ValueIreland.com

With thanks to, and courtesy of, Jan Battles who writes for The Sunday Times, here is the 17th and last in our series of Top Tips for Irish Consumers.

When I’m being thrifty and virtuous (which I admit is not always) these are some of the things I have found that help me save money.

• I’ve installed Skype on my computer, which has got to be one of the best inventions ever.  The software allows users to make telephone calls over the internet for free to other users of the service (and for a fee to landlines and mobiles). My best friend moved to Australia a few years ago and now instead of buying phone cards or access codes off websites I can call her totally for free. Not only does it cost me nothing, and is really easy to use, but because I have a webcam on my laptop I can see her every time we speak, instead of just once a year at Christmas. You’d think there’d be a catch, but I’ve yet to find it.
• When using my credit card abroad and given the option of paying in euros or the local currency I always select the local currency. It means I’m not getting the crappy exchange rate the hotel, restaurant or shop has set (which will include a nice cut for themselves) but rather the bank’s rate of the day.
• I use Which? magazine and its website Which.co.uk to help choose what brands of electronics and appliances to buy. They do comprehensive tests of reliability and value for money. They’ve never led me astray.
• Otherwise it’s just trial and error for us consumers. Consumer Choice, the magazine of the Consumers’ Association of Ireland, publishes similar reviews.
• I buy as much stuff online as possible: I get Dermalogica skincare products, which are only available in certain beauty salons and spas, from Care4YourSkin.com, where they are much cheaper (and they arrive at your front door). I use Amazon.co.uk for books, CDs and DVDs; Pixmania.ie is good for electronics and I buy art prints from Allposters.com or Easyart.com who will deliver canvas or framed prints.
• Earlier this year I had an extension put onto my house and got a new kitchen fitted. I brought my rough plans to one kitchen company and paid them around 150 euros to do up a full CAD drawing with computer images of what the kitchen would look like, then emailed it round six or seven different companies for quotes. The dearest was twice the price of the cheapest. Many companies around the country are willing to deliver and fit in Dublin and are usually much cheaper than ones based in the capital.
• I use websites like Laterooms.com and Wotif.com to get discounted hotel rooms. I’m so disorganised it’s always last minute anyway when I’m booking a holiday that it works for me but if you like to have everything sorted months in advance it’s not ideal.
• I stock up on painkillers like paracetamol and ibuprofen when I’m in the North or Britain. Boots and Tesco have several different lines of own-brand versions in the UK that they don’t have here that are much cheaper, and it’s the same active ingredient. You can get paracetamol for as little as 1p a tablet when the cheapest here is more than 8c each. You can also get some medicines that are prescription-only here over the counter there, which saves on the 40 or 50 quid it costs going to the doctor.
• Unless I have a memory lapse, I always clear my credit card when the bill comes in. I tend to use it only to book tickets, reserve hotels and when buying valuable items so they are covered by the card insurance. I don’t use it as a loan facility as the interest rates are so high and I’m freaked out by big debt (my large mortgage is something I manage to block out of my head most of the time). I love denying the bank any interest payments so when I forget to pay on time it really bugs me.
• When the lovely people at the insurance company send me my annual renewal and have bumped up my premium I always call them. The first year I phoned all the other providers to get quotes and told my insurer how much cheaper I could get it elsewhere. The second year I didn’t go to the bother and just said I could get it much cheaper elsewhere and they immediately dropped the price. It seems to me like they pick any number out of the air and are leaving the ball in the customer’s court as to whether they bother to quibble with them or not.
• These are personal top tips, and are not necessarily endorsed by The Sunday Times.

PAUL CULLEN, Consumer Affairs Correspondent
Sat, Nov 22, 2008

THREE LEADING members of the Consumers’ Association of Ireland have resigned in a row over policy issues and internal operations.

The three, Diarmuid MacShane, Mel Gannon and Enid O’Dowd, were all members of the association’s council and had raised their concerns about the running of the organisation at recent meetings.

