ValueIreland.com

Do you know that the “unit pricing” regulations are? Do you check out the unit prices to see if you’re getting good value for money?

A shop that provides price labels on their shelving and has bar code scanning at checkouts (most shops these days) are obliged to provide a unit price for an item as well as the actual selling price.

So, if you’re buying an item that is sold by measure, volume or weight, the label must tell you how much that item is per litre, or per kilo etc.

Below are two shelf labels from my local store from a couple of weeks ago. As you can see, they’re both for the same product - Squeez Orange Juice, but for 2 different volume containers.

Interesting, isn’t it! On the same shelf, two different unit prices for the same product.

And to even complicate things even more for the poor consumer, the version of the juice that was market as €1.64 per litre was actually also flagged in a “2 for €2.50” deal. What’s that? 2 litres for €2.50, or a unit price of €1.25 per litre (which isn’t actually shown anywhere).

Takes a bit of effort and mathematics to work out the best value there!

If anyone was in any doubt about it, here’s a perfect example of why Irish consumers are suffering under the weight of a huge number of useless regulators in this country.

Last week, the Irish Independent has an article entitled “Watchdog: ‘rates should be displayed’.

At a time when the banks were slowly but surely flushing themselves down the toilet, the Financial Regulator conducted a mystery shopper exercise on 100 foreign exchange outlets to ensure they were observing the rules regarding the display commission levels and exchange rates.

And the result of this exercise? They found that some of the providers weren’t following the rules.

And the response of the useless Financial Regulator? Did they prosecute them for not following the rules? Fines? Closure orders? Name and Shame?

Nope. A Press Release that essentially tells us nothing! Useless or what?

I could go on about my conspiracy theory regarding this whole pork recall issue (you’re not worried about the bank bailouts or the recession now, are you?), but lets for the moment stick to the facts.

• From a regulatory perspective, I think this editorial piece from the Irish Independent was pretty much on the money. We have 4 watchdog bodies involved in this - yet it still took a week for the matter to come to a head, and we couldn’t even do the testing necessary in Ireland.
• From a value for money perspective issue, why did the “from farm to fork” food tracing process not allow the supermarkets and suppliers isolate the 10% at risk product and allow the other 90% to remain on the shelves. Does this mean that the expense of implenting this tracing regime is all for nought now?
• From a consumer perspective, you are entitled to refunds if you can prove purchase. As the pork purchased isn’t “fit for purpose”, you’re entitled to “repair, replace or refund”. Any of the three resolutions are perfectly legitimate on the part of the shop where you bought your pork. Generally, proof of purchase (a receipt) isn’t always necessary, but this is probably considered a special scenario. If you have own-branded items its easy for them to identify that you bought the product in a certain store. If it’s a branded item, to be fair to the stores, you should have proof or purchase. If you have your receipts, you should have no problems.
• So, though we’re told it’s safe to throw your pork products in the normal rubbish - you shouldn’t. Try first and get your money back. If that’s unsuccessful, then throw it out.
• Here are two useful Frequently Asked Questions pieces in The Irish Times and The Irish Independent that will help you further.
• Finally, for the ultimate source of information on what’s going on, go to the Food Safety Authority website. If you’re calling from a mobile, don’t call their 1890 33 66 77 number. Save yourself a few quid (since you’re likely to be on hold for a while) and call their 01 817 1300 number instead.
  

It’s a week or so now when there were a number 0f calls to Joe Duffy about management company issues. You can find a lot of similar sentiments raised on the Management Company forum on AskAboutMoney.com - problems with with management companies and management agents. The National Consumer Agency have even provided a website that you can reference to find out more.

However, the key question with regards to all of this is:

Are you and your fellow residents in control of your management company - has it been handed over by the developer to the residents?

Yes, we are

If you are in control of your management company, then happy days - you have full control over what your management fees will be and who your management agent is and what they should be doing for you as residents. In fact, if you’re in charge of your management company, you could even decide that you don’t need management agents if you can get a strong enough group of people to carry out the agents tasks instead. You could simply change your management agents to another company if you’re not happy.

No, we’re not

Then tough! It’s most likely that you have no control at all. If the developer of your estate is still in charge of the estate, and therefore the management company, you’re most likely going to be outvoted at any management company AGMs. Like where I live, the developer maintains a block vote that will always outvote the wishes of the residents - even if every resident did show up to an AGM and voted together.
Even getting rid of the management agents in this scenario is likely to be impossible. Chances are, as in the case of where I’m living, the management agent and the developers that are in control of the management company are very closely tied together. One would never agree to the other being changed.

