We've got mail: Life-time Liverpool supporter Keith Nevin from Dublin was first in line when it came to buying his football team's new shirt which went on sale earlier this month. On the day it was launched he walked alone into Champion Sports in the Jervis Shopping Centre where he was amazed to see a rack of the new shirts with a sale tag advertising them, he says, as marked down from €65 to €55.
"I always thought that if something had a sale tag, it had to have been selling for the higher price for a certain period first," he says. "How could Champion have it on sale if it had only just been released?" he asks. "I'm not complaining about the price, it's the same all over Dublin, but it seems like it was trying to create the impression it were giving people the shirt at a cut rate when that wasn't really the case."
PriceWatch visited the store in question last Tuesday and confirmed that there was still a sale tag on the rack of Liverpool shirts offering them for sale at a price of €55. The bright red sale tag also listed an RRP of €65 but that price had a line through it. It certainly looked as if the shirts were being sold as part of a sale.
We contacted the store to find out what was going on. We spoke to the manager who accepted that there might be confusion about the two prices on the sale ticket which adorn the rack of jerseys, but he said that the store was not claiming that the shirts were currently selling at lower price than they had in the past.
"The first price on the tickets is the RRP," he said. "If the ticket said 'Was €65' then we would be breaking the law. But we are putting the legitimate price on the ticket - €65 is the RRP but we're choosing to sell it for €55. I can understand how people might be confused by the two prices so I have told staff about it so they will be able to explain the situation to customers in the future."
Shedding light on ESB bills
Finbarr Holland got in touch after being shocked by the seemingly almost random nature of his recent electricity bills. He has been paying his ESB bill by direct debit for at least 15 years without any problems. Over the last eight months however, he has been dismayed to see the whole system go "seriously off the rails". Since the beginning of the year his monthly payments have fluctuated dramatically from month to month. First his bill went from €95 to €80 and returned to €95 before stablising at a fairly hefty €167 for five long months. "In my latest bill it has dropped to €49," he writes "but I am now an outrageous €283 in credit!" He says he has contacted the ESB several times in an attempt to resolve this suddenly erratic billing system . "Their response is that they got in a new computer system last year and that this is the way it operates. If I don't like it I can always go back to paying my bill in the traditional method," he writes. "This is a grossly unsatisfactory situation." He adds that staff at ESB have told him that he is not alone in his unhappiness and that he is "one of many who has complained about this situation" .
We contacted the ESB and were told that if we provided our reader's details they would investigate the specifics of his complaint. In general terms, however, the company said that its bills were determined by calculating from official meter readings, customer readings or estimated readings. Customers wishing to pay by direct debit can choose a bi-monthly system or a monthly one. With the former, the exact amount of the bill is collected 14 days after the date it is issued.
The monthly direct debit amount, which applies in our reader's case, is calculated based on the number of units used between the last two actual readings. The monthly amount is reviewed every four months and, at the end of a 12-month cycle, any debits or credits are rolled into the plan for the following year. This means that a customer's account can be in debit or credit at any given time. The amount is deducted from the customer's bank account on a date decided by the customer. Apparently this system works best when customers avail of the option of phoning in their readings to ensure a higher number of actual readings.
"There has been no change in direct debit operation in the last 12 months," the company said. Some 550,000 customers currently pay by direct debit and the ESB says it receives "very few queries" in connection with any of them.
Tongue twister
Terry Pattison has written in to complain about the exorbitant cost of pressed tongue in Ireland. "In Eurospar, Killiney it is priced at over €35 per kg while at SuperValu in Deansgrange it is over €30," he reports. "This is more than twice the price of the best ham. I suspect it is imported." He says that as every animal slaughtered in Ireland has a tongue of its own, why can't some "Irish producer compete with these extraordinarily high prices with home-prepared produce?"
