Rip Off Ireland - Reviews

a REAL consumer programme???...Whats RTE coming to??
Why a nappy?.....I`d already posted a bag of cement by the nappy stage of the programme!!
Check out the "Lidl Price Variance Irl v France" in Good Deals, Bad Deals section.Most seem to think there`s no problem.Is this for real!

I only caught the tail end of last nights show but was in the audience for the last one.

The message has indeed been simplified to an extreme degree but I'd agree that that may have been necessary to reach the widest possible audience.

If it at least brings attention to the power of lobby groups in Ireland then it will have achieved much. The nappy is in the post

I thought it was simplistic however it probably had to be to reach the masses whose main interests are English soccer teams, Mobile Phones and Tabloid Papers. I thought the best line was when the kids chanted 'The low tax economy is a fairytale'; I wish Joe public would realise this. I hope Eddie does a show on government money wasting & joke tendering.

Posted the nappy during lunchtime. 60c well spent.
C'mon lads and ladies, post your nappies. We do enough complaining about rip-off this and that but we rarely do anything about it. This is the only decent action point I have seen so far. Worth sending a message.

I missed the show. Can anyone tell me what the significance of the nappies is?

thanks ajapale

The groceries act unnecessarily protects large multiples from real competition. Surprisingly one example of an item protected by the act are disposable nappies. The legitimacy of nappies being on a "groceries" act is the subject of a high court challenge and as i understand it the action tackles the very existence of the groceries act. Eddie maintains that the large stores have enough protection from the competition authority et al without the need for the groceries act. Mr.Hobbs wants us to send a nappy to M.Martin to show that consumers want more competition amongst retailers and push him to withdraw the protection offered by the Groceries Act.
For me as stated above its all a bit tabloid but on the other hand we do have a tabloid / media driven government. Send em in it will probably work...................

Great show, thoroughly enjoyed it.

Did he really say 77% of the price of a car is tax??, hard to believe that one, car would be fairly cheap at 23% of current retail.

Being tight myself (though no Cavan blood ) I found myself cheering along to much of the programme.

Notice how he mentioned % fees re houses about 10 times and specifically brought up the conveyancing issue, felt some vindication after the "verbal mugging" I got over on the legal issues board when I had the sheer audacity to pose the question if the legal system was unfairly creaming it with regard to % fees on conveyancing.

Missed the show myself - Anybody know if it's available online anywhere?

About time us consumers took some real positive action to show the Government we're more importnat than industry lobby groups.

Another nappy on the way to the Minister.

Go Eddie Go! - Eddie for President!

Tip - if you don't have any nappies in the house, contact your local creche who'll be gald to supply a few used ones to reduce their refuse charges.

until rte give me and others a Free To View card to watch rte on SKY rather than expect me to pay twice ie a licence and a sky sub they will never make a rip off programme that I will watch. How can one watch a programme when the channel broadcasting it are guilty of the biggesst rip off!!

noah

Is it free to post the nappy?

Will all the episodes have the annoying sections with the kids? If so I think I'll have to switch over during those bits next time.

Whatever happened to the driver of the waste collection/county council truck that drove down the road with the protestor hanging from the bonnet? The guy could have been killed!

ok, just bought the nappies, got 10 for €2.53, cheapest I could find. Got the A4 envelopes, will get the 60c stamps tomorrow.

Should I put a note in as well, or will they get the message?

Cahir said:

Will all the episodes have the annoying sections with the kids? If so I think I'll have to switch over during those bits next time.

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No. The show I attended had no kids in the clips. That bit kinda pi**ed me off as well. And the fact that the end clashes with the start of Lost on RTE2.

I though the Pee Flynn clip was hilarious. Yeah, you try and keep three houses and a housekeepers on €100,000 (after tax) a year.

tiger said:

Should I put a note in as well, or will they get the message?

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I put in a wee post-it telling Mr Martin to scrap the Groceries Act and give us consumers a really competitive market etc.
Doubt he will get to read it though.

Teabag said:

I put in a wee post-it telling Mr Martin to scrap the Groceries Act and

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Pun intended?

"Speaking of vested interests, I wonder if Eddie has shares in Huggies or Pampers?"

There is no need to put a stamp on a letter to a Government Department. Just write "freepost" on the envelope and it will be delivered.

An Post will at the end of the month bill the Department for the number of freepost items.


Murt

The programme was entertaining. From the number of people who were prompted to send nappies, it seems to be highly motivational.

But it was too much of a polemic and lecture and I would question a lot of the facts and issues raised.

Shock stat from last night had to be the price of cement. 85 Euros per tonne here, 45 in Germany + 10 to transport it !!!!! Crazy.

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So CRH is responsible for the high house prices in Ireland? ( I am a shareholder in CRH by the way). I will check this one out. It simply makes no sense. CRH's customers are the builders - all big businesses. In the EU, there can be no restrictions on importing cement. So why not set up a cement importing business? There is a huge demand for it. These numbers simply don't add up. And why compare with Germany? Germany is in an economic slump at the moment. Maybe it has massive overcapacity and cement is being dumped? Perhaps we should opt for an economic slump so that cement prices would be lower?

Architects charge commission on the sale price of houses, so this is anti-competitive. Nonsense. The architecture market is competitive, but it's just very busy. Perhaps we should go back to the bust of the early 1980's when our architects all had to emigrate. Would we prefer this? I have only come across fees charged on the building costs, rather than the sales price, but maybe this is now the practice. But what should we do - force architects to charge according to a particular way?

Conveyancing is anti-competitive? Nonsense! It was up until around 5 to 10 years ago. It is viciously competitive now. It may still be expensive, but that is down to our archaic property ownership system, not down to the individual solicitors.

But what ruined the credibility of the programme for me was the use of the bin protest thugs in a programme about "Rip-off" Ireland. The vast majority of people fully accept that they must pay for the disposal of the waste they produce. The vast majority of us accept that we must pay for the services we get. A few people have hijacked a bin tax campaign for political purposes and good guys like Eddie should see through this and not be giving them support for entertainment purposes.

Brendan

Would it also be possible to send the minister an email with a picture of a "nappy attachment"?