Holding back on management fee payments isn’t really an option either - your contract to purchase your home includes a clause that you’ll continue paying whatever management fee is charged.

So, what can you do?

If you’re in control of your management company, you can pretty much do what you like.

If you’re not, then you’re pretty much at the mercy of the developers and their management agent buddies.

Don’t forget that Philip Boucher-Hayes is on again tonight on RTE1 at 8.30pm with the 4th in his Buyer Beware! series. According to the RTE schedule, this is the sparce detail of what tonights show is about:

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

I did manage to watch the full programme last week. In case you missed it, this is what was covered:

The feature story in Episode 3 of Buyer Beware! looks at the activities of a British-based company Community Concepts which has approached Irish businesses for money which, it claimed, would go to publish a drug awareness booklet for Irish schools. And, as we come into the Christmas shopping season, the second item examines the burgeoning phenomenon of online shopping, and looks at some do’s and don’ts for purchasers in the light of some cautionary tales.

To be honest, I found the programme quite disappointing. While there was probably some entertainment value in watching the presenter chasing around a dodgy geezer in the UK, its all a little bit abstract and a little bit irrelevant to Irish consumers.

Wouldn’t it be much more interesting and relevant if Philip was chasing Brian Goggin of Bank of Ireland or Eugene Sheehy of AIB around their housing estate (or leafy suburban roads) trying to find answers as to why they rip off Irish consumers so much, or chasing the Financial Regulator Pat Neary around and around the Central Bank on Dame Street trying to find out why he lets them away with it all the time.

Regular readers are probably aware that I’m not a big fan of the actions of the National Consumer Agency. And though it might have been expected, you haven’t seem me dancing in the streets with the news that the NCA would be no more following the 2009 budget announcement that the NCA would be merged with the Competition Authority.

Apart from a comment about the proposal on my original budget post, I haven’t really approached this subject.

There’s not a whole lot for me to say really, having thought about it since the original announcement. I absolutely believe that we need an organisation such as the National Consumer Agency to protect the interests of Irish consumers, but not operated in the way this organisation is.

The NCA has at least 60 different pieces of consumer legislation at their disposal under which they can protect consumers, yet during 2007 when they received at least 2,250 complaints regarding suspected legislation breaches, there were only the following prosecutions:

• Failure to display price of grocery product - 3
• Failure to display prices in a public house - 3
• Failure to display price of petrol - 6
• Other fines imposed - 4
• Prohibition Orders - 3
• Oh, and don’t forget the classic “undertakings” - there was 1 of those.

That’s less than a 1% prosecution rate - hardly “putting the consumer first”.

And what does it take to achieve this 1% prosecution rate - according to the NCA 2007 Annual Report:

The Agency employed 59 staff, of which 55 were civil servants on secondment from the Department of Enterprise, Trade & Employment, 3 were on secondment from Forfás and 1 is a member of staff of the Agency.

And at a cost to the tax payer of:

State funding was provided through the Office of the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, and amounted to €5,369,331 for the period ended 31December 2007.

We do need a National Consumer Agency - and possibly we need it to be independent and for it to not be merged with the Competition Authority - but for an organisation that claims to be “putting consumers first” it needs to do a whole lot more and to be a whole lot more effective before we can feel in any way protected.

You’ll be familiar with the recent Financial Regulator decision to fine Quinn Insurance €3.25m and Sean Quinn personally the amount of €200,000.

In a very unexpected move, Quinn Insurance and Sean Quinn himself meekly rolled over and accepted their punishment with the fines being accepted, and Quinn resigning from the board of his own company.

Which has me very confused since the most explicit information I can find regarding what the wrongdoing actually was doesn’t get any more detailed than:

The regulator said it had “reasonable cause to suspect that breaches of regulatory requirements occurred in relation to Quinn Insurance”.

Only reasonable cause? No proof? Quinn Insurance and Sean Quinn accept a fine of €3.45m on the basis of merely a suspicion?

Why?

Particularly given past activities and challenges made by Quinn Direct Insurance in the face of a decision of the Financial Services Obudsman in April 2005. In that case, the Ombudsman directed (wrongly as it turned out) Quinn Direct to refund to all impacted customers a €25 administration charge levied by the company though they hadn’t informed clients that they would be liable for such a charge if they transferred a policy from one car to another.

I don’t know if the financial impact of this decision would have been worth as much as €3.45m to Quinn Direct at the time, but their immediate reaction to that decision was to challenge the Financial Ombudsman and take them to the Commercial Court.

