Weekend Consumer News Short Stack
A few short points for the weekend:
- Consumer Protection Agency – According to the Irish Independent on Thursday, Ireland has one. If only we had an agency to protect us consumers, rather than one that tells us stuff that we already know and just gives warnings to business that rip us off rather than actually prosecuting them.
- Car sales decline – I see that the motor sales peoples union, the SIMI, has again called for a new scrappage scheme to bail out the garages that are having a tough time because they’re not selling any cars. Maybe if these same people didn’t try to screw money from consumers by having artificially high used car prices for example, they might sell a few more cars.
- Pubs to Freeze prices for a year - As announced on Monday, publicans are to come together to freeze prices for a year in an effort to tempt us back into their premises. Can’t say any more, or any better, than Conor Pope at Pricewatch – “What I, and I suspect many other people, would like to see is a significant price reduction across the board. That might be the only thing that will bring customers back.”
- No Electricity or Gas Price Rises – As expected last Monday, the Commission for Energy Regulation (CER) has not approved the price increases that had been originally requested by the ESB and Bord Gais (but then deemed unnecessary by those same companies). The CER has actually gone a step further and asked the ESB to reduce their prices to consumers, apparently by up to 1% according to RTE Drive time. Brilliant! That’s probably a benefit of approximately €1 every two months for most customers on an average ESB bill. Money in the bank! Don’t waste it!
- Bank Bailout Nominee Directors - The list of directors to be added to the 6 bank boards as the government nominees were announced last Wednesday. Despite having written about this here previously, the list was totally underwhelming. Jobs for the boys, anyone? “We need directors who’ll lift their snouts and squeal” said Sarah Carey in the Irish Times on the morning of the announcement – I just can’t see that listing of people squealing like a pig.
- Bank Bailout (Part 2) - Of course, if the Government becomes a shareholder in the banks, then these nominee directors will actually be legally obliged to report back to the Government – and all other bank shareholders. I wonder was this part of the plan all along back in October when the original unworkable nominee director plan was unveiled.
