Probably what some of you might think is a bit of a simplistic topic, but in the past, I’ve written about the importance of checking your change when out shopping, and how there are sometimes certain tell tale signs that a shop assistant might be going to rip you off.

I can add a new one to that list now after an incident in a newsagent close to my work in Dublin 2.

If you think about it, most of the time when you get change in notes and coin format, the assistant will give it to you in the order of big notes on the bottom, graduated up to the smallest coin at the top of the pile.

That order makes it easy to check fairly quickly that you’re getting the correct change.

So, when you’re given the change in the reverse order, with the biggest note obscuring everything underneath, you should be a little wary.

Based on my recent experience, they are literally trying to hid something – that you’re €5 short in your change.

And the tell tale sign that you know they’re trying to rip you off – as soon as you’re even starting to question the short changing, they’re at the till pulling out the extra cash.

In this case, most tellingly, I only said that I thought the change was short. Without even checking the amount, the assistant gave me back the fiver I was short.

More Related ValueIreland.com Posts:

• October 19, 2009 -- Dublin Bus – Consumer Watch “Bad Value of the Week”
• February 11, 2009 -- Always Check Your Change
• October 2, 2008 -- Scam – Tip for Shop Keepers

I’d like to extend a warm welcome to the folks from mylunch.ie who’s blog has now joined the Thrift.ie website – the Irish Consumer Aggregator website.

From their own website, the mylunch.ie philosophy is:

We feel lunch plays an important role in Irish society and people deserve a chance to optimise their lunching experience. Having noticed that there are some great lunch offers available we thought it would be a fantastic idea to make people more aware of them, and so www.mylunch.ie was born.

No longer will you have to go to the effort of walking aimlessly attempting to decipher handwriting on many a dusty blackboard in order to find the best lunch value around. Instead, a few simple clicks on our unique, daily-updated website provides you with all you need to know.

So, welcome to mylunch.ie who now joins Gerard Sheehy from Pensions & Investments, CheapEats.ie, SaveAFewBob.ie, TheSavvyShopper.ie, ValueIreland.com, and SayNoTo1890.com in working to provide Irish Consumers with the best of consumer news and advice every day.

More Related ValueIreland.com Posts:

• April 9, 2010 -- Thrift.ie – Welcome to Gerard Sheehy, Pensions & Investments
• April 6, 2010 -- Thrift.ie – An Irish Consumer News & Offers Aggregator – want to be included?
• September 4, 2009 -- Thrift.ie update – welcome to The Savvy Shopper

Instead of doing the same thing that you’ve always done, hoping that eventually things will magically get better again.

There were two articles within 24 hours of each other recently that inspired this particular rant. The first was from Twenty Major in his “Tourism Suggestions” blog post. Straight out, he touches on a subject I wrote about here some time ago – the misguided focusing of tourism people on the so called “tourism tax” as the reason why people aren’t coming to Ireland:

So fewer people are coming to Ireland. Numbers are 25% down apparently and tourism bosses want the €10 tourist tax scrapped. Which kind of misses the point. That tax is no expensive, it’s everything else.

He goes on to point out how detached from reality many hotels in Ireland are with their “per person sharing” (PPS) room charges. This was highlighted also in a letter to the Irish Independent:

The hotel industry now finds itself in the position of having 10,000 excess hotel rooms to fill. The Irish Hotels Federation is reported as complaining that there is no sign of an upturn in the future.

Neither the federation nor the Irish Tourist Industry Confederation seem to have appreciated that the general hotel policy of quoting rooms at ‘Per Person Sharing’ (PPS) is short-sighted.

There are many single people who would jump at the chance of a hotel holiday but who are put off by the letters PPS.

While that letter writer makes a good point above, their next sentence threw me a bit for a loop, so we’ll move quickly on.

Moreover, there are also couples who prefer not to share a room.

Twenty Major also points out something I’ve been writing about here over the past couple of years – many businesses, though finding things tough – aren’t doing anything different to try to attract new, or extra, business.

Encourage bars and restaurants to offer real value, especially in Dublin. Gone are the days where location = profits. Fuck you and your €15 salad. Buy drinks all afternoon, get a round on the house. Requires a huge cultural change but it’s better than twiddling your thumbs, right?