But not this time

I can only say that I’m puzzled as to why Quinn have accepted this recent Financial Regulator decision without a whimper. Accepting this punishment seems to have called off the hounds with respects to the Financial Regulator, but it seems that the Office of Director of Corporate Enforcement could still be involved.

The temptation, and subsequent reality, of some creamy pints of Guinness on Thursday evening prevented me from watching the 2^nd episode of Buyer Beware on RTE1.

And unfortunately, this isn’t one of the programmes that RTE allows you catch up on by providing it online. However, based on the topic of bogus modelling agencies, the following Top Tips might be of use to those who may be targeted by such scams.

Did anyone see the programme? Any comments?

As a matter of interest, I was doing some recent research where I was reading through the 2007 Annual Report for the National Consumer Agency. Page 52 of the report shows the top 6 reasons for complaints and information requests to the NCA (78,000 in total during 2007). So far, none of the 4 items covered in Buyer Beware! appear in the top 6 problems for Irish consumers.

Just a few short points for the weekend.

• ECB Bonus Money - Following our comments last week regarding what you could do with your ECB interest rate windfall, the Irish Times Business blog proposes that you should really be thinking about putting the extra cash against your mortgage and thereby reducing the term. Given an Irish Independent story on Friday that says the cost of lending on credit cards on personal loans will be increasing as banks scramble to keep making money, we’d actually suggest that you reduce higher cost borrowings first (such as credit cards and loans) before paying off the cheaper borrowing that is your mortgage.

• Clocked Cars - Earlier this week, the Irish Independent provided some coverage on the AA research that found that upwards of 10000 imported 2nd hand cars may have been clocked before being sold to Irish customers. We’ve covered car clocking here a few times before, and have criticised the National Consumer Agency policy of not prosecuting those caught doing so. Check out our Top Tips on how to check if the car you’re thinking of buying may be clocked. This subsequent Independent article indicates though that like everything else in the world, clocking cars is becoming more technically advanced – but most of our Top Tips will still help you identify other tell-tale signs that a car might be clocked.

• A Short Rant - Why do so few people have the courtesy to respond to phone and e-mail queries these days. If I were to stand in front of you to ask you the same question, would you still ignore me? I’m talking about sales inquiries to businesses, queries to customer service departments, calls and e-mails to work colleagues, contacts and acquaintances, or just general responses to e-mails, phone calls or written communications. I may just work to a different standard, but as much as possible, I respond to anything I get within the day, and if I can’t I will still respond saying I can’t respond, and confirming when I will. Is that so hard? Am I asking too much?

• Price of Petrol - I noticed this morning that petrol in Tesco in Clearwater in Finglas was 105.6c per litre. Just think – if the government hadn’t added 8c per litre to the cost of petrol in the budget, we’d now be back down below the €1 per litre for the first time in a few of years – April or May 2005. The NCA are investigating petrol prices at the moment because we’re told that Irish petrol prices are 20% higher than the rest of Europe. The budget increase of 8c at the moment represents 8% of the price, or nearly half of the 20%. Will the government appointed National Consumer Agency rightly associate most of the price difference reason to government taxation, or will we get some other reasons? Or will they shy away from criticising their masters?

• And Finally - No Frills Shouldn’t mean no standards? An interesting article from the Cork Southern Star newspaper detailing a range of issues with Ryanair.
  

Have a great weekend!

Not sure how much of a big deal this is given my low regard for the Financial Regulator, but did you know that the Financial Regulator Consumer Panel hasn’t sat since the end of September?

So throughout the Irish and global financial crisis that we’re experiencing at the moment, and the massive decision being taken by the government in the form of the bank bailout, it appears that the Financial Regulator isn’t consulting with consumers at all - ignoring them in effect.

According to the IFSRA website, this is what the Consumer Panel is for, and what it’s not doing at the moment:

• monitoring the performance by the Financial Regulator of its functions and responsibilities under this Act
• providing the Financial Regulator with comments with respect to the performance of its functions and responsibilities
• providing the Financial Regulator with comments and suggestions with respect to the performance of the financial services industry
• when requested to comment on policy and regulatory documents issued, or to be issued, by the Financial Regulator

As it happens, we didn’t have a Financial Services Ombudsman Council sitting for a period during that time as well - from the middle to the end of October.

As of today, we still don’t have a Financial Regulator Consumer Panel in place yet, so consumers can still go whistle as far as at least one of our Regulators is concerned.