It will be recalled that we were not too impressed with apieceofireland.com when we reviewed its product back in March, well we not consider a competitor known as buyireland.com.
Disregarding all other potential problems, what stopped me taking the American Express out of the Wallet was that buyireland.com are not selling land freehold, instead the purchaser must settle for a 20 year leasehold interest. Now, consideirng that the footage of the land is token the Unique Selling Point I had assumed was that the purchased would actually own the land. But he will not.
Sure as a potential customerwhy would I waste my money at buyireland.com when a local farmer in Ireland will rent me an entire acre, near my house, for EUR 300 for a year, and during that time I can dig holes in the land, plant grass, do wheelies, live in a tent, or whatever else I want (that is not permanent)
Dear readers, the only advantage I see with buyireland.com is the decorative parchment. Thus it is a gift, if you are a principle it offers little.
We (the two or perhaps three writers of this website) do not like BOI for the following reasons
BOI will not issue me a laser (maestro debit) card because my salary is not “mandated” to my account. This is a joke as their competitor AIB issue laser cards automatically on all accounts, even non-current accounts.
BOI will not let me lodge cheques at the counter using my Pass (bank) card. They insist that I use the “express lodgement” letterbox which has no substantive receipt. I got around this problem by using a lodgement book which is accepted at the counter.
BOI staff in all branches are the most disinterested I have encountered in any Irish bank.
BOI bank tellers usually sit, making them too far away from the bandit glass for their words to be heard clearly. Most staff in AIB stand.
BOI require a form to be completed by the customer when a Foreign Exchange draft is being purchased. AIB do not.
BOI online banking is terrible in appearance and functionality. It does not offer IBAN transfers, or once-off transfers to other Irish accounts. I don’t know how their online banking was ”WINNER - Best Online Banking 2007″, did they sponsor the awards? were they the only competitor? indeed I can’t find out anything about the awards in question.
BOI no longer issue American Express cards. They are so disinterested that in order to confirm that fact for my other financial website I had to apply for a card, be rejected, and then ask for the rejection reason. (The reason was they no longer issue AmEx cards. There is no mention of when the agreement terminated on their website. But the AmEx website suggest they still issue the Blue card, I would tell AmEx but they are yet another faceless corporation. I once contacted them back before the word phishing was invented to let them know about a fake “Buy a prepaid AmEx here” website and got no reply.
BOI credit card application forms are sent from their Credit Card centre to a customers branch for approval via a non-recorded medium. They often get lost and to make matters worse the Credit Card centre does not diary the matters, so if and when a form is lost the customer is left in limbo and his application will only progress if he contacts the Credit Card centre to enquire.
BOI uses a sepreate domain- boimail.com for staff emails, thereby faciliting phishing, as who is to know that they do not use foobar.com for email.
BOI shares are almost worthless - but then again most shares on the ISEQ are right now because we are in a recession.
I’ve been a customer of Vodafone Ireland for over 5 years.
Like all Irish networks they divide their customer base into two categories
Prepay (formerly branded as Vodafone Ready to Go)
Billpay
I have the misfortune to be a Prepay customer. What this means is I get
No statements, neither paper nor online, so I have no idea how much a given call/text cost me.
Original handset is barely subsidised (I can understand why)
Upgrade handset is barely subsidised (This gets me goat)
Surely, in reference to the upgrade handset, it should be possible to allow an individualised upgrade discount just like Billpay customers enjoy. But alas Vodafone don’t care. Their best, and only, deal is an EUR 10 reduction from the prepay handset price. So my 5 years of custom gets me an EUR 10 discount on an already high handset price. It’s almost like they don’t want to keep me, but hold on the other networks have similiar policies, the word cartel springs to mind.
With that word in mind lets look at the relationship between the Networks and the Handset manufacturers. I’ve wanted a Nokia N95 16Gb since it was released. For some unknown reason Vodafone only offered that to Billpay customers, and as a Prepay customer I could only buy the 8GB version.Secondly now that the successor N96 has been released by Nokia VOdafone are not offering the N95 16GB to any of their customers. I must ask what happens to the stock that is left?
In other businesses like Motor Retailing “end of lines/last years models” are discounted until they are all sold. I imagine that phones are sent back to Nokia where they are sold in lesser developed markets months later or perhaps even melted, yes I bet you they are melted for economic reasons.
I’ve always had a soft spot for Viking Direct. As a child I drooled over the monthly catalogues admiring the various office equipment and stationary as if it was a toy catalogue.
