We've got Mail:A reader from the west of Ireland was dismayed recently by the complete lack of flexibility shown by Aer Lingus when he was booking a flight for a friend as a surprise gift.
To make sure there would be no problems when said friend presented himself at the check-in desk, our reader contacted his friend's wife to check his name as it appeared on his passport. His first name, the man's wife said, was John (our reader has supplied us with the full name, but we don't want to spoil the surprise so are keeping it on a first-name basis only).
Our reader "got a great deal" of €86 return for the flights to Vienna in the middle of January through the Aer Lingus website.
The story doesn't end there, unfortunately. Days later, he got a call from his friend's wife to say that her husband has just got a new passport and the name on it now reads Jack.
Our reader immediately went online to change the name on the ticket for this flight, which is not scheduled to depart for more than eight weeks, but was unable to do so and was directed to an 0515 phone number. He was left on hold for six minutes and then when he asked the Aer Lingus customer service rep to change the name on the ticket he was charged €70 - just €16 less than the full price of the tickets in the first place.
"I'm aghast. This is a rip-off," he writes.
It certainly sounds a bit unfair to us. We contacted the airline on our reader's behalf and were told the charge was "standard practice" among airlines. "The name change facility allows customers to transfer a ticket to another person for a standard charge," a statement said. "If a customer is unable to travel, this facility allows the customer to nominate another person to travel in their place, thus not forfeiting the total amount of the ticket."
The statement went on to say that customers were advised at the time of booking to ensure that the name in the booking matches the name on their passport. "The fee of €70 offsets the administration involved in making the necessary changes to a booking. The procedure of making a name change to an existing reservation involves a new booking being made, reissuing of the ticket and a new e-mail confirmation sent to the customer with the correct details."
Making a killing on a filling
A reader recently had the misfortune to knock a piece of an old filling out of her tooth, but it was only after she went to her local dentist that the pain really kicked in, when she was hit with a bill for €240. She was charged €40 for a consultation, €60 to have a pin inserted in her tooth and another €140 for the filling.
"Is this excessive?" she asks before at least partially answering her own question.
"My sister lives close to the Fermanagh border," she writes. "I attended a dentist near Enniskillen during the summer for a check-up. My husband and I were charged a total of £60 (€88) for a check-up and clean. That's £60 for the two of us, not each. I was charged €5 for an X-ray!"
Higher cost of definition
A reader e-mailed us to complain about the absence of an essential adaptor when he bought a top-of-the-range TV recently. The television in question is the Philips 32" LCD with ambi-light - a pretty good model by all accounts, which retails for slightly over €2,000. Almost all but the most bog standard of LCD TVs are HD-ready now and need to be connected to the Sky set-top box through a High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) cable (essentially an upgrade of the analogue scart cable) which carries sound and picture.
"You'd expect when you buy a deluxe model TV that it's going to have a HDMI connection," our reader writes. "But amazingly the TV I bought doesn't, and you need an adapter. So you'd expect Philips to supply one in the box, but they don't and it costs €50." It does seem a bit ridiculous that after spending more than €2,000 on one of the most high-spec LCD TVs on the market you can't connect it to your Sky set-top without an adapter.
We contacted Philips to see what the company had to say and to find out why it wasn't including the required adaptor as part of the deal.
A spokeswoman pointed out that the TV our reader bought was stock from last year and it did require an adaptor. She expressed surprise that our reader was not advised of this before they brought it home. However, she said all this year's range of Philips flat-screen HD TVs come with two HDMI outputs and no adaptor is needed.
She advised people buying a high definition TV in the run-up to Christmas to make sure it had a dual HDMI at the back which means it is ready to accept two high-definition sources (DVD and TV, for example).