They had also called for fees payable to association representatives on other bodies to be passed to the organisation itself rather than the individuals themselves. However, they were outvoted by other council members.

Mr MacShane, who operates a consumer website, ValueIreland.com, said he had resigned because the association was not working effectively on behalf of consumers.

“They aren’t doing anything. They’re a magazine publisher rather than a consumer advocate, producing soundbites for the media but no initiatives.”

He also criticised the flow of information within the organisation and claimed it had taken almost a year to get a list of association representatives on outside bodies.

The association’s chairman, James Doorley, rejected Mr MacShane’s criticisms.

“As a small NGO, we’re doing as much as we can to represent consumers. I’m not claiming we’re perfect.

“Given that we have limited financial resources we have to focus on certain issues,” Mr Doorley said.

Membership of the Consumers Association of Ireland, which is effected by subscribing to its magazine, Consumer Choice, has halved in the past decade, to about 5,000.

Its €700,000 annual turnover compares to the €10 million budget of the State-run National Consumer Agency.

This includes a grant of €66,000 from the Department of Enterprise and Employment.

The latest accounts, described by the council as disappointing, record a loss of €41,000. They also show that CAI members were paid a total of more than €50,000 in return for representing the association on outside bodies.

Mr Gannon and Ms O’Dowd ran for chair and treasurer respectively in previous years but were unsuccessful.

The Irish Times
Monday, November 24, 2008
Conor Pope

WHILE IT MAY sound peculiar that people who contact the National Consumer Agency (NCA) to complain about rip-off prices have to fork out as much as ¤3.50 for a 10-minute call to one of its agents, that can be the case if the call is made using a mobile phone rather than a landline.

Like many banks, insurance companies, Government departments and other State and semi-state bodies, the NCA advertises a so-called lo-call 1890 number on its main consumer contact page. Unlike ComReg, the Financial Regulator and the Data Protection Commissioner, to name just three organisations also representing the interests of consumers, the NCA does not list a landline contact number for consumer inquiries.

It is a peculiar oversight, as the lo-call 1890 number is anything but low cost when called from a mobile. The cost of making such a call from a landline is 5.1 cent a minute during peak hours and 1.3 cent off-peak from anywhere in the country. The cost of making the same call using a mobile can be as high as €0.35 a minute and, unlike landline numbers, which are routinely included in the bundled “free” minutes offered by the mobile phone and landline operators, calls to 1890, 1850 and 0818 numbers are excluded from such deals.

While many large organisations advertise their lo-call numbers as if they were entirely to the consumer’s benefit, they don’t make any mention of the potential cost. To its credit, the NCA does at least carry a note on all its promotional literature alluding to the fact that the costs of calling the number from a mobile may vary, although they don’t say by how much.

Not only mobile phone users are penalised for calling lo-call numbers. Some landline customers also find themselves out of pocket, because landline deals offering unlimited calls for fixed monthly prices exclude 1890, 1850 and 0818 calls.

Given its role of protecting the Irish consumer, the NCA should be beyond reproach when it comes to consumer matters, so its failure to offer a choice of both landline and lo-call numbers is surprising. We contacted the agency and were told that it had initially considered using a freephone number as its main contact but had been cautioned against it as 1800 numbers tend to generate large volumes of “crank calls”, which, it said, would hamper it in its objective of handling a greater number of genuine consumer queries.

THE NCA SAYS its call centre in Cork will handle 90,000 calls this year and the number of complaints in connection with its 1890 number are “extremely low”. It told PriceWatch that its Dublin-based staff “are not trained to offer call-centre services” but consumers who call its corporate headquarters with inquiries are connected to the Cork-based call centre at no additional cost, making it a much cheaper, if little publicised, avenue for mobile phone users.

The NCA stresses that 1890 billing practices are “an issue of commercial practice by those operators concerned” and says the cost of the calls to its own number “remains under scrutiny internally”. It has plans to raise the inclusion of a landline as a potential option when tendering for call-centre services within the next month.