Just like the Remington Company Viking Direct then had a grey haired spokesman. Mr Irwin Helford. Under his tenure Viking sought to increase its customer base and mailed catalogues to potential customers who had never ordered from the company, it was not junk mail as it had genuinely interesting content. Irwin was an usual first name in the UK/Ireland so he was referred to by an initial, but this gave him more importance in my eyes. His distinguished appearance was a rubber stamp of quality, and consistency.
As time went on Viking grew and now is part of the Office Depot group and I Helford has aged and no can longer be seen endorsing products in the catalogues.
Moving onto the crux of this article you are probably wondering why I use the emotive word “suck” in the title. Well pay attention 007. As you will know most goods bought in the Ireland come with a 12 month warranty covering bad workmanship. It doesn’t cover accidents caused by a purchasers butterfingers or misuse. If such coverage is required then an optional warranty can be bought on most big ticket items (i.e. flat screen TVs, washing machines and so on).
Consumables should never have warranties. But I am sorry to have just learned that on the viking direct website a ream of blank paper has a warranty, as does a box of paperclip, and this is not a free 12 month warranty, it is instead an itemised and unavoidable warranty charged at 2% of the items price. Viking call it “Extra Protection Plus” but I would prefer to borrow use the lexicon of the Irish Government and refer to it as a levy.
The levy is not removable during online purchasing. It only appears at the final stage, and we all know that by that time the potential customer has put so much effort into choosing his exact products at his exact price that he will be inclined to press “order” regardless of any minor additional charge. This is already the case on Airline websites where a variable “fuel surcharge” appears. Viking must realise this because if one instead opts for a fax order form the name/address field is not pre-populated,so the form is too time consuming compared with purchasing online.
The levy extends the warranty to cover accidental damage. So, I presume if I accidentally drop my ream of paper and it somehow tears in half I will be covered. Does it also cover bad print jobs, I mean all those sheets of paper that I throw away because of typos, could I send them back to viking for a refund? Indeed could I send them my a4 junk maik, no that would be wrong, very wrong. I don’t mind upselling, in McDonalds the customer is always asked “and would you like extra fries with that”, but what I do not like is non-optional, sneaky extras.
“If its not chained down they’ll steal it… or they’ll break it”
Who are they, they are the public and that is what one business owner continually reminds me.
While it cannot be condoned I can at least understand theft, someone wants (or even needs) an item, or the cash that it could be converted to on the black market known as eBay.
However I cannot understand vandalism. Why can’t people just leave things alone. Anyone who has a car has had, at some stage, an aerial bent, a side mirror flicked in, or a bonnet dented.
CCTV is often spoken of as a panacea. But we must distinguish between live monitored CCTV and unmonitored recorded CCTV. The former is a pipe-dream for the average Joe, but what good is the latter. Of what use is it to you if you can find the image of the black haired Caucasian dancing on your cars bonnet? You won’t know his name and address, and if you did he wouldn’t pay.
So, dear readers, unless you live in Singapore where hoodlums actually fear the Police, I strongly advise that you lock every thing down. Think of it like this, if it’s valuable there it should be either attached to, or blocked in by, a metal formation of some kind, be it pad-lock, chain, gates, mesh or bollard.
PC World is yet another British retailer that has opened stores in Ireland in recent years; just like Maplin and B&Q the economic good times known as the “Celtic Tiger” finally pulled their big boxes across the channel to Eire.
There is an air of impermanence about PC World. I can just picture a couple of articulated trucks with integrated forklifts appearing at the rear loading doors. The diesel engines will rev as the forklifts are lowered. Their electric hum will be like a hoard of locusts buzzing around the high ceilinged interior, skidding on the shiny concrete floor as they corned. The trucks will drive to Rosslare Europort and PC World will be gone.
Why do I say these things? do I hate PC World, do I hate British companies? No, I just believe it will be a reality as despite being in “Eire” for over 18 months the PC World website still says Under Construction. There’s not even a table of opening hours. It is laughable that a company in the businessof selling computers and accessories does not even have a brochure style website, i.e. one listing products but not having having a shopping cart.
So it seems that after years of ignoring Ireland the company finally opened stores here, and we might hope that after a few years of ignoring its website it might open that too. Still at least in the meantime their website complies with STATUTORY INSTRUMENT No. 49 of 2007 one of the few in the .ie namespace that actually does.
Just like the Remington Company Viking Direct then had a grey haired spokesman. 
one of the few in the .ie namespace that actually does.
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