A Beemer in her bonnet over high-maintenance car: A PriceWatch reader from Galway contacted us after being charged more than €450 for a service on her BMW. She dropped her car in to Barry Motors on the Headford Road one morning and returned two hours later, by which time the service had been completed. She was presented with a bill for €461. Labour was €287.50 plus VAT which brought it to a total of €326.30 or €163 an hour.
Before she drove away she was told that the car also needed to have its rear wheel bearings replaced at a cost of €564, including €122 she would have to pay upfront because the bearings were not in stock and were, she was told, "special".
Angered by the high cost of the service, she took her car instead to her local mechanic in Oughterard where she was able to get the bearings on one of the wheels replaced for €253 - more than €200 less than the quote from the BMW dealer in the city. She did not have to pay upfront for the parts and the work was carried out in two days.
She sent the company a letter in April demanding to know how they could justify such charges for the service. A month passed and, having had no acknowledgement of the letter, she re-sent it and sent additional copies to us because she believed what she regarded as "blatant overcharging" should be brought to the attention of the public.
We contacted Barry Motors and were told that while it had no record of receiving our reader's first letter, it had got the second one and had attempted to contact her to explain the cost of the service. A spokesman pointed out that, rather than being a case of "blatant overcharging", the labour costs in the Galway BMW outlet were comparatively low. He said the hourly rate for a BMW mechanic in their garage was €115, significantly less than the rate charged by BMW garages in other major cities around the country. He accepted that getting service there was more expensive than having it done at a local garage but pointed out that a BMW with a full BMW service history retains its value and so justifies the additional expense. He said that the garage would attempt to contact our reader again to explain the costs in more detail and would try to resolve the matter to her satisfaction.
Posh paint job
Liz from Fairview contacted us after spotting a substantial discrepancy between the price of posh paint and wallpaper in Ireland and Britain. While a five-litre tin of Farrow & Ball paint costs €15 less in the UK, a roll of the company's handprinted wallpaper is more than €30 cheaper across the Irish Sea. She noticed the discrepancy on the Farrow & Ball website.
"Given that you must purchase three rolls when you place an online order you will save €93" if you can have it shipped to a UK address, she writes. "I have just purchased on the UK section of their website, using an Irish credit card address but giving them a UK delivery address and it was fine."
She also noticed that it wasn't just the full-sized tins of paint that were dearer in the Republic. Sample pots of Farrow & Ball cost a fairly hefty £2.98 (or €4.35) in the UK. In Ireland, however, they are €7. "Obviously F&B has figured given the price people are paying for their period homes in Dublin they will happily pay another 25, 33 or even 60 per cent more than more rational people in the UK for their paint."
None of the prices include delivery charges. An extra charge of €30 is imposed for Irish orders of wallpaper and paint compared with £3 (€4.37) for UK orders. There appears to be no delivery charge for the sample pots.
Stamp of disapproval
Recently a PriceWatch reader applying for passports for his children had to sign two pieces of paper in the presence of a notary public. He showed up in a Dublin office with his partner at the appointed time and waited five minutes in a waiting room before being seen. "We showed him the papers, produced the supporting passport and signed them," our reader writes. "The notary public then signed and stamped the papers (two identical papers, one for each of our children) and told us that the fee for this service was €50 per document. We paid him €100 in cash, did not receive a receipt, and were on the street by 12.45pm, having seen him for less than 10 minutes. Can you tell us if this is the normal cost for such a transaction?"
We called the Law Society of Ireland but it has a policy of not giving out guide prices for solicitors or the different services they offer. We then spoke to a solicitor who said that while the costs per stamp vary from solicitor to solicitor, a charge of €50 per time would not be unusual.