One person who would welcome such a move is consumer activist Diarmuid MacShane. A year ago, he was aghast when he opened his mobile bill and saw the “horrendous” charges associated with calling lo-call numbers. When he rang his operator to complain, a customer service representative empathised but said there was nothing that could be done about it.

MacShane DISAGREED. Mirroring a similar campaign in the UK, he set up an anti-1890 website, www.saynoto1890.com. The site lists the alternative landline contact numbers for companies using 1890 numbers so people calling them from mobiles at least have the choice of saving themselves a few bob.

“The numbers are advertised by service providers as being lo-call and call-save. Unfortunately that only applies to landlines, and I don’t think that people who have these numbers actually realise the impact to mobile users,” he believes.

He says some businesses use these numbers because of their “national” non-regional nature while others “like them because they provide easy-to-remember numbers - so if it’s making it easier for people to call, and therefore to get business, they might not be too concerned about their cost to their customers. But I think that even more people would become annoyed through greater exposure of the cost implications, which many people probably aren’t aware of.”

We contacted the four mobile providers last week and all four confirmed that calls to 1890 numbers are not included in their bundled minutes. They charge a range of prices of up to €0.35 cent a minute.

When we asked why they were not included in bundles, we got broadly similar, if not entirely convincing, answers from all the providers. O2 said it excluded calls to 1890 numbers “on the basis that they are a non-standard call. The exclusion of certain non-standard calls from bundled minutes on price plans is standard industry practice,” a statement said, adding: “As a mobile operator, O2 facilitates access to 1890 numbers for its customers and charges a flat rate of 35c per minute to ensure transparency.”

For its part, Vodafone said it did not include calls to 1890 numbers because it was concentrated on “offering value where the customer needs it the most and in keeping our tariff plans as simple as possible for the consumer. Including non-standard calls makes the tariffs confusing,” Vodafone claimed.

The company doesn’t, however, find it confusing to vary the charges associated with calling 1890 numbers depending on the package consumers subscribe to - people with 600 free minutes pay €0.18, those with 400-minute bundles pay €0.20 up to a maximum of €0.30 a minute.

Meanwhile, 3 Mobile charges €0.30 a minute to dial 1890 numbers while Meteor told us it did not include calls to 1890 or 1850 numbers, again citing “standard industry practice” as the reason. To its credit, however, at €0.15 a minute it is the cheapest of the networks for such calls.

MacShane says there is no justification for the charges to be higher than normal calls to landlines, and he can see “no reason to not have them included in minutes bundles. Given that the aim of mobile companies is to reduce the total number of landline minutes used in the country, so more and more people will be calling these numbers from mobiles. It’s easy money”. He says the line trotted out by the phone companies that it is “standard industry practice” could be translated to mean “we charge what we do because we can, and people pay it”.

In a programme subtitled, Service with a Snarl, Conor Pope of the excellent Irish Times PriceWatch column is fronting tonights Prime Time Investigates.

In a warm-up article in Saturdays Irish Times, Conor looked at some examples of problematic customer service experienced by Irish consumers. On the basis of that article, it looks like NTL/Chorus/UPC might be bearing the brunt of the coverage.

Lets hope this programme doesn’t unexpectedly and quietly get pulled like the last episode of Buyer Beware last Thursday night.

Tonight is the 6th and last in the Buyer Beware series on RTE1 with Philip Boucher Hayes. Tonights programme has a taster of what it’s about up on their mini-site:

We look at one specific very low calorie diet (VLCD) - Lipotrim, available over-the-counter in over 120 Irish pharmacies. We interview several people who have taken it, and ask whether closer medical monitoring of patients and sales regulation of these types of diets is needed.

Reporter Philip Boucher-Hayes looks at water safety and tests lifejackets and other types of personal flotation devices (PFDs), and discovers that a relatively new device, costing only €5-should probably be added to the list of must haves for all of us when we head out onto the water.

