ValueIreland.com

Just a few short comments for the weekend.

• ValueIreland.com Housekeeping - We think we’ve been having problems with our e-mail recently, but it’s only come to light on Wednesday. We do reply to all e-mails and phone messages received within 48hours, and have resent some that we thought didn’t get through. So, if you’ve been expecting an e-mail response from us, but haven’t received one, please get back to us.

• Health Insurance Price Rises - This should have gone in last week, but better late than never. The VHI are increasing their price rises by 23% in 2009, and Quinn Healthcare are raising theirs by 16%. Hibernian Healthcare on the other hand will give you a 10% discount and hold that price for 2009 if you change to them on either December 21st or 30th. And don’t forget, despite what your current insurer might lead you to believe, there’s no problem in moving from one company to another - you will not lose cover. Hibernian actually make it easy for you with template cancellation letters for either Quinn or the VHI.

• Explain Yourselves - Seems that that’s the only solution that this government, and the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment in their feigned attempts to address the higher prices in Ireland compared to elsewhere. The grocery multiples have already been called in (without much success as we’ve seen), and now it looks like the mouthful that is the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Energy and Natural Resources is getting in on the act by calling in the ESB to find out why we have the highest electricity costs in Europe. Not sure much will come from this - if the regulator with the power (pardon the pun) only insists on a 1% reduction in tariffs, a Dail committee isn’t going to get too far.

• Avoid Transport Price Rises - In the past week it has been announced that Dublin Bus and Irish Rail will be increasing their fares early in 2009 because of a fall in passenger numbers. This post from early in 2008 gives you a suggestion on how you might avoid these price rises, at least for a while. Unsurprisingly, there’s no details on the respective websites that I can find, so if we don’t know which tickets are going up by what amount, we’re not going to know which tickets to buy now to beat the rise.

• Fine Gael Launching a thousand rip offs - We had Leo Varadkar give us his Top Tips for Irish Consumers yesterday, and on Tuesday last he was quoted in the Dail as saying he and Fine Gael will be relauching their “Rip Off Ireland” campaign “in the coming weeks”. This will be the second relauch within 12 months. I see that they have redesigned their RipOff.ie website in the past few months (though I’m not sure where the www.bublin.eu links are coming from on some of the pages). They would do well reviewing some of the site contents, particularly on their Links page - references to the ODCA and “interim NCA” are out of date, as are links to the dearly departed ShoppingBill.com and RipOffIreland.org.

Have a great weekend!

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.

I posted this on the SayNoTo1890 blog yesterday. I received an e-mail earlier yesterday asking for alternative landline numbers for a few companies. Unfortunately these companies have proved most difficult for us to find such alternatives. Are you able to help?

• Aer Lingus - 0818 365000
• Ryanair - 0818 303030
• Sky TV - 0818 719852
• Quinn Insurance - 1890 89 1890

If you can shed any light on alternative landline numbers for these companies? Post a comment below, or e-mail us here.