There was an interesting piece on the front of The Irish Times yesterday from Paul Cullen about a study which found that Irish consumers would never recover from the guilt they felt about their consumption during the boom years.

The retail director of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), told a retailing conference that our sudden embracing of cheaper shops and a increased focus on special offers and the purchase of more own-label goods, were here to stay.

But is that really the case? Have we really become a nation of long-term frugal enthusiasts or would we revert to our conspicuous consuming ways given half a chance?

And, more importantly, do you feel guilty about your spending habits during the boom years?

A study published earlier this month by the National Consumer Agency suggests that our habit of shopping around might not be as enduring as the man from PWC has suggested. It found that the number of consumers shopping around for better value has fallen from 75 per cent to 67 per cent over the last 12 months while the number listing convenience as a determining factor in where they shop increased from 13 per cent to 17 per cent.

Ann Fitzgerald, the NCA’s chief executive said the finding that fewer people were shopping around was “worrying” and said that if that trend continued “and we fall back into old habits, becoming complacent in our shopping behaviour, we can expect retailers to take advantage resulting in less competition and higher prices.”

Even first-time visitors arriving in most European capitals can quite easily work out the best way to get around the cities within a few minutes of arriving at the airport, with tickets designed to work across all modes of public transport easy to find and easy to understand.

It’s not so simple in Ireland, however, and even regular bus users who have lived in Dublin for more than a decade struggle to identify the pre-paid tickets that might best suit their needs, or even if such tickets exists.

The Siemens European Green Cities Index, compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit and published last month, ranked Dublin 21st out of 30 in a list of the greenest cities in Europe and described it as the worst city in Europe in terms of its transport infrastructure.

It showed that just one in five people use public transport, compared to 42 per cent across Europe, and found that the length of the capital’s public transport network and its cycle lanes were well below the 30-city average. It also criticised the lack of a fully integrated ticketing system for public transport.
(more…)

could you really justify spending 40 grand on just one night in one of these hotel rooms?

I was pointed towards this great thing on a bulletin board (www.magicmum.com, as it happens) this evening. It asked people to list five entirely random but mildly interesting things about themselves or their families.

I can’t post to that site being neither magic or a mum so I’m going to post my five here. I’d like to hear yours.

1. My great, great grandfather was a senior gardener in the Botanic Gardens in the 19th century and cultivated an orchid which bears the Pope name.

2. Ben Dunne once gave me a lift home in his very, very high spec Lexus.

3. I was the first baby baptised in the church in Mervue, Galway.

4. John Aldridge borrowed ten cent from me and never gave it back.

5. I was the drummer in a band that played support to Primal Scream in Galway three months before they released their first big hit, Loaded. Only 75 people showed up but I have since met about 500 people who claim to have been there.

I have been talking about the ridiculous discrepancies that exist between the same shops north and south of the border for years now as have many other people in the media but nothing really seems to get done about it.

I have had hundreds – if not thousands of complaints about the problem and every shop from Argos to Zara stands accused of ripping off their shoppers in the south. But when challenged the retailers either ignore the complaints entirely or dismiss them with vague references to higher overheads in the Republic.
(more…)

LAST WEEK Pricewatch received a press release issued on behalf of Lyons Tea. “New research from China has found that regular consumption of green tea, which is rich in catechins, can have a very real and positive effect on weight loss and the body shape of moderately overweight Chinese individuals,” it read.

Despite not being a “moderately overweight Chinese individual” we read on.
Turns out that the “new investigation”, which was funded by the Lipton Institute of Tea, monitored the effects of green tea consumption on body weight, body fat mass and fat distribution in just 182 people and found that, compared to a control group, they lost weight and toned up after 90 days.

This “news” prompted Gráinne Galvin of Lyons Tea to issue the release in which she claimed it would be “interesting to see further research to determine if the same effects occur in other populations, such as here in Ireland”.

It is a complete non-story with virtually no relevance to an Irish audience but in January, when so many of us are determined to shed the pounds piled on over Christmas, businesses appear willing to go to almost any lengths to link themselves to a positive weight loss story.
And to be fair to Lyons Tea, drinking green tea is better than many of the dieting options presented to bloated, hungover and overweight consumers in January.
(more…)

Helen Curtin from Dalkey was delighted when she got some Marks Spencer vouchers recently. She got onto the MS website and spent a couple of hours browsing the virtual aisles.