From a personal perspective, I think that the last item about water safety will be the most beneficial of the whole series for anyone who is watching.

The Irish News of The World picked up on my post last week criticising the programme for not really addressing the major concerns of the Irish consumer:

Rip-Offs TV Anger

RTE’s Buyer Beware TV show has been criticised by a consumers group. Diarmuid MacShane of ValueIreland.com said the show concentrates too much on foreign conmen.

He said: “They’ve taken the easy way out. If you look at the rip-offs by big first here, that’s where most people have problems”. “Not the Mickey Mouse operations from the show”.

An RTE spokesman said: “We are very surprised. We regard it as a very successful show and everyone in RTE is delighted with it”.

Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they. They’d hardly come out and say they were sorry they put the money into it because it hadn’t gained the success of other short consumer series, like those from Eddie Hobbs for example. I thought that was a stunning comment in its arrogance from RTE when I read it first.

I think that the best barometer on the success, or failure as I see it, of the show is the overwhelming silence and lack of coverage following each episode - no one really cares about the show or the contents.

The Irish Examiner
Fiona McPhillips

There are few of us who haven’t been hit by the recession, the credit crunch and the recent budget.  So what are we going to do about it?  Many consumers have been turning to the Internet for advice on how to manage their money, cut costs and find the best bargains.  Others have joined online communities in the hope of pooling their resources in the quest for a fair deal.

“How to live on less” is one such topic on the parenting site, www.magicmum.com, while www.boards.ie has a message board for bargain alerts and another one for consumer issues.  Financial awareness website, www.askaboutmoney.com, allows users to ask advice of other users on a wide range of financial issues, while another message board, www.thepropertypin.com, sorts the truth from the spin on the Irish property market.

Despite this positive action from consumers, it seems that Irish businesses have not yet stepped up to the mark.  Diarmuid MacShane of www.valueireland.com feels that there has still not been much of a change in how retailers and service providers deal with their customers.  “We’re seeing many gimmicky offers from the big supermarkets recently – points back weekends and money off weekends – but no consistent dropping in prices yet.  You get the impression that many Irish businesses would rather not sell anything at all instead of dropping their prices.”

Instead of putting up with this, consumers are moving away from the large supermarkets in favour of German discounters, Lidl and Aldi, once considered “too cheap” by many.  Web designer, Katherine Nolan, set up the blog, www.lidltreats.com, last summer in a response to the negative media attention the low-cost supermarkets were receiving.  The blog points out particularly good buys and quality products and offers some great recipes for those needing a little inspiration. “When exactly did it become shameful to get value for money?”, she asks her readers.

Only three months on, Nolan feels attitudes are changing already.  “There was a time when people would say that they only went to Lidl or Aldi occasionally or they would sniff about quality and say they never went near the place.  Now they are more likely to boast about how they’ve been shopping there for years and can’t understand why other people took so long to join them.  It’s a badge of pride to be able to point out the best buys and people definitely boast about their bargains.”

It is a view shared by Deborah Hadley at www.frugalireland.com.  “Initially, when people are quite amazed with the savings, they are likely to be quite proud and try to evangelise.  Eventually it will taper off as we all cop on and begin to shop around regularly.”  Hadley shares advice on budgeting, menu planning, supermarket deals and coupon codes.  She explains that, while she could do her weekly shop in Tesco for €250 in one hour, two hours of shopping around at Aldi, Tesco and her local butcher will yield the same results for €100.  Hadley advises calculating potential costs per hour for any shopping trip in order to maximise savings.  “People use lack of time as their biggest excuse but if you put it into perspective, it becomes less valid an excuse.”

There are also substantial savings to be made in both time and money by shopping online.  Keep an eye on online offers, sales and coupon codes at shopping.blogs.ie.

