While Ireland's top hotels have been fighting off questions about their five-star ratings, in Dubai the Burj Al Arab, the world's only 7 star luxury hotel, has bought a pair of white Rolls Royce Phantoms to chauffeur its customers. They join the hotel's current fleet of 10 Rolls Royces.
A former accountant and a car salesman have teamed up to become the online middlemen for people looking to change cars. The site, www.mormo.com, is due for a full launch in September.
"Our aim is to represent the buyers with dealers. It doesn't cost the motorist anything - the dealer pays a fixed commission - and it cuts out all the hassle for the customer in having to haggle with the dealers. For the industry, it's a hassle-free sale, and means that they don't have to tie up staff in the showroom," says Hugh Cooney. He used to work with KPMG before venturing out with business partner Mark DeVito, who previously worked with Merlin Motors Group.
The aim is to have three or four dealers per franchise on the books. "We deliver the cars to the customers, appraise the trade-ins and try and match the customer with the best deal on offer at that time," says Cooney. Sadly for customers the deals on offer remain confidential so a degree of trust in Mormo is required.
"That's true but we are probably going to be the customer's last stop and they will have tried out the prices in a few dealerships themselves so they will not accept our offer if it's not the best they have had."
For now mormo is only going to operate in Dublin, but it has plans to expand nationally later. As for warranties and the like, they're unaffected and lie between the new buyer and the garage.
Drivers of brown cars are most likely to have to make an insurance claim, closely followed by those with pink vehicles.
Insurance group esure said 22.6% of people who had a brown motor had claimed on their policy, followed by 21.3% of people who drove pink cars.
The group, which analysed 100,000 claims from the past four years, said drivers with black cars were third most likely to make a claim, followed by those with yellow vehicles at 20.8% and mauve ones at 20.3%.
At the other end of the scale, people with cream cars were least likely to claim on their insurance, with just 14.6% doing so, while drivers with beige vehicles were not far behind at 15%.
Just over 16% of drivers with white or bronze cars had lodged claims with esure, and 17% of people with maroon vehicles.
The group found that it was not just the colour of a policyholder's car which was associated with the frequency of claims, but also their first names.
It found that nearly one in three people called Lloyd insured by the group had lodged a claim during the past four years, followed by 28% of people called Sam, Leon and Phil, and 26% of Robs.
Among women, 35% of those called Natasha had made a claim, along with 31% of Shelleys, 30% of Juliets, 28% of Natalies and 27.8% of Justines.
Men called Murray were least likely to have called on their insurer, with only 12% making a claim, while around 13% of people called Royston, Archie, Terence and Ernest had done so.
Women called Mavis emerged as being least likely to lodge an insurance claim at just 7%, followed by 11% of those named Susanne or Glenys and 12% called Vivien or Doris.
Mike Pickard, head of risk and underwriting at esure, said: "This is a light-hearted study based on esure's claims data. Of course, it does depend on how many people with a certain name we have on our books, and thankfully there's not that many people with brown cars, so proportionally they come off worse.
"Needless to say, if someone called Natasha driving a brown car came to us for a quote, we wouldn't penalise her and it would not form part of the underwriting criteria."
Volkswagen AG, Europe's biggest carmaker, unveiled a seven-point plan on Monday as the basis for closely-watched wage talks on a new contract for 103,000 staff at six plants in western Germany.
The IG Metall metalworkers' union and the German carmaker's works council have demanded a 4 percent pay rise and sweeping job guarantees for around 10 years.
The talks start on Sept. 15 and are due to wrap up by the end of October. Volkswagen wants to implement the seven points over the next six years.
PAY FREEZE FOR TWO YEARS
"There is no leeway for pay increases," VW personnel chief Peter Hartz said, citing difficult market conditions, relatively high labour costs compared with German rivals and the gap between VW's foreign and domestic manufacturing plants. But he said Volkswagen's plan offered a way to preserve German jobs and avoid relocating production to lower-cost plants abroad.
NEW STRUCTURE VW aims to reduce the number of wage tiers to 12 from 22 and slash the number of job classifications. As of 2005, it will pay new hires in western Germany along the lines of its Auto 5000 system that compensates workers by the number of cars they make.
Bonuses will be linked to performance so that in the long term variable pay will make up 30 percent of workers' income.
LABOUR ACCOUNTS VW has suggested widening the band of time accounts -- a system in which staff put in longer hours at busy times and then draw down these labour accounts when demand slackens -- to 400 hours from 200. This would cut overtime pay and boost flexibility.
NEW DEFINITION OF WORKING TIME Young people would work more, older staff would work less under a system of building up lifetime flex time accounts. VW would not pay all hours on the job alike, but would instead pay more for time spent on actual production and less for breaks, communication and qualification activity.
HEALTHCARE Volkswagen would introduce healthcare options and insurance, especially for older workers, in return for worker concessions on hours or pay.
COMPETITION FOR WORK Individual plants in Germany would get more leeway to compete for production allocations by temporarily offering longer working hours that could help offset one-off investment costs.
TRAINING Volkswagen will increase the number of apprentices it takes on by 20 percent -- more than it actually requires -- but only hire as many qualified staff emerging from the programme as it needs. Pay rates for apprentices would also fall to the level set under sector-wide pay deals agreed by unions.
Mercedes parent company DaimlerChrysler has denied reports last week that it would extend warranties covering electrical problems in Mercedes cars beyond the current two-year period as a way to shore up its shaken reputation for quality.
The German-American carmaker will still voluntarily fix at no cost some problems that arise after the warranty ends, a spokeswoman in Stuttgart said, but that would continue to be decided on a case-by-case basis. There is no change in warranties," she said in response to a report in the German Handeslblatt newspaper on Friday.
DaimlerChrysler has stressed it's ready to accept a hit to earnings if needed to improve Mercedes quality ratings which have slipped amid a rash of problems, particularly in the complex electronics of E-class cars launched in 2002. Its goal is to make the flagship Mercedes line number one in initial customer satisfaction surveys by 2006.