But when she went to check out and pay for the goods there was a problem. Marks Spencer does not ship to addresses in the Republic of Ireland, one of only two places in the world which M&S says it cannot ship to (the other is the Channel Islands) – despite the fact that it accepts international orders through many of its outlets based in Northern Ireland.

She was incensed at both the time she wasted – there was no obvious indication that there was a restriction on delivery to the Republic – and the fact that her vouchers did not go nearly as far in a shop here as they did online due to the considerably higher prices the retailer charges Irish shoppers.

When she contacted the store she was told the problem was that we don’t have postcodes. She points out that Amazon and thousands of other international retailers can manage to find Irish addresses perfectly well even though we don’t have postcodes.

We contacted Marks and Spencer, whose spokesperson said: “We do not currently deliver to Ireland and we’re sorry for any inconvenience caused to the customer. Our international delivery service is a new and growing part of our business and we will continue to review new locations going forward.”

When we pointed out to M&S that their response failed to explain why the store is in a position to deliver to Brazil, Argentina, Iraq and Afghanistan but cannot deliver to the Republic, the company was unprepared to elaborate further.

So, the VHI is predicting that it could lose 60,000 customers this year. And how is it going to respond to the threat of mass defections to its two rivals? It announced this morning that it will increase its prices by an average of 8 per cent. Good thinking fellas, that’ll get people coming back in their thousands.

Bus Éireann said today it will reduce the frequency of services on a number of routes because demand isn’t there any more. It saw a 10 per cent drop in passenger numbers last year and is now conducting a review of routes with “poor levels of customer support”. Dublin Bus has seen a similar reduction in demand for its services and will soon announce a major restructuring. So, are people deserting the buses or have the buses deserted the people?

AFTER MANY years of growing further and further apart, I finally walked out on our gym last August. Almost immediately the pleading text messages started and with each one, the price of membership fell.

They fell so low that I was fairly sure the gym would soon be offering to pay us to rejoin but we held firm and eventually the messages stopped coming.

It’s an experience that will be familiar to anyone who has turned their back on gyms over the last 18 months. And there are a lot of such people.
(more…)

CONSUMERS are slashing their credit card spending as they tighten their belts for huge reductions in overall income.

IF you have gone on a credit card spending splurge over Christmas, then the best advice is to pay off as much as you can, as quickly as you can.

FOR MANY YEARS we’ve been complaining about rising prices, but this year the coin flipped and we entered a long deflationary spiral. While the near collapse of global capitalism, the death of the Celtic Tiger, the bursting of the property bubble, pay cuts and tax hikes have left us feeling understandably glum, we can find some crumbs of comfort in the cheapening of the country.
(more…)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQkLAhWsbi4&rel=0

Am liking this, big thanks to Jim Carroll for pointing me towards it.

Somebody sent me some dirt in the mail today. Yay! While other people in this building are getting lovely presents – bottles of wine, amazon boxes and the like - delivered to their desks, I’m getting letters like this (and I’m quoting it in full):

“SURELY someone should take ALDI and the Irish producer to task for ADDING a heap of dirt to the potatoes before packing them.

Quite simply it detracts from the quality of the product.”

Quite.

The anonymous letter writer has thoughtfully included a sample bag of Aldi potatoes, empty save for the offending dirt.

Happy Christmas.

HIBERNIAN Aviva Health is reducing the cost of its Level 2 Hospital Plan back to the price it was prior to an increase announced last October.

You might assume that, as with any service, price and value would be the main determining factors in deciding which fixed broadband package to opt for.

If you want fast broadband, what are the options? Obviously your choice will depend on where you live as well as price and value, but here are some of the fastest options, according to ComReg’s price comparison website, Callcosts.ie

You have to wonder what Pay Related Social Insurance (PRSI) is other than just another tax following the move in the Budget to fillet the benefits you get from it.

WITH THE number of sleeps until Christmas rapidly diminishing, it’s hardly surprising that over the next 72 hours thousands of stressed-out shoppers will fall back on gift vouchers to sort out their most pressing stocking-filling dilemmas.

While they’re just a step up from cold hard cash – the one gift most people are extremely reluctant to give at Christmas time – they do serve as an ideal last-minute present and one which will be greeted with a broader smile than some ill-advised talcum-powder-aftershave combo found gathering dust in your local pharmacy or a pair of absolutely hilarious socks featuring Homer Simpson saying “D’oh!”.
(more…)