Top Five Lidl Treats:

1. Chocolate: the JD Gross bars and the Fair Trade chocolate are as good as premium brands and half the price.
2. Continental meats: parma, salami and chorizo are of very good quality and priced so that they can be everyday purchases rather than luxuries.
3. Vegetables: good quality, excellent selection and the best organic vegetable section of any supermarket.
4. Frozen fish: salmon fillets, prawns and breaded fish are all good.  There are often great fish specials such as sea bass, lobster and crab and frozen, ready-prepared fish dishes of a very high quality.
5. Kitchen stuff: washing-up liquid, dishwasher tablets, surface cleaners, tinfoil, greaseproof paper, freezer bags and refuse sacks are all very cheap and very good quality.

Top Five Value Ireland Tips:

(see also www.toptips.ie)

1. Read up on the budget - Find out exactly how the budget changes are going to affect you.  If you are going to need more money, work out where that is going to come from.  If you are going to be better off, put the extra money into your savings.
2. Review your habitual spending - Make sure you are getting the best deals on your home, health and car insurance.  Monitor your electricity and gas usage.
3. Be vigilant for price rises - Make sure you are not taking the hit when the 0.5% VAT increase kicks in on 1st January 2009.  Any businesses that are trying to pass the cost on to their customers should be exposed and boycotted.
4. Be aware of your consumer rights - Make sure you know what you are entitled to as a consumer so businesses cannot take advantage of you in their efforts to cut costs.
5. Get online - As well as consumer-led resources, there are government-run sites that can benefit Irish consumers.  These include the National Consumer Agency (www.nca.ie), the Financial Regulator (www.financialregulator.ie) and the communications regulator, ComReg (www.comreg.ie).

ZZZZZZZzzzzzzz!!!! I don’t know why I’m bothering any more, but remember to check out Buyer Beware! tonight on RTE1 at 8.30pm. Even RTE aren’t bothering to update their mini-site for the programme, so it seems that even they’ve lost interest in it as well - this is the 5th episode but the site hasn’t been updated since episode 3.

Overall I think the programme is disappointing in its irrelevance to the majority of Irish consumers. Philip Boucher Hayes isn’t addressing the main reasons for consumer calls to the National Consumer Agency for example, and they don’t address the scams, ripoffs and consumer issues caused by Irish companies.

Instead they’ve taken the easy option of addressing peripheral ripoffs that most people should already be aware of. They’re focusing on scams carried out here by people based outside the country, and haven’t looked much at all at Irish ripoff artists. Obviously RTE wouldn’t want to be annoying anyone in Ireland that might be paying their tv licence, voting for the government parties, or more importantly, paying for RTE advertising.

Anyway, for the 5th episode, this is as much as I can find out:

Consumer series in which Philip Boucher Hayes investigates companies and individuals who have left customers feeling dissatisfied.

Maybe the true scam in all this is that RTE paid money to have this programme produced in the first place?

The Irish Examiner
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
By Jennifer Hough

CONSUMERS have been ripped off to the tune of €620 million in the past four years, according to a watchdog website.

The report by ValueIreland.com shows more than 1.6 million customers were overcharged €623m for a range of goods and services from insurance companies to banks to phone companies from 2004 to 2008.

Editor of the website Diarmuid MacShane, a former director with the Consumer Association of Ireland, said he started compiling the name and shame list following a number of high-profile cases in 2004, and a survey by the website which found that more than 41% of Irish consumers did not check their bills before paying them.

The report paints a stark picture of how consumers pay for companies mistakes. AIB was listed eight times on the survey. Bank of Ireland had five offences, while the ESB was named four times.

The Government rang up the largest bill when it admitted in December 2004 that it knew pensioners with medical cards were being charged illegally in nursing homes.

This repayment of this overcharging is expected to cost in excess of €50m.

Mr MacShane said these revelations could possibly be the tip of the iceberg, as many people did not even notice they were being overcharged.

He added that he felt the Financial Regulator could be doing more to discipline the offenders, some of whom seemed to be overcharging again and again.

“As far as the consumer is aware there has been silence on the part of the regulator,” he said.