It seems that some businesses would rather close down than try to encourage new business by trying something different. I’ve written about it before here, but a great innovation by the Insomnia Coffee chain was their breakfast (coffee and a muffin for €3.50) and lunch (coffee and a sandwich for €5) offers.

You only have to look around many other similar type businesses to see how staid their own offerings is to their office working potential customers.

Insomnia even tried another offer (the ill-fated 3 for 2 deal) which very quickly cost them a lot of money and it quickly stopped. But they tried, and went back to their other deals, and more importantly have kept them in place.

You can only admire businesses who try new and different things. And just feel sorry for those that are hoping for their fortunes to turn by doing absolutely nothing – such business don’t deserve our business, in good times or in bad times.

More Related ValueIreland.com Posts:

• June 7, 2010 -- Why we shouldn’t give the diaspora the vote
• May 21, 2010 -- Understanding “the angles” when reading the newspaper
• November 23, 2009 -- Refund.ie – A service that I’d stay well clear of

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I wonder what the actual IT policy with regards to laptops, Blackberries and other personal data devices and phones is within government departments and semi-state bodies. Back in June last year, the HSE and Bord Gais lost unencrypted laptops containing personal data.

And now, a week or so ago, this story reveals that they’re not the only government organisations to have lost laptops containing personal data:

An investigation by the Irish Independent has found that 51 laptops, 21 BlackBerrys, one Mac computer and two memory sticks have been lost by 19 government departments and their employees since 2008.

Only two government departments — the Department of Social Protection and the Department of Community, Equality and Gaeltacht Affairs — did not lose any computer data devices since the start of 2008.

For many of us working for functional private organisations, we’re all familiar with data security policies when it comes to anything to do with securing company data. It’s a wonder that the government who has responsibility for the development of data protection laws to protect of all of our data can’t follow their own laws.

Do as we say, not as we do – unfortunately! Read more here about the organisations who aren’t able to protect their data.

More Related ValueIreland.com Posts:

• September 14, 2008 -- IPSO misled consumers during credit card skimming fiasco
• August 26, 2008 -- Data Protection versus Consumer Protection – round 2
• August 21, 2008 -- Consumer Protection versus Data Protection – and consumers lose!

Earlier this week, I posted some tips on what to do if you think you might be the target of a financial phishing scam. One tip there, to call your banks customer service line, reminded me of another tip I follow particularly myself.

Do you ever receive calls from your bank or your credit card company, or any other financial institution?

If they ask you first to prove that you are who they think you are, do you provide the information they ask for? Your address, your date of birth, your mothers maiden name?

Now, you’ve given them all the details necessary to prove who you are, but did you check that they are who they said they are? How can you be sure if it was the financial institution they said it was?

What if you’d lost your wallet or your phone recently? Would there be enough information there to allow someone find out which bank you dealt with?

I may be a little more paranoid than most when it comes to these things, if any of the financial institutions I ever deal with calls me, I’ll get a name and number, and I’ll call them back on their customer service line.

That way, at least I can be sure of who I’m talking to.

More Related ValueIreland.com Posts:

• July 13, 2010 -- Some good tips on Reporting E-Mail Scams and Spoofs
• January 14, 2010 -- Bank Of Ireland phishing e-mail – would you fall for this?
• April 10, 2009 -- AIB Customers Targeted by Phishing Again

This Q&A came from the New York Times recently. While it’s US focused, it does point out some useful tips on what to do if you receive e-mails claiming to be from your bank.

Q.&A.: Reporting E-Mail Scams and Spoofs
By J.D. BIERSDORFER
Q.
I got an e-mail message claiming to be from my bank and wanting me to download a form pertaining to my account. I’m fairly confident this is a scam, but what should I do with the message? Is there some place to report it?

A.
Call your bank’s customer-service hotline and confirm that the message is indeed false. While you have a bank representative on the line, you can ask if the institution has a place to report or forward “phishing” and fraudulent messages for investigation. Many companies have a place for such things, often at addresses like abuse@yourbank.com or spoof@yourbank.com, so ask if there is such a mailbox available.

To help collect as much information about spoofed messages as possible, the Anti-Phishing Working Group advises that you report the message to them on a Web site form, or forward to them as explained on the form.

