READERS' FORUM: Have your say
A READER called Niall McKenna recently spent a weekend visiting friends in London and when he was passing through Dublin Airport on the outward leg of his trip he picked up a one-litre bottle of Baileys as a gift for his friends. The bottle cost €24.40 in the Loop at Dublin Airport.
“The same afternoon, at a branch of Waitrose in West Ealing, a one-litre bottle of Baileys was retailing at £13.99 (€15.50),” he writes. It gets worse. On his return he bought another bottle at Heathrow airport for £11 (€12.15) – or less than half the price it was selling for in Dublin Airport.
Hard to beat buying books online for value
THE SAD NEWS of the closure of yet another book shop, Hughes & Hughes, has an air of inevitability, a reader by the name of David Grant writes. "I recently sought a book as a birthday present for my son, who lives on the west coast of Scotland and sails and builds yachts." He browsed the "the well-stocked shelves of Waterford Books" and uncovered a splendid volume, by the name of Traditional Boats of Ireland: History, Folklore and Construction.The book was priced €59.95.
“As this large volume weighs almost 2.5kg, postage costs to his Scottish address would probably add another €20. I wondered if I could do better online with Amazon.” The price of the book online was €35.98, there was no delivery charge and Amazon said they would deliver the book within three days of receiving his order.
“I pressed the button and placed my order without hesitation. My son duly received this book three days later. I have spent quite a good part of my life browsing and buying in Irish bookshops, and view their continuing closures with sadness and dismay, but with this sort of cost difference to be had at a computer keyboard there is, alas, simply no contest. And now with Kindle appearing over the horizon, the prospect becomes even more bleak for our book sellers. I find this deeply dismaying. Is there an answer?”
Gresham sandwich didn’t cut the mustard
Ciaran McCarron says he felt compelled to get in touch regarding a recent experience in “the venerable” Gresham Hotel on Dublin’s O’Connell St. “I ordered a sandwich and a regular coffee in the hotel lobby café/bar. The sandwich was very poor – ordinary white bread, a few chips which had the appearance, texture and taste of those which could be had in the Burger King down the street and a measly bit of salad. Almost €10!”
He says the coffee was a regular filter coffee “and came in at the crazy price of €4. It’s also €4 for tea. The most expensive tea and coffee I’ve seen in Dublin for a long time,” he says. He describes the Gresham as “a great institution” but says they need to “up their game a bit – and get real with the prices”.
No credit to Xtra-vision
WHILE BROWSING the latest releases in Xtra-vision, a reader from Glenageary took his eye off his seven-year-old son just long enough for the child to buy the film Harry Potter and the Half Blood Princeon DVD using his savings which he happened to be carrying with him.
“When I expressed my unhappiness with the transaction on the basis that he was just too young to be buying things – anything for that matter – without my approval, the store manager agreed to exchange the DVD,” he writes.
Our reader assumed the shop would return the €10 to my son, as the transaction had just happened but, instead, the manager insisted the store’s policy was not to exchange items for cash but for store credit only.
“The manager offered to credit my account to the amount of €10 but I decided to take the DVD.
“It was only later when recounting, with some annoyance, to my partner what had happened that she pointed out the film had a specific 12s rating, and should not have been sold to someone that young anyway.”
