Its Christmas, so its time for carols, holly, mince pies and vouchers

As Christmas approaches the annual present hunt begins. For many of us the prospect of traipsing around shops through the scrum of bargain hunters trying to find the perfect present for loved ones is a version of hell. That is why the gift voucher is a source of salvation.

However as consumer groups and advocates point out every year, vouchers can come with hidden strings attached which can leave a sour taste in the mouth of the recipient. The most common problem is the expiry date, some of the vouchers expire within 6 to 12 months. Under existing laws, the retailer has the power to decide the expiry date and in theory could make it one week! The other problem of course is that with so many businesses failing, will the shop or retailer be around when the recipient wants to spend the voucher in a few months?

So while they can solve lots of dilemmas, I would encourage people check the details of the voucher before they buy it, especially the expiry date.




There may be some vouchers which you will never redeem...I get dizzy on a ladder so no skydive vouchers for me....please!

Interesting to see that Senator Brendan Ryan of the Labour Party is bringing forward legislation to change the law which would mean all vouchers would have a lifespan of 5 years. It won't pass, but at least it might encourage the Government to do something in time for next year....maybe not, but we live in hope!

Hair today, gone tomorrow!

As someone who is follicly challenged, I was interested to see the Advertising Standards Authority in the UK ruled against an advert by Advanced Hair Studio which claimed that their laser therapy had been approved and could reduce or stop hair loss and/or grow new hair. I have been combing the web and it seems that while this laser treatment has been "cleared" by the Food and Drugs Administration in the US, it has not been approved. Advanced Hair Studio appear to be scratching their heads at the decision.

I don't know the ins and outs of this, but I do remember a really long (must have been 3-4 minutes) ad for them on TV3 a few months ago. They had a list of sports stars lined up to endorse the product and it seems life would come to an end when your full head of hair disappears!


The bald facts?

The serious angle to this is that it is important that consumers are not sold false promises on these types of products. I am not saying that these AHS treatments don't work, I don't know if they do or not. What I do know is that it is vital that claims being made in advertising such as this can be substantiated. Unfortunately in Ireland, like the UK advertising is self regulated, so unless someone complains the advert won't be reviewed or looked at. And even if judged to be misleading it will be withdrawn many months later, when consumers may well have bought the product or service. And since there are no penalties, it can be worth the risk to run an advert that sails close to the wind. In Ireland we need legislation and an independent body to protect consumers from misleading advertising.

A tale of two taxis

Taxi drivers as a profession are not the most popular. They are probably up there with politicians, bankers and tax collectors. However I have come across quite a few decent taxi drivers in my time. However I have also come across obnoxious, ignorant taxi drivers who expect consumers to put up with dirty, smelly taxis, who expect you to direct them to your destination and who never carry any change. And don't start me with printed receipts...."oh the machine is broken"....and "do you have a pen I will write one out for you" As a native, I generally don't have to worry about being taken on the scenic route, but when abroad there are times when you know you are being taken for a ride in more ways than one!

Some in the taxi business will say the problems here are a result of the liberalisation of the trade, and the fact that part timers and unsuitable people have started to drive taxis. However as someone who remembers the bad old day when taxis were like hens teeth, we can never go back to the way things were. I remember waiting at a taxi rank in Dublin for about 3 hours one dark and cold November night in 1999. Quantity and quality should not be mutually exclusive.

Anyhow in recent weeks I have experienced both ends of the spectrum. I encountered a taxi driver who was polite, who didn't need directions, who took me via the shortest route, who had change and who printed off a receipt. And he didn't insist on talking ad nausem and telling me his opinions on what was wrong with the world!

Then 2 weeks ago on the way home from the airport, I encountered another kind of taxi driver. Car was clean and he didn't need directions to Ashbourne. Great I thought, its almost midnight and I can sit back and relax after a long flight. However when we left the first roundabout out of the airport, I noticed that he was taking the motorway and I asked him why he wasn't taking normal way to Ashbourne via the old airport road and Kilshane Cross. He tried to brush it off and I assumed he was taking another shortcut further up the road. However further into the journey I realised he was taking me the long way home to Ashbourne. I questioned him again and then he became angry and told me if I didn't like the way he was going he would drop me back at the airport. He also told me amazingly that the other road which is used by tens of thousands of vehicles everyday and which I almost everyone else from Ashbourne and beyond uses to get to the airport was dangerous.



Thankfully my experience didn't come to this!

I was annoyed but didn't see the point in having a blazing row. To be honest was also concerned that he just might stop and leave me stranded on the M50. So I politely told him I was unhappy and would be reporting my complaint to the taxi regulator. The rest of the journey home was not too pleasant and a very silent one. On arrival home I got my receipt and paid up.

Sometimes we get mad and do nothing. I have had bad experiences with taxis before, but haven't complained. Life is too short. But this was too much for me. I have since made my complaint to the Commission for Taxi Regulation and have got a acknowledgement. While their complaint form is online, you cannot submit the complaint online, instead you have to type it up and post it off. Hopefully they will move to an online system to make it easier for consumers to complain in the future.

