We've Got Mail: Marie from Dublin has written in with a query about her rights when there is a discrepancy the price on the shelf and what is charged at the cash register.
She contacted us after buying a pair of footless tights in a city centre shopping centre recently. "When I went to pay, the price came up as €12.95 but the tag said €9.95.
"The assistant very nicely said that she was sorry but the price on the ticket was actually a Spanish price and the Irish price was €3 more."
Obviously, our reader wanted the item in question at the lower price and a manager was called. The manager toed the line on the footless tights and said that the price was incorrect on the tag.
She said that if all items on a rack were priced incorrectly, she would be obliged to sell them to our reader at the lower price.
After about five minutes arguing the toss and with a large queue forming, the manager conceded the point and said that in this instance she would be prepared to sell the item at the lower price.
"On my way home, my 15-year-old said that there was some consumer law that she learned about in Home Economics, passed in 1978, which stated if the price was incorrect on a tag then the retailer had to sell it at that price.
"Can you clarify?"
Unfortunately for our reader, there is no consumer law in place in Ireland that offers this level of protection, although there is a widespread belief that there is.
Last week PriceWatch asked 10 people selected at random if they thought a store would be legally obliged to sell the item at the lower marked price in circumstances such as these and eight of them responded in the affirmative.
They were, however, wrong. If the price of something on the shelf is less than the price at the till you do not have an automatic right to buy the product at the lower price. The contract between our reader as the buyer and the shop as the seller did not come into effect until money had actually changed hands so the store was under no obligation to sell the tights to her at the marked price.
"A price indication on a product is what's called an 'invitation to treat'," says the Office of the Director of Consumer Affairs (ODCA). "If the consumer is advised of the correct price before purchasing they are not entitled to the goods at the lower price. In this case, the consumer has a choice of rejecting the goods and not buying them, or, accepting the higher price and making the purchase," the ODCA says.
"If the consumer was not informed of the correct price before purchasing, they may be entitled to some form of redress from the shop for having been misled," it adds.
Saving mobile screens doesn't come cheap
A reader from Knocklyon in Dublin recently upgraded to a Nokia E-61 phone and decided that a carry case for it would be a good idea to protect the screen.
"As the Nokia website for Ireland does not have any shopping facility, I checked out the UK site. Sure enough, there is a carry case and it was priced at £12." However, as the site did not deliver to the Republic, he couldn't place an order.
He went into town looking for it and visited the Telephone Centre on Dawson Street where he was quoted a price of €40 by a sales assistant. He pointed out that it was only £12 (roughly €20) on the Nokia UK website and asked him to check the price, after which it fell to €30.
"Of course, I should be very pleased to have knocked 25 per cent off the price just by questioning the assistant but when I know it is available for £12 then €30 is still in rip-off territory," he writes.
He left the shop without it and went to a Vodafone shop where he was first told that there was no carrying case for the E-61 and then, when he provided the serial number, he was told that the store would not be stocking them.
"Talk about making it up as you go along," he says.
We contacted the Telephone Centre, who said that the price for the leather carry case in question was actually €29.
A spokeswoman said that the shop - one of the oldest dedicated phone shops in Dublin - shipped in a small number of the cases in from the UK and that short of selling them at a loss, they could not sell them for a lower price.
She pointed out that websites were in a position to sell such items at a cheaper price because they could buy them in greater bulk and had considerably lower overheads.
It should also be pointed out that once the sterling price was converted to euro and delivery charges were added, the difference between the Dawson Street price and the online price falls even more.
While the Nokia site does not deliver to Ireland, the same case is available on ebay which does, and has a price tag of £13.95 plus a £5 delivery charge, making a total of £18.95 or €28.12, just 88 cent cheaper than the Telephone Centre, but it will take a lot longer to arrive.
