rip off Ireland - 4 Dame Lane

Just Williams at the Central Hotel

Hamills, Mullingar (westbound)

Computer rip off

Amarin Thai Restaurant, Castlebar

Shell Disgrace

Deerpark Hotel Howth

We recently had Sunday lunch in the Deerpark Hotel Restaurant near the golf club in Howth. It was a promising venue with a lovely sea view. However the experience was really terrible. The food was mediocre at best, the waiting staff rude and slow and the place was really grubby and stuck in the stone ages! That's acceptable to a certain degree, you get what you pay for etc. However the bill was astronomical for what we actually got! Really disappointing.

Restaurant: Wrights/ Monkstown

Over twenty five euro for a main course. Service was good but meal content was poor. For this price I got 6 crab claws and about three tablespoons of boiled rice!! Could have done better myself. It was tasty but value for money..I don't think so. Never again!

Let me give you the background to a call I've logged since 06-Oct-03.

The timer on the gas oven (powered by electricity - I know- what's the story with that one) stopped working so I logged a call with Dimpco Customer Services. They aparently in turn contacted their sole Gas Certified engineer for Dublin's Northside who was in turn supposed to make contact with me on my mobile number to arrange a visit to fix the problem.

Several (over phone calls to Dimpco later, I still don't have the problem fixed.

It is now 23-Oct-03 and the only contact I've had from the engineer is a voice mail he left on our land line to say that he was outside the house on 20-Oct-03 and there was no response and we would have to schedule for another day.

This is 2 and a half weeks later and there is nothing.

Can I urge you all, before you purchase any white or brown goods, to ask what level of aftersales service you can expect from ANY supplier. This is just not good enough.

Went to garnish Island in the summer of 2002. Paid something like 7 euro each for the boat trip and got to the Island and have to pay another fee to actually get into Garnish Island!Bascially you are dropped off at the pier so you cant do much if you forgot your wallet, besides swim for shore!What a rip off!Imagine all the tourists that get caught for this in "our Lovely country"!

I was looking to buy the Nikon Coolpix 5400 Digital Camera.

Pixels Liffey Street: €1000
Camera Shop Blanch: €870

Pixels were €130 more expensive than the Camera shop in Blanchards Town.

In the end I had my brother bring it from the USA where it cost me €590 (after currency convertion).

I saved myself from between €410 & €280

Brown Thomas seems to be the shop at the heart of a lot of Irish cities, this is certainly the case in Limerick.
But its a pity because it is without exception the most disappointing shopping experience around at the moment.

Perhaps they assume supremacy but the staff in this shop are rude to the point of being offensive.

For anybody considering having their wedding list there it may be useful to know that....
*they charge each guest €5 to buy the presents on the list, and this is not a delivery charge.
*if your guests do not choose to have it delivered the Brown Thomas staff will not take the item off the list, rendering the whole excerise completly pointless!

They also offer no incentive to the bride and groom to use the service ( shops like Meadows and Byrne offer the couple 10% discount in the shop to the value of the items purchased).

I have to agree Tesco in Balbriggan is terrible. Their shelves always seem to be empty, their fresh produce half the baskets are empty!! The staff clearly dont want to be there and are only putting in the time to get paid. I have stopped going there and nothing would tempt me back. The Mangement there should be shot for running what was a pretty good supermarket into a crap one!!

I've heard many complaints about this crowd over the years and here's another. My brother got married this August and used the Black Tie on Patricks St in Cork to hire suits for the fathers, best man and groomsmen. Having been fitted for size everyone picked up their wrapped suits a few days before the big day. A couple of hours before the wedding my dad took out his suit only to find the seat of the pants to be ripped apart. Luckily my mother is a dab hand with a needle and thread and was able to perform some running repairs. In addition, the waistcoat was missing from the bride's father's suit. When my dad returned the suit, the staff at the shop found the ripped pants episode very amusing and when he spoke to the manager he was told that there would be no refund for the torn pants. Black Tie seem to have a large share of the suit hire business in this country which probably explains their attitude. However my advice would be to use their competitors if at all possible.

The Westbury Hotel is well known for it's Afternoon Tea! Great location, comfortable seating, relaxed atmosphere. It was always expensive but now it has just got ridiculus! One 'afternoon tea' is loads for 2 people - but you now get nearly half the amount of food that you got about a year ago - and still for the same price!! Getting to the point now where it isn't worth the money - even for a special treat!

Have to agree with the comment about the Westbury - we went for a drink after a heavy shopping trip one Friday afternoon - ordered a ham sandwich and paid €15 for two slices of ordinary bread with ham - no crisps or salad garnish - outragous !....Dont think I will be doing that again ....