As far as I am concerned, the driver added about 4km to my journey and probably about €4-€5 to the fare. However more concerning for me was his aggressive behaviour, which was totally unacceptable and unnerving. I look forward to hearing from the regulator in due course and will keep you posted!

Not the mighty Quinn!

Despite all the spin from the Irish Government, the appointment of Maire Geoghegan Quinn as Research and Innovation Commissioner is a third tier appointment far removed from the plum post we got with McCreevy as Internal Market Commissioner in 2004. The disappointing appointment is probably a reflection of the fact that McCreevy has not done well in Brussels and that Ms Geoghegan Quinn despite being a formidable Minister in the 1980s and 1990s has not been a front line politician for over 13 years.

The new Commission is a reflection also of the changed environment. The appointments of Barnier, Almunia, Oettinger and Rehn as Internal Market, Competition, Energy and Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioners respectively is a repudiation of Le Monde Anglo-Saxon and the free market approach that dominated the first Barroso Commission epitomised by Champagne Charlie. It is good to see that consumer rights are more pronounced in the statements from Barroso prior to his re-appointment in September 2009.


What does the EU do for consumers anyway?

From a consumer prospective, we have a new Commissioner Mr John Dalli from Malta. In the last Commission the Health and Consumers portfolios were divided from 2007 when Bulgaria and Romania joined, however he takes up the post with the two parts of the job reunited. He has a hard act to follow coming after Ms Kuneva who was very active on consumer issues during her mandate. I know quite a few people from Malta and they were all very pleasant, friendly and practical people. And of course like Ireland, Malta was part of the British Empire, so their political and legal system has many similarities with Ireland and the UK. In relation to the draft Consumer Rights Directive he may be more amenable than Kuneva who appeared determined to bring in changes that would not always be good for consumers.

Apart from the appointment of Commissioners and their portfolios, Barroso made a number of changes to the portfolios. For example BEUC have been calling for a number of years for the units in the EU Commission dealing with pharmaceutical products and cosmetics to be moved from the Enterprise and Industry Directorate to the Health and Consumer Directorate. The good news is that Barroso has finally agreed to do this.

I wish Commissioner Dalli well in the new role.

Upsetting the apple tart!

I was listening to our former leader Bertie Ahern on the radio last week plugging his new autobiography. Bertie was always a great man for what the experts call a malatropism, in laypersons terms getting his words and meanings mangled. One of the famous lines a few years ago was his exhortation to us that we shouldn't "upset the apple tart". Although some of us thought there was method in his malatropism!

Anyhow in the course of his interview with Pat Kenny he was asked about mistakes he made during this tenure. He was slow to admit any, except....and I drew my breath, at last some real insights....but no his only real mistake was the establishment of the Financial Regulator. He said that if he had the choice again he would never have removed the regulation of the banks from the Central Bank and that basically the Financial Regulator was too focused on "the consumer" because of all the overcharging scandals and ignored its prudential superivsion role. Now that comment I must say really did upset my applet tart for the rest of the day!

This was a line being spun by the Irish Bankers Federation during the summer as well, that the Financial Regulator was too busy on consumer issues and producing the "I don't know what a tracker mortgage is " adverts to notice that the banks were heading for the abyss. Now that is such a load of baloney. Of course that is a convenient because it allows the Government, the banks, the developers and sections of the media off the hook.




Now that is what I call a bank digout!

The demise of the Irish banking system resulted from a combination of factors, such as a very strong pro-construction policy by Government with tax reliefs for developers and investors, the insistence by the banks, stockbrokers, etc for "light touch" regulation which meant that the financial regulator got lots of meaningless data, but not any really useful information, the dependence of the banks on inter-bank funds, low interest rates and a flood of cheap credit money being shovelled out to consumers. On top of that you had a phalanx of economists and commentators in the banks and stockbroking firms and egged on by some politicians and sections of the media who added fuel to an already overheated market by telling us all to buy before it was too late and lashing out at anyone who questioned what was going on.

And given all that it is amazing, yet not surprising that some would try and say the edifice came crashing down because Pat Neary and co were too busy writing a consumer protection code and making adverts. While I welcomed the increase focus on consumer issues in the early years, progress has been very slow. No one could argue that Ireland is some sort of utopia for financial consumers! Ask anyone who is in debt, ask anyone who got bad advice, ask anyone who got ripped off, ask people who is struggling to find the next instalment of their loan or mortgage payment.

Yes mistakes were made in the establishment of the Financial Regulator, primarily the failure to put in strong people who would stand up to Government and the vested interests and their insistence on "light touch" regulation which hampered the ability of the institution to have any idea what was going on! And even when they did they appeared very slow to use the powers they did have.

Churchill once said "Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Therefore if we don't conduct a proper enquiry into how the banking crisis occured then we could be back in the same place within a generation. The Public Accounts Committee indicated that they would discuss the establishment of such an enquiry in September, but I am not sure what has happened to that. It may have been delayed by NAMA, but it does need to happen.

