SOUNDING OFF:The inexplicable euro-sterling price discrepancies keep coming more than a year after the UK currency had weakened significantly. A reader called Fiona indulged herself in a bit of wishful thinking last weekend by looking at garden furniture. "I clicked on the MarksandSpencer.ie website – which takes you to marksandspencer.com. I found a set I liked – lattice table and four chairs – which cost £399 (€443)."
The site does not allow online ordering for delivery to Ireland, so she went out to an M&S outlet in Dundrum where the same set was €699. “Nobody in M&S has been able to explain how – effectively – £400 can become €700, even if one takes into account the most extreme differences in Vat, FX rates, wages etc. This goes beyond a rip-off: it’s insulting,” she writes. “I thought I might be able to order in Lisburn for pick-up there, but they don’t allow that either.”
And Dee Byers also wants to complain about M&S. “They’re still at it,” she writes. “Marks & Spencer in Dundrum are still overcharging on the exchange rate.” She says that in their Per Una range, they have covered over the sterling prices with euro stickers. On a sample of just two items, they charged €84 for a £55 (€61) item and €55 for a £35 (€39) item, she writes. “Last Autumn they claimed that they had to charge the higher rates because items had been sourced some months earlier – I fail to see how they can still justify this today.”
Pricewatch contacted Marks & Spencer again to find out if it had an explanation for a price difference of over €250 between Belfast and Cork for the garden furniture and for the ongoing price discrepancies in the clothes department. In a statement, the company said it was “competitively priced within the Republic of Ireland”. It said that when setting its prices, “we, like any other business, have to take into consideration factors specific only to the Irish market such as higher rental, operational and employment costs. It is therefore misleading to compare Irish prices to those in the UK.”
Fast buck
A reader called Carol from Kerry has cottoned on to a nifty way to make a few bob from the ongoing currency differentials. She was in Belfast recently where she bought an outfit for her daughter in Wallis at a cost of £80 (€87). “The clothes didn’t fit her so I returned them to our local Wallis outlet two days later. They refunded €130 to my credit card as this was the euro price of the item. Isn’t there a lot of money to be made if one lived near the border!”
Off your Berocca
And another reader was in Heathrow airport recently where he bought three tubes of Berocca multi-vitamins for £8 (€9.45). “Passing through Dublin Airport last Friday I saw Berocca on sale in a pharmacy and one tube cost around €9.60. Most pharmacies across the country charge that much or more,” he fumes.
Over the bar
Paul Walsh was at the recent GAA All-Ireland club finals in Croke Park. “I was on the premium level for both matches. The bar at Cusack stand side charged €5.25 for a pint of Guinness, and when queried the barman, said ‘You’re in Dublin now (as if I didn’t know, having lived in the city for 30 years). But how is it that the bar on the same (premium) level, just 50 yards away behind the goal on the Davin stand end, was charging €4.75 for the same pint of Guinness?”
Berry obliging
And finally, a little bit of good news from a reader who mailed us last week to make the point that even if you have gift vouchers which are long past their expiry dates, it is still worth presenting them at the place they were bought. “Unpacking some boxes having recently moved, I found a voucher for the Strawberry Tree restaurant in Brook Lodge in Wicklow which was over a year out of date. They had no problem honouring it. Definitely worth the phone call.”