Dermott Jewell, chief executive of the Consumers’ Association of Ireland, said the research highlighted how important it was that people checked their bills.

Mr Jewell said the issue of overcharging had come up in a CAI survey in relation to supermarket receipts and price discrepancies.

“At different occasions we have carried out similar surveys looking specifically supermarket receipts. People need to be vigilant and check their bills.”

Mr MacShane also called for consumers to be cautious and not to make the mistake of assuming the bill was right.

“Banks and other companies had overcharged customers by large amounts of money, yet customers rarely noticed,” he said.

“If we don’t take such a precaution as checking a bill to protect ourselves from overcharging businesses, how can we expect others to protect us from these businesses?”

A spokesperson for the Financial Regulator said it was very active in pursuing companies who were thought to be overcharging.

The regulator yesterday announced that some of the country’s top banks are still not dealing adequately with complaints from customers.

It said that while all institutions had procedures in place that complied with the requirements as set down in the Consumer Protection Code, there were still problems, with 27% of consumers having “no idea” how to complain about a financial product or service.

Overcharging: High-profile cases

• August 2007 — Ulster Bank admits overcharging customers by €4m.
• April 2005 — AXA Insurance promises to refund €1.7m to 130,000 customers who overpaid for home or motor policies.
• April 2005 — Bank of Ireland admits not refunding customers who had overpaid on insurance products to the tune of €15m.
• June 2004 — Vodafone admits overcharging 22,000 customers a total of €147,000 through exaggerated roaming charges.

July 2004 — AIB confirms it was to make refunds to 34,000 of its third level and graduate customers. The total, before interest compensation, was €1.4m.

The Irish Examiner
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Editorial

A SURVEY, compiled by ValueIreland.com since July 2004, indicates a range of banks, service providers, and insurance companies have been exposed as overcharging 1.6 million Irish customers by at least €623,943,892, over the past four years.

In April 2005, Bank of Ireland admitted that it had not refunded customers who had overpaid for insurance cover on car loans.

It estimated that there were a total of 65,000 loans involved in that error. It agreed to refund all the customers a total of €15m.

In May of this year, Bank of Ireland announced it was refunding about €200,000 to 16,000 holders of child saving accounts.

The bank has agreed to repay the money after an incorrect interest rate was paid on the savings accounts between May 2003 and February 2008.

Ulster Bank admitted in August of last year that it overcharged clients by not refunding about 25,000 borrowers almost €4m that they were due on insurance policies after they had repaid loans early.

Abuses at AIB had previously been detailed.

Over the past four years, Irish consumers have been ripped off by the banks to an extent that the term bank robbery has been given a whole new meaning.

We received this press release earlier this week - a campaign by the Dublin station Q102 against the dual pricing and exaggerated sterling to euro price conversion rates.

We in ValueIreland.com have always advocated that consumers should always vote with their wallets when it comes to where to spend their money. While it’s great to see a campaign of any kind to raise awareness of consumers, ignoring a store completely might not be completely in the interests of consumers.

As an example, what if a particular store that is “named and shamed” actually provides the best value going on a particular item - cheapest in the country. There’s no reason why consumers should ignore the whole store. Ignore the expensive items by all means, but take advantage of the value - wherever it’s available.

Dublin’s Q102 launches ‘Ignore That Store’ campaign to name and shame retail outlets who mark up prices when converting from sterling to euro

‘Ignore That Store’ initiative launched in conjunction with The Consumers’ Association of Ireland

Free Christmas advertising campaign on Dublin’s Q102 promised to first store which undertakes to convert sterling to euro accurately

Tuesday, 25 November 2008                For immediate release

‘On The QT’, the flagship current affairs programme on radio station Dublin’s Q102, in conjunction with The Consumers’ Association of Ireland, has launched a new innovative on-air campaign called ‘Ignore that Store’. The campaign is naming and shaming the many retail outlets that are ripping off consumers by marking up prices when converting sterling to euro on labels.

