Weekend Consumer News Short Stack
A few consumer news points for you for the weekend:
- Busy busy week for ValueIreland.com and particularly our Overcharging in Ireland, Check Your Bills, and SayNoTo1890.com initiatives. Following an appearance in the Irish Times on Saturday, there was Pricewatch in the Irish Times on Monday, and the Irish Examiner on Tuesday. There was also George Hook on Monday evening, TV3 on Wednesday morning as well as Radio Kerry and C103 in Cork. Finally, there was Q102 on Friday evening.
- “Go Local” Campaign – We’ve talked many times about buying Irish here in the past month or so. We’re now coming to the end of a week long “go local” campaign led by community organisations across the country – the IFA, the churches, the vintners and the GAA. Did you see any of this campaign in your region? Did it cause you to change your normal buying habits?
- Financial Services Ombudsman complaints – During the week, the Financial services Ombudsman announced that complaints to his office had increased 28% in 2008. 21 example complaints were provided – where 11 were upheld and 10 rejected. Wouldn’t it be nice to have seen who the complaints were made against – particularly where complaints were upheld? A bit of name and shame wouldn’t go astray. Tell us consumers who’s been bad and we can choose better where we can put our business.
- Annual Travel Pass Cost Increases – Lots of comments at work these days where colleagues are suffering from up to 25% increases in their yearly train travel passes – despite possible service cutbacks. I was in Pearse and saw the great incentives from Iaranrod Eireann to entice customers to apply for even these more expensive annual pass tickets. Assuming you just wanted a single or return somewhere, there was only 1 out of a ridiculously insufficient 3 ticket machines working, and it looked like the queue for the ticket kiosk was winding out onto the street it was moving so slowly. And with all that, there were no trains running!
- I received an e-mail this week promoting an apparent new EU consumer awareness campaign – Is It Fair? The e-mail I received had all the hallmarks of being a spam message, though the site looks legitimate upon first viewing. I’ll be following up more on this after I (hopefully) receive a response from whomever sent me the e-mail in the first place.
- I’ve meant to write about this before, but if you’re ever around the Kildare Street / Molesworth Street area and need a coffee and sandwich, then make sure you avoid the BusyBean Cafe on Molesworth Street and head straight for the Petit Cafe Food Co. on Kildare Street. Apart from the food and coffee being a whole lot nicer, the service is unbelieveably better – a pleasure to go there.
