PriceWatch: You spot the prices, we ask the questions.
Liam de Burca, a Cork-based reader, has been in touch to ask what happened to the prices which used to appear on bags of Tayto crisps. "When I was a child, bags of Tayto always carried the price prominently on the front of the packet. Not only was it a way for children to measure inflation, it also proved to be a useful in establishing someone's age, as you could always work it out based on the lowest price they could remember Tayto selling for."
More seriously, de Burca points out, when the prices were carried on the bags, shops had to charge that price and could not "arbitrarily increase the cost to up their own profits". PriceWatch contacted Tayto and was told the practice of carrying the prices on the packets was discontinued in 2002 "to avoid consumer confusion". Apparently the "price flash" on the front of the bags was merely a recommended retail selling price and Tayto could not compel retailers to sell the crisps at that price. The company says that the price of the product "was often inconsistent" so it chose to remove its suggested price entirely. The company does still have a recommended retail price, which is 50 cent, and it surveys some 200 stores every month to check prices. It says its April survey indicated that the average price was 51 cent.
So, the days of Tayto bags being a ready reckoner for inflation appear to have gone. For the record, however, a bag of Tayto in the early 1970s would have set you back 3 pence (or 4 cent in the new money). In the early 1990s a bag cost in the region of 14 pence, or 18 cent. Seven years later, the same sized bag would have set you back approximately 22 pence or 28 cent and it had climbed to 28 pence, or 36 cent, by the end of 2001, just before the euro was introduced. Earlier this week PriceWatch found shops in Dublin city centre selling Tayto at between 50 and 60 cent a bag. The company did, however, increase the size of its bag of crisps from 35g to 40g in 2002 at the same time as it dropped the price flash.
Unfair exchange: James O'Connell writes in connection with the difference between the sterling and euro prices in shops operating in both the Republic and in the UK.
In a recent column Debenhams accepted that its prices did vary between its UK stores and its shop in Dublin's Jervis Street Centre, but offered several reasons, including higher wage costs and property prices here, for the higher prices. "As someone with no connection to the retail trade," O'Connell writes, "may I suggest that you also note that Marks & Spencer make a point of charging the same prices in the Republic as they do in the UK - the exchange rate they use is fair and they add no further mark-up."