Called in for lunch & a gawk at this very impressive bar in the heart of Dublin - thats where the good impression came to an abrupt end.It has an outragously expensive lunch menu - I try to keep the lunch budget around €10 for the grub (which is perfectly adequate for the majority of places) & found I had to make do with a chicken Tikka Ciabatta Sandwich "served with blah,blah,blah & blah".What was served to me was pathetic - I make a better effort at home in the evening.They could really make do with throwing a few chips on the plate & add a bit more chicken to the Tikka.I quickly cleared the sparse plate (for gods sake I ate all the side salad & I never eat all the side salad ! ), made like a bunny & hopped it out'a'there.Bouncing up Dame St. €11.50 worse off ,I thought to myself, if that miserable sandwich cost me €8.50 is it really €3.50 for a bloody 7Up ?????
This is one bank that will never be robbed - the criminals are on the inside robbing us !

Was in there last Thursday night. Typical Dublin superpub (which I don't like anyway), though it seems to have lost a lot of its early days business - mad quiet for a Thursday.

Anyway, not the point.

€3 for an orange juice mixer in a vodka. What's that all about???

Just stop the madness......

Markree gives good castle. Upon entering the grounds by night, the unpromising banality that is Collooney gives way to a scene straight from central casting: an epic driveway, gnarled trees, dark scrubs, murky ponds, and on the occasion of our visit a thick fog (honest). From the outside, the castle itself is no less impressive – a 17th century beauty as advertised. The broad entranceway is suitably grand in scale, all antlers, painted patrons, stained glass, and oak panel.

Then we got to reception. Upon check-in, we asked about a music festival that evening in nearby Ballintogher, which we had seen advertised both online and in print. Our young hostess (16?) had never heard of the event, and (worse) made no effort to find out more. She did order a taxi for us.

The rooms, and we saw several, were grim. Wall-to-wall burgundy carpet, knackered mattresses, grimy bathroom fixtures, peeling paint. At 170+ Euro per room for a basic double during off-season, that just isn’t good enough.

Our taxi did arrive eventually with 18 Euro already on its meter. It had come from Sligo town, a fact that our hostess declined to share with us. With Ballintogher another 20 (Euro I mean) away, we decided to send our cabbie home, drive ourselves, and take it easy on the sauce at the festival. Overall, the service we received was not so much belligerent than clueless. If value is our sole subject, this distinction is irrelevant.

Sadly, the common areas don’t redeem matters any. Glassy-eyed staff wander without conviction through rooms (perhaps save the dining room) whose décor seems arrested in a kind of late 1960s/early 70s take on castle-chic. Think Roman Polanski’s ‘Fearless Vampire Killers.’

Better yet, don’t think at all … about actually checking in here. Ride a horse during the day, peruse the grounds, but stay elsewhere. Please.

Went to Gti on a Saturday afternoon at about 3.05 for a late lunch - no problem plenty of room. We ordered soup and a main course each - a water and a coke and tea for afterwards.

What we got was the tea first (!) and Coke - no water and there was still no sign of any food at 3.55. We had asked the waiter several times what was happening and he just fobbed us off in the rudest manner I have ever seen in my life.

We walked out at 4.00 and passed the waiter on the way out who abused us and said he was just about to bring us the food.

I have never in my life seen the like of it.

Afterwards we went across to Weirs and had a lovely and prompt meal. Should have gone there in the first place.

Spread the word - GTi are horrific.

 GTI also

This has to be the worst Tesco store in Ireland. It is dirty, badly stocked and the staff would win competitions for rudeness.

Shoppers have to fetch their own baskets from the front of the tills as there are never any at the front door. Shelves are always half empty and palattes of stock sit unpacked in the aisles (including frozen food) for half the day.

Ask a staff member (if you can locate one) for help and you will be greeted with a blank stare. There is never anyone resembling a manager or supervisor on duty. the average number of tills open is about 3 (out of a total of 9, I think).

I don't think anyone shops here out of preference, but only if they have no alternative.

Bring back Quinnsworth I say!

Well, this place is just strange.
You get the feeling that this eatery is considered an institution by the locals but to be honest its serves institutional food.
We had to go to the counter and ask for a menu and even then the waitress seemed rather annoyed that we had interupted her chat.
The choice of food varies between sausages/chips and chops with potatoes. Old reliable Irish cuisine. Nothing wrong with that necessarily! We had the Gammon steak with mashed potatoes. It wasn't very hot and you got the feeling they had a large cauldron of mashed potatoes that had been sitting there all day. There was no sauce at all and the veg was limp,tasteless and mostly pureed..yeugh!
This coupled with the fact that both my glass and cutlery were not just dirty but filthy ( and the fact the waitresses acted like disgruntled ex-nuns), made the experience rather a trauma. I would not recommend it.

Big O's taxi has a dedicated phone line from the Ibis hotel reception.

They charged e9.70 from the hotel into Quay street in Galway. That was about 8pm on Sunday night of a bank holiday. Fair enough we thought, it's a bank holiday surcharge.

However, we got a cab back out at about 3am, same journey, same number of people. Cost us e5.70.

Mentioned to the later taxi driver - he couldn't believe it - he was even more upset than we were.

0/10