Pricewatch plea: help us expose dodgy dealers and rogue tradespeople

More than 2,000 separate complaints from readers have featured on this page since it was born. The roll call of dishonour is long and has included banks, retailers, mobile phone companies, television and broadband providers, car dealers, drug companies, airlines and a whole lot more besides.

Many of the complaints that have come our way have been dealt with successfully and people have been apologised to and compensated by businesses that let them down. Problems have been addressed and remedied and sometimes systems have been changed to ensure that the same issues don’t recur.

However, there have also been times when Pricewatch failed to get redress.

Sometimes our queries have been ignored. On other occasions, companies have simply dug their heels in and insisted that the rules are the rules – even if those rules are hidden in small print so minuscule you would need a high-powered microscope and a lifetime to spare to read them.

And, on rare occasions, it has been the consumers who are in the wrong.

Never-ending supply

For all the queries and complaints that have appeared on this page, we know there are thousands more that have not appeared because of our own limitations.

If a person is let down by a large institution or multinational, it is generally not too difficult for us to put things to rights either in print or on radio. Big companies are easily tracked down and shamed.

They also fear raps over the knuckles by regulators, so when they are contacted they tend to do what they should have done in the first place.

But a lot of smaller operators are either entirely unregulated or don’t care about negative publicity.

These dealers work under the radar, ripping people off, pretty safe in the knowledge that they will be too hard to track down because they can so easily disappear.

Sometimes such businesses and individuals get away with messing people about because the rights and wrongs of a case are just too difficult to prove.

And sometimes they work under the assumption that the shame of being scammed will mean victims won’t get in touch with the media out of fear of making the whole problem worse.

Unwanted exposure

Just because they have not featured on this page does not mean we would not like to expose them, which is why Pricewatch has joined forces with TV3 for a series that will attempt to do just that.

But we need readers’ help if we are to confront and expose the tradespeople who promise palaces for peanuts but leave homes in ruins, or small shops that sell high-priced furniture, only to do a runner when things go wrong, or the mechanics who think nothing about clocking cars to flog them off to the trusting and unsuspecting.

To do that, we need to hear people’s stories. We want to hear about the dealers who have let people down or ripped them off – and we want to empower consumers so they can become part of the resolution process instead of just being victims.

We are talking about rogue builders, painters, gardeners, mechanics, car dealers, door-to-door salesmen, scam artists, caterers, puppy farmers, model agencies and the providers of dodgy financial services and more.

They are just some of the traders we will be looking at.

• Have you ever been the victim of a con or a scam? Been ripped off by a rogue trader? To find out how you can fight back, email us at pricewatch@irishtimes.com or pope@firebrand.ie, call us on 087-4314862 ,or visit tv3.ie/take_part.php