‘On the QT’, which is presented by Scott Williams, has discovered that certain stores are overcharging consumers by astronomical mark up’s when it comes to converting sterling prices to euro prices, in some cases by as much as 45%. In addition, some stores are going as far as blacking out the original sterling prices or ripping the sterling tag off in a bid to cover up the incorrect conversion rates.

Since announcing the campaign, ‘On the QT’ on Dublin’s Q102 has been inundated with texts, e-mails and calls from concerned listeners naming shops who are exploiting customers with unfair prices. Dublin’s Q102 has also visited some of the shops repeatedly mentioned by listeners to check their conversion rate, and found that many items were marked considerably higher than the actual sterling price shown.

Below are samples of the e-mails sent by listeners to ‘On the QT’ offering their support for ‘Ignore That Store’:

• “My partner went to Claires Accessories to buy 2 baby headbands at 2 pounds sterling, and was asked for 7.60. I brought them back. Total rip off. Thanks for highlighting this.”
• “I saw a dress in M&S for 105 euro, it was however only 55 sterling. That’s a huge mark up.”
• “I was in Monsoon in Liffey Valley last night and was bowled over to see that a dress, marked £180 sterling was being sold here for 280 euro - disgraceful, Name & Shame!”

The ‘Ignore That Store’ project has already garned support from politicians across all parties including:

• Chris Andrews TD, Member of the Joint Oireachtas Committee of Enterprise, Trade and Employment
• Dr. Leo Varadkar, Fine Gael’s Spokesperson for Enterprise, Trade & Employment
• Senator Brendan Ryan, Consumer Affairs Spokesperson for the Labour Party
• Mary White, Green Party Deputy Leader and Spokesperson on Enterprise

The ‘Ignore That Store’ initiative follows hot on the heels of the extremely successful ‘Make small Print BIG Print’ campaign run by Dublin’s Q102 earlier this year. That project was focused on not only abolishing small print but making it BIG print, clearly highlighted, easy to read and in plain English to ensure consumers avoid getting trapped into agreements through the use of obscure and unwelcome terms and conditions. Furthermore, Scott Williams, CEO of Dublin’s Q102, was called to make a presentation about the ‘Make small Print BIG Print’ campaign to the Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment sitting at the Oireachtas.

Scott Williams, CEO of Dublin’s Q102 and presenter of ‘On the QT’, believes that the ‘Ignore That Store’ endeavour will be as successful as the ‘Make small Print BIG Print’ campaign and he has promised free Christmas publicity to the first store which stops inaccurately marking up their prices.

“After the recent success of the ‘Make small Print BIG Print’ campaign we believe that we can do more for the Irish consumer and stop stores marking up their prices. The response from our listeners to the ‘Ignore that Store’ project has been astounding. We have received a flood of calls, texts and e-mails on this topic confirming that this is a huge problem for consumers. We hope that our offer of free advertising in the run up to Christmas to the first store which undertakes to use accurate prices will encourage the stores to do so!”

Dermott Jewell, CEO of the Consumers’ Association of Ireland, has expressed his committed support for the ‘Ignore That Store’ campaign:

“The actions and attitude adopted by many retailers in adding exorbitant, unrealistic and undeserved profit margins to Irish consumers needs to be highlighted. But - more importantly - consumers must acknowledge that this is unacceptable, that they are being fleeced and that they do have the power to do something about it and that they must do something about it.”

“The Consumers’ Association of Ireland, together with Q102, wants every consumer who sees anything more than 10% added to the euro exchange value of a £ sterling price to leave the goods there, to walk away and to tell their friends and family to Ignore That Store. Then, they should take their money to a retailer who values their custom with reasonable prices.”

“This is the one simple way we, as consumers, can send the message that until we see fair pricing we will not spend and we will leave products on the racks and shelves of the profiteers.”

And no, the irony of the CAI launching a campaign this week isn’t lost on me either.