However as Bertie would say lets not be throwing red herrings and white elephants into the mix by blaming the banking crisis on the consumer. They are central players alright but only as the people who will pay for the sins of others.

It takes time to do things now!

The Tánaiste Mary Coughlan was right to call for greater competition and for action to tackle the high costs and prices charged in the services and non-traded sector by doctors, dentists, lawyers, etc at the MacGill Summer School. Essentially she was challenging the professionals and their representative bodies to put their shoulder to the wheel in terms of increasing competitiveness. Now many of them would say they have suffered a lot from the downturn, in particular professionals such as architects, solicitors and estate agents where job losses and business closures have been high. But we also know many of them did very well in the last 15 years too.

Over the last decade the Competition Authority have produced a range of reports entitled "market studies" looking at certain professions and making a number of recommendations. These were quite lengthy and detailed reports, costly no doubt that exposed anti-competitive and restrictive practices in the professions which increased costs for consumers. In areas such as the legal, medical and dental professions, entry to training was controlled by the representative bodies keeping numbers down and increasing costs. The reports recommended a range of actions directed to the representative bodies, Government and statutory bodies.

In 2007 the Competition Authority as part of a submission to Government did an analysis of progress on their reports and they found little progress was made on most of the recommendations. (The table is on pages 57-58 of this report) Indeed in fairness to most of the representative bodies, they had a least moved on some of the recommendations. In fact it was Government Departments who had the worst record and had largely failed to move on most of the proposals. Perhaps some of the Departments disagree with the proposals, however we don't know.


Classic..."It takes time to do things now"!

Therefore while I agree with the diagnosis of the Tánaiste I disagree with her on the cure. We do not need another report in 6 months time, that is perhaps what the civil service would like. Consumers and taxpayers need action now to reduce costs and charges and that can be achieved now by Government moving to implement many of the recommendations in these reports.

Mr. Doorley goes to Washington

Yes its been a while since I posted. May and early June were mad busy and then I was away on holidays after that, so only now getting into the swing of things again. In mid June I had the pleasure of visiting Washington D.C. (had a short sojourn in NYC). I have grown up on US politics and American civil war history so lots to see and do. The Lincoln memorial and Capitol Hill were particular treats.

In advance of my trip I decided to email the Consumer Federation of America, (CFA) just to see if they would be willing to spare me an hour to discuss consumer issues in the US. Many thanks to Mark Silbergeld, Director of International Issues at the CFA for not only sparing 3 hours to share information on consumer issues, but for inviting me to the 39th Annual Awards of the CFA. It was a very impressive, well attended and enjoyable evening.

Interestingly while I was there one of the major announcements from Obama was the establishment of a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA). Of course unlike here where the executive controls the legislature and most Government proposals are implemented in full, Obama will have to negotiate with Congress to get this through. Predictably industry groups in the US blasted the plan. However it was good to see senior politicians over there such as Senator Chris Todd taking a strong consumer position. We could do with more politicians here taking such a strong line to promote and enhance consumer protection.


Senator Dodd tells it as it is....where are the Irish Senator Dodds?

While Obama was setting out his stall in the US, the Irish Government was revealing how it planned to reform the regulation of our financial services sector. Well in truth, it wasn't all that revealing in that it only filled in some of the blanks left over from Cowen's Ard Fheis speech and the April Budget announcement. I welcome the fact that the original suggestion that the consumer information and education role would be merged with the Financial Ombudsman has been ditched and that these functions will be transferred to the NCA. There was a danger that the good work and integrity of the Financial Ombudsman would be undermined by these structural changes. If there was a hint that the Ombudsman was engaged in advocacy, the office could be accused of bias and all decisions could be challenged and overturned. The transfer of these functions to the NCA seems like a good fit and to be cost effective, but the FR had a good track record in the area of information and price surveys, so the NCA needs to maintain that work.

The core issues remain unresolved. Where will consumer protection reside? Who will be responsible for implementation and monitoring of the consumer protection code? Who will conduct the consumer related inspections? Who will take the enforcement proceedings?

There is a danger that we focus solely on institutional reform or on the issue of a rules vs a principle based appraoch. I believe what we really need is cultural change. Essentially we need effective enforcement. We need a regulator who is willing to take on the big players and vested interests and who isn't afraid to institute and pursue legal action.

I have heard a lot of claptrap in recent months on this issue, the most baseless, yet dangerous was the assertion that the Financial Regulator failed because " it was preoccupied with it's consumer mandate". Of course it suits some interests to spin this because the logical conclusion of that argument is to downgrade the consumer protection mandate in the new structure. That would be totally unacceptable and I don't think Government would be that foolish.

My biggest problem with proceeedings has been the lack of a plan or a strategy and the failure by the Department of Finance to engage in consultation on the new regulatory regime. I appreciate that the Minister and the senior department officials are dealing with a myriad of other urgent and serious issues, but we cannot afford to mess this up again. We need more than press releases and speeches, the very least we need is a White Paper setting out the options. Perhaps there is one in the bowels of Merrion Street. However from where I am it appears very disjointed and ad hoc. Let's hope I am mistaken.