We've got mail: While planning a family trip from Cork to Dublin recently, reader John Doyle from Cork used Irish Rail's website to book return tickets for himself and his family. Although he certainly found it convenient, that convenience came at a cost.

The tickets for two adults and three children set him back a hefty €185.50, he writes. On the journey to
Dublin, however, the conductor expressed surprise at the price, as a family return, which would have covered all those travelling, costs just €118 at the ticket office.

Doyle says he feels as if he has "been somehow cheated/swindled out of  €67.50". While he accepts that online booking offers a reservation facility, it is not something he had asked for or required. He wants to know what he and his family received for the extra €67.50. He also asks why is it not possible to buy family tickets online. And why is the ticket office price for family tickets not made clear on the Irish Rail website?

We visited the Irish Rail site and, after a fairly lengthy trawl, did manage to find a reference to the family ticket, but it was hardly prominently advertised and, as our reader says, impossible to buy online. We
contacted Irish Rail and were told that while it accepts that it is a problem, it is one the company is on track towards resolving.

Irish Rail spokesman Barry Kenny says that, "like many sites, we are not in a position to put our group discounts or special fares online at this stage". The software required to do this is quite complex. He says that the company is looking at ways in which it could address the problem and agrees that our reader's concern is a legitimate one.

"We should have a notice preventing people from buying the full price fares if cheaper alternatives are available," Kenny says. Irish Rail will be putting a notice up as soon it can, advising people in circumstances similar to our reader to contact an Irish Rail office as a cheaper fare may be available offline.

Costly cover
John McCabe from Ballinteer, Dublin, wrote in to alert readers to the "serious disparity" in the price of travel insurance he was quoted recently while organising a holiday in Spain. McCabe and a friend went
into their local Budget Travel outlet in the Nutgrove Shopping Centre and booked a week in Gran Canaria. Budget insisted that the pair buy travel insurance as part of the contract and quoted them a price of €37 per person for the week.

"Naturally, I found this excessive," he says, so he went looking himself and managed to find what he says is is a comparable level of cover elsewhere for €12 per person. He does say that the Budget representative told them that, while travel insurance was compulsory, he was certainly free to look elsewhere for it.

We contacted Budget Travel, which offers a robust defence of its policy prices. A spokesman says that while there are certainly cheaper insurance products on the market, the policy it offers at €37 per person represents "very good value" for money.

"With 30 years' experience in the travel business we feel that the policy offers the best cover at an affordable price," says Budget Travel's head of marketing, Clem Walshe. He says that other, cheaper policies might have a higher excess, or not cover the same range of eventualities, and pointed out the advantage of having a policy which the Budget reps in a resort would be familiar with. "Our staff at the resorts know exactly what to do and who to call," should something go wrong, he says.

"We feel that the policy we have available, which is optional, represents good value for money. We give our customers a choice to book it or not - all we insist on is that they must have an insurance policy in place offering a minimul level of cover."

He adds that Budget is extremely price-sensitive and accepted that while everyone loves a bargain, travel insurance is one area where Budget is not seeking to be the cheapest.

More tea, Vicky?
Although it is scarcely possible to imagine anyone needing it less, a size 0 Victoria Beckham apparently swears by a certain type of Chinese tea for use as a slimming aid. The tea is called Pu-Erh and sells in posh beauty salons for up to €20 for a small box of no more than 20 teabags.

A sharp-eyed reader from Dublin contacted us last week to say that she has seen exactly the same tea for sale in the Asian supermarkets around Dublin for closer to €2.70.