, it seems like it’s not all that clear whether this new bill will actually do anything to change the plight of consumers in Ireland today.

Maybe a more accurate reason for the politicians reluctance to pass the bill prior to an election was detailed in this excellent small piece in last weeks Phoenix magazine.

Consumer Bill “Terrifying Dáil Aspirants”
by Bill Board

Politicians fear Irelands democracy could suffer if the proposed Consumer
Protection Bill is passed. Election candidates, who traditionally peddle their
wares on doorsteps, now fear falling foul of the legislation, which proposes a
ban on scams, misleading information, blatant lying, false cures, lying through
the teeth, and cold calling, amongst other accepted election practives.

Said one outraged candidate last night “Ireland is doomed if this bill is
passed! All the lads are worried sick and some could even see jail if it’s
backdated. Next thing we’ll be banning fairy tales in schools as well! If we’ve
got to tell the truth all the time, we’d have a better chance of being elected
in Saudi Arabia!”

Scary because it’s probably true!

I was reading this article today about mobile phone retailers being rapped for giving out difficult to get discounts, and for having excessive small print associated with these offers.

It was interesting to see that this was being mentioned in the context of February being “Scam Awareness Month” in the UK, organised by the Office of Fair Trading. The details of this campaign are as follows:

The Office of Fair Trading has joined forces with trading standards
departments, Citizens’ Advice, the police, charities and neighbourhood watch
schemes across the country in a month-long campaign to educate the public on
mass-marketed scams received via email, post or telephone calls.

Here in Ireland, we have the National Consumer Agency who have had a small campaign trying to alert the public about the dangers of falling for certain scams such as “prize draws” and pyramid schemes.

It’s a pity we in Ireland couldn’t have a more concerted effort amongst all of the relevant agencies in an effort to warn the public of the many possible ways people can be scammed these days. Though, apparently, Scams Awareness Month, is part of an international initiative organised by the International Consumer Protection and Enforcement Network. It seems that the Office of Director Of Consumer Affairs (now part of the National Consumer Agency) is a participant in this Network. Why no campaign in Ireland I wonder? I’ve sent a mail to the NCA asking this very question.

This website, MoneyExtra has details of a number of scams we should all watch out for. In the meantime, click here to see a listing of the Value Ireland Tips amongst which we provide tips on avoiding a number of different scams.

Do you have a tracker mortgage with Allied Irish Banks (AIB)? Have you seen that they’re dropping their interest rates for tracker mortgages? In case you haven’t, their press release is here for you to read.

However, have you seen how to avail of these new rates? I haven’t been able to find out where they provide this information - they definitely don’t tell you how in their press release.

According to a report from a banking analyst in Davy, you have to write to AIB to get your rate dropped. They won’t give it to you automatically, you have to ask.

I think this is a bit sly. They’ll obviously not have to give this new rate to everyone, if everyone isn’t going to ask for it, and therefore they’ll save themselves money, and obviously keep their profits high.

Therefore, the message must be publicised far and wide - if you have a tracker mortgage with AIB, you must get that letter sent in. If you don’t yourself, let others know, just so that as many people as possible get this discount on their mortgage, and take some money from AIB in a more legitimate manner than they’ve taken money from their own customers in the past, through overcharging on foreign exchange, or students, or shopkeepers, or ironically given this article, mortgage customers.

Lots of hype last week (including here) about cheap flights from Knock Airport to New York or Boston with the FlyGlobeSpan airline. The quotes said “from €157 including taxes”, while the radio coverage I’ve heard mentioned “€200 flights to New York”.

All fine and good, until you go to their site to try to book. While I’m fully aware of the manner in which airlines price and advertise their flights, I was a little surprised to be quoted over €350 each way for flights in August to New York.

I just checked then all their other flights out to New York, and there was only 1 single flight in their whole schedule for the summer at even close to their prices mentioned, €208 on June 26th. After that, it looked like the average flight price was around €300.

Cheaper flights my arse!

Over 1.2 million Shoppers’ Rights Cards were distributed to Irish households by the National Consumer Agency (NCA) from January 2006

It’s over a year now since the National Consumer Agency launched their “Shoppers’ Rights Cards” in January 2006. These cards were to be distributed to 1.2m households nationwide, and were to be available in shops around the country (listing here).

Tuesday of this week was the first day that I actually saw a Shoppers’ Rights Card on display in any shop - and I’ve checked, I do use many of the shops on that listing. Congratulations to Woodies DIY in Carrickmines for the dubious honour.

Even though the NCA have these cards featured in a “Hot Topics” section of their website, its obvious that it isn’t really. On a quick survey of 6 houses in Mayo, Donegal, Wexford and Dublin, none have even had a card delivered.

Even in mid-2006 when I followed up directly with the NCA about when I could expect delivery of the card to my house in Dublin, they were unable to say if I should have received it already, or when I could expect it. Don’t people carrying out direct marketing require better feedback on the outcome of their campaigns than that?

The Shoppers’ Rights Cards are a good idea - Irish consumers need to be further empowered in how to be sure they’re getting their entitlements in dealing with sometimes unscrupulous businesses, but it’s unfortunate the follow through by the NCA is so half-hearted.

Maybe they could make the cards downloadable, like we do in Value Ireland with the Value Ireland Card (click here to see more).