While you may not see immediate results, you can also forward the suspicious message to the Federal Trade Commission. The F.T.C. adds the collected spam and phishing messages to a database that it uses for building legal cases against people sending deceptive and fraudulent e-mail.

The National Consumer Agency are the Irish useless regulator you need to follow up with – they will sometimes highlight on their website if there are banking phishing e-mails going around.

You could also read up on the ValueIreland.com Top Tips on Avoiding Financial Phishing – click here to read more.

More Related ValueIreland.com Posts:

• July 15, 2010 -- A tip on making and receiving calls with your bank
• June 15, 2010 -- Yet again, the NCA is wasting their time, and our money
• May 25, 2010 -- The National Consumer Agency Price Comparison Website – RIP – and just as well

Back in April, I wrote a post Business owners – know when to give up on customers? where I question whether or not the customer was actually always right.

In response to that post, Leon from ReverbStudios made the following comment:

A subject close to my heart! “The customer is always right” saying is totally stupid these days and was probably never wise. To say that ignorant, demanding, non-paying customers are right is ridiculous in the extreme.

You do need to be professional and not personal though. My tip for avoiding saying the wrong thing in the heat of the moment is to just wait a while. Do nothing unless you can do it with a clear, calm head.

With regard to helping the client find another company after you fire them, you should yes but also warn the new company that the customer might be difficult otherwise you’ll make enemies of peer businesses!

Non-paying customers is a topic very close to my heart with years of experience seeing customers avail of ones services and then simply refuse to pay. You sometimes think that you’d love to have the hard neck to do as they do, but then you just realise that it really is no way to do business.

All you can hope for is that at some stage, what goes around, comes around and that such customers “get theirs”.

With all that in mind, this website – Clients from Hell - is definitely worth a read for a chuckle.

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Since his Bord Snip report was almost completely ignored by the government when it was launched a year ago, Colm McCarthy hasn’t been shy about pointing out the deficiencies of government actions in reigning back public spending.

What’s the best way to keep him quiet? Give him a new job of course.

As well as the usual Fianna Fail ploy of commissioning a report to distract the public in lieu of actually doing anything, giving Mr. McCarthy the job of reviewing the operation and value of our semi-state companies will at least keep him quiet and off their backs for another while.

You’d have to wonder, too, about the thought process that Mr. McCarthy went through in deciding to take up this new role – he can’t be confident that they’re going to listen to him this time any more than they did the last time.

Would it have made more of a statement on the part of Mr. McCarthy if he’d turned down taking on this new role until they’d followed up on his Bord Snip report first?

More Related ValueIreland.com Posts:

• July 20, 2010 -- More government departments losing confidential data
• June 22, 2009 -- Government cuts – the government still don’t get how to go about it
• March 10, 2009 -- Ideas – Here’s one for the Government and their mini-budget

I’m sure many of you have come across this anomaly in the financial world recently. I’m not sure whether it’s just stupidity, incompetence or just a lack of thinking, or maybe there’s a conspiracy theory in it somewhere?

Pretty much all of my banking and billing are now transacted online. Not only is it very handy for me, but as it’s a cost saver for financial and utility institutions, it’s something they’re encouraging you to do more regularly now as well.

I do my banking online with no paper statements. I get my utilities bills consolidated together via GetItKeepIt.com so I just get an e-mail when a new bill is issued. My credit card account is online where I get an e-mail notification of new statements. My savings accounts are also transacted online as well – no paper statements, I just log in to check the balance wherever I want.

So why is it that whenever I want to apply for a new account with most institutions still, I HAVE to have an original paper copy of a bill or a statement of account?

It’s not acceptable to these financial and utility companies to provide a print out of an online account statement – they must be original paper copies.

And, to get these paper originals sent out to you, (and here’s where the conspiracy kicks in), you have to pay money.

Surely it’s conceivably more secure to provide a print out of an online statement or bill rather than sending on a paper bill. I can dumpster dive and get the paper bill or statement from my neighbour much easier than I can get logged on to their bank account and print out an online statement.

If this isn’t a “screw more money from customers” issue, why insist on these paper bills, or at the very least, provide an online function to reprint a proper statement yourself (which is effectively what the bank will charge you €7.50, or whatever, for them to reprint per page).

It’s great that businesses are providing a better customer interaction via their online services – it’s just unfortunate they don’t change their other processes and procedures to take account of such technological advancements.

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