ValueIreland.com

One of our more popular Value Ireland Tips pages is that giving some hints and advice on checking your change. It may seem like such a simple thing, but the reaction we’ve received – particularly with regards to the section on things to watch out for – has been extraordinary since we first published the article.

Dublin Bus don’t provide you with change, but instead they print out that little receipt at the end of your ticket which you can return to their offices in return for the actual cash. It’s a simple transaction for both sides, if a little inconvenient for the customer.

And yes, I know that this process is intended to discourage passengers from using cash and getting regular “saver tickets” instead – but my options for saver tickets given my bus usage wouldn’t actually save me any money at all.

So how, I wonder, in recent times can bus drivers get it so wrong? The best example of this happened to me and a friend of mine on a Friday evening a couple of weeks ago when we were heading out to Ballsbridge from Nassau Street on the 4. I was paying the fare so dropped two €2 coins in the machine to pay for the two €1.40 fares and got my change ticket printed out with the two tickets. I was given change of 2c rather than the €1.20. Unfortunately, I didn’t notice this short-changing until afterwards, and it was this that inspired this post. You might understand if the change receipt said 12c rather than €1.20, but 2c?

Another example happened since then, but now I’m wiser to the possibilities. A week or so ago on my normal 19a route I put a €2 coin into the slot and asked the driver for a €1.60 ticket. He prints out the €1.60 ticket, does nothing else, and moves to look over my shoulder to the next passenger. This time around, I had to ask for my change. Either I had put in a €1 coin and he didn’t realize but he still gave me a €1.60 ticket (thereby not really doing his job properly by checking that the correct money is paid for tickets), or he decided to extract his Christmas bonus a couple of weeks early.

As per the commentary in the above link on checking your change, I’m always very suspicious of someone who corrects a short-changing issue without at least confirming for themselves that there was a mistake. This driver simply printed out my 40c change ticket without checking for himself that I had in fact put in €2 rather than €1.

Lessons learned:

I know someone who has complained to a 5* hotel about the service received when they were trying to check in early a couple of weeks ago. Early mind you, was 12.30 in the afternoon, after checking out time in the same hotel. But still, they were told that there was not a single room in the 500 room hotel available for another 3 hours.

In defense of the hotel, they did actually respond to the complaint:

With regards to your experience at check-in I would like to personally apologise that you did not receive our usual five star standard of service and please be assured that I shall personally be looking into this.

Once again please accept my sincere apologies and I hope you will return and allow us the opportunity to show you our usual high level of service, please contact me directly if you have any questions and I look forward to welcoming you back to *** ******** Grand Hotel & Spa in the future.

Assuming you’ve gotten past the exhilaration of having a business actually respond to a complaint in the first place – Dunbrody Country House Hotel take note - would you be happy with this response to a complaint?

A number of sources recently (and in the past) have questioned the use of taking your car for a “pre-NCT” check. Unless you have something majorly wrong with the car that you know about, why pay for such a service, especially if according to Charlie O’Hagan in a recent Sunday Business Post article, you could end up paying upwards on €200 for a “pre-NCT” check.

In these “pre-NCT” checks, you could very well end up paying them to check or fix something that might necessarily be a problem, while they could miss out on something that could fail in the test. While you will probably not get a guarantee that your pre-checked car will pass the NCT, the garage you use may show goodwill by fixing whatever it is causes your car to fail. But they’re not obliged to, so you could be unlucky.

You should save yourself some money and just get your test done - doing all the easy stuff to make it more likely that you’ll pass the test first time.

If during the test anything causes the car to fail, you can specifically get that fixed by your local garage and get a re-test done for €27.50. Make sure you get a written quote for the cost of labour and materials required to fix the problem before you get any work done as well. In the long run, this will all probably save you money, rather than getting the “pre-NCT” done up front.

I wonder if Bertie had it in mind that the assessment of our Financial Regulator he’s planning (referred to here on Public Inquiry) would cover the hygiene habits of staff within the Central Bank?

Cracking article here (sub required) by Quentin Fottrell in todays Opinion section of the Irish Times. The relevant quote for our purposes here is as follows:

In the restroom on the ground floor of an office block in Dublin there is a notice telling us, “Please use the brush provided if you’ve soiled the bowl”. It’s no small irony that this sign urging us to take responsibility for our own actions is in the Central Bank.

In the recent NRA hearings on the plans for the new barrier free tolling the AA Public Affairs Manager Conor Faughnan has called for extra taxes to be placed on petrol rather than impose the new planned tolls on the M50.

I have to completely agree with Mr.Faughnan, but would actually like to see changes go further. We should remove all motor taxes (including the daft new emissions based taxes) and the VRT, and replace them both with extra taxes on petrol. By following this suggestion, we have a pure pay per usage situation, which is emmininently more fair than our current situations.

Back to Mr.Faughnan at the hearings:

The AA today called for the tolls to be abandoned and replaced with a two cent per litre ‘infrastructure levy’ on fuel, which it said would raise more money with far less waste.

“NRA figures envisage a set-up cost of €13 million and an ongoing operating cost of €25 million annually, based on 2008 prices. This would mean that of the €80 million collected in revenue each year over 30 per cent would disappear in costs. This is scandalously wasteful,” said AA public affairs manager Conor Faughnan.

To my mind however, the words “scandalously wasteful” brings us to why such proposals as mine and Mr.Faughnan will never happen. Just imagine the number of civil servants who would need to be otherwise engaged if they weren’t required to oversee motor tax in each county, and centrally in Shannon, as well as those who oversee the VRT system. It’ll be much easier for the government to avoid such a situation rather than do the sensible thing and bring in pay per use when it comes to car usage.

To follow up on my post below, here’s the Value Ireland site statistics for the month in which the infamous Top Tips article was published – April 2007. “Someone” from the Irish Independent was the most frequent visitor to the Value Ireland web pages over the course of the whole month.

On the other hand, I’m amazed at the response to my post (in a positive way obviously, thank you all) below about the Irish Independent and the methods of one of their journalists. Here’s some links to those who’ve responded, commented and followed up elsewhere.

Damien Mulley

Derfen

Bock the Robber