December 16, 2008
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?
December 1, 2008
For the second time in 2008, Hibernian Direct Insurance has been added to the ValueIreland.com Overcharging List of Shame.
As reported in Saturdays Irish Times, this week the Hibernian Direct has had to repay 370 of their customers a total of €16.608, as well as a €45,000 fine to the Financial Regulator. This was because the Financial Regulator determined that Hibernian had broken the consumer protection code.
According to the Irish Time article:
The breaches related to the sale of optional extra cover in relation to motor policies sold by Hibernian. The regulator found that Hibernian did not provide all the information required by the code when selling these extras.
In another case of providential timing, this is the first time in 4 years that the Financial Regulator have fined a financial services company (at least that they’ve told us about) who was found to have unfairly taken (read: stolen) money from their customers.
It was only last Tuesday that the Irish Examiner highlighted the fact that these companies normally get away free and easy for such actions.
November 27, 2008
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.
November 18, 2008
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.
November 13, 2008
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.
October 6, 2008
As an Association member, council member, and a director of the Consumer Association of Ireland, I’ll be there. As will all the other directors and council members of the Association, including the Chairman James Doorley, the vice-Chairman Michael Kilcoyne and Chief Executive Dermott Jewell. You’ll get to hear speeches from Messrs. Doorley & Jewell letting you know about the activities and successes of the Association over the past 12 months.
If you are a paid up member, come along and ask not what you can do for your Association, but ask what your Association did for you during 2008 with your €91 membership and the approximate €60,000 annual grant received from the Department of Enterprise Trade, and Employment (€63,000 in 2004 for example)?
Come along and find out if you are getting value for money from your Consumer Association? As well as producing your 12 monthly editions of the Consumer Choice magazine, did you know that the Consumer Association of Ireland represents its members interests on upwards of 25 different other organisations? From the Financial Regulator to ComReg, from the Taxi Regulator to An Bord Bia, the Consumer Association of Ireland is attending meetings, fighting the good fight, on your behalf. Come along to the AGM and ask about the value of this representation?
Since I joined the Association, the turnout at these AGMs has been very low – no more than 30 people attended last year for example. Let’s change things this year - if you’re a member, please try to come along. If you know someone who is a member, please forward them this link and ask them to go along. It would be great to see as many members as possible there this year.
It’s your Association. You’re paying for it to exist – through your membership and your taxes. Take an interest in what’s going on and come along and get involved. Make sure you’re getting value for your money from your Consumer Association.
August 16, 2008
HIBERNIAN Insurance admitted yesterday it had repaid around 350 motorists after it discovered discrepancies with their premiums.The refunds were for sums between €23 and €600 and the Financial Regulator was informed, a spokesman said.
Wouldn’t it be nice to see at the end of these articles something like “the Financial Regulator did something” rather than the passive “were informed” and continued to sit on their arses doing nothing while yet another high-profile Irish company is caught dipping it’s greedy mitts into the pockets of Irish consumers.
Click on this link to read about the many other Irish companies doing the same, and since 2004, how useless the Regulator has been in failing to stamp out this kind of theiving.
December 17, 2007
Cracking article here (sub required) by Quentin Fottrell in todays Opinion section of the Irish Times. The relevant quote for our purposes here is as follows:
In the restroom on the ground floor of an office block in Dublin there is a notice telling us, “Please use the brush provided if you’ve soiled the bowl”. It’s no small irony that this sign urging us to take responsibility for our own actions is in the Central Bank.
November 19, 2007
I thought I might pass on some of the press release information that comes to my attention as part of my consumer research and news reviews. In the past couple of weeks, the following two pieces of news were released by the Financial Regulator and the National Consumer Agency.
- Save hundreds on your home and life insurance premiums - The Financial Regulator has updated their Cost Surveys for buying home insurance and life insurance. Check out the news here and follow the links to their surveys.
- Online ’shopping assistant’ helps EU consumers - The National Consumer Agency provides news of the new Howard - The Shopping Assistant. This is an EU initiative which is designed to help online shoppers determine whether or not they can trust shops they might want to purchase from.
The Howard tool seems interesting - I must check it out. I do remember the Which? organisation in the UK providing a similar type tool in the past. More to follow on this once I get a chance to check Howard out.
October 20, 2007
Allied Irish Banks has refunded €266,000 to 3,773 customers and apologises for stealing money from them. The reason this time was that over the past 10 years they took Stamp Duty from customers who had AIB credit cards, but were living abroad. Though, in this situation, AIB probably didn’t benefit from this “mistake” since they would have been supposed to pass this money on to the Revenue Commissioners.
This now means that since November 2004, 1,375,973 Irish consumers have been overcharged by approximately €112m. This is the true scale of “Rip Off Ireland” yet where are the National Consumer Agency or the Financial Regulator when it comes to addressing this theft from Irish consumers?
