`There's always been this attitude in Ireland of `Ah, sure it will do'. No it won't, not any longer. For heaven's sake, don't accept it. Do complain." This is the advice offered by Carmel Foley, the newly-appointed Director of Consumer Affairs. So what are some of the most common consumer complaints?
Probably the bete noir complaint is the waiting one. We've all done it. Sat in the house waiting for someone to arrive to fix the washing machine, or the heating, or sand the floor, paint the hall, tile the bathroom, or install the cooker. Often, you've taken time off work for this purpose, or made other elaborate arrangements so you can be in the house at that particular time to let someone in.
The clock ticks. You have a cup of tea. And another one. No one has arrived. You struggle once more with the washing machine door, which still refuses to open. You have more tea. When you next pass the washing machine, you give it a thump. You don't want any more tea. By the time you realise today is not the day the washing machine will be fixed, the day has gone west and so has your temper. These times are the unforgettable low-lights of domestic life: what drives people to DIY.
The days of Irish mammies at home all day, endlessly on call with cups of tea and lunch and dinner for builders and tradesmen, is gone. And even if you know your neighbours well enough to entrust them with a key, the chances are they go out to work too.
It's accepted that you can take time off from work to attend the dentist or doctor - a note from either will confirm where you were, but what happens if you need to attend to domestic matters? "Put it this way," explains a member of the Civil Service, "you don't even get a day off when your granny dies. It has to be parents or siblings. So you definitely won't get compassionate leave for your washing machine."
Michael Kelly is the press officer with the ESB. "The two main reasons we get called out to houses is to read the meter, or if there is a problem with the main fuse," he explains. The ESB offers a choice of morning or afternoon calls, but cannot give a precise time than before and after 1 p.m.
"If for some reason we can't turn up, we'll phone at least a day in advance to say so. And if we don't turn up, we'll make a cash payment." The cash payment is £20, which is a welcome token payment, but simply that - a token payment which often will not compensate someone for taking a half-day from work. And of course, if someone doesn't turn up at the planned time, another half day has to be taken off work in the future.
So what happens in these situations? The unhappy reality is that if the plumber, electrician or craftsman operates privately, then there is very little that you can do, according to Jean Cahill in the Consumer's Association. "It's down to the individuals to compensate you," she explains. "You'd have more of a comeback if someone arrived to do a job and they didn't do it properly. People not turning up - well, there's not much you can do about that."
Of course, you could always try dealing with such situations yourself. An acquaintance of mine who lives in Kerry wanted her stairway and living room carpeted. She measured the area, went into town on her lunch break, chose the carpet and set a time and date for it to be delivered and fitted. Since this involved taking time off work, she asked that they phone her if the arrangements changed. No call was made, so she waited in for the carpet man to arrive at the set time.
After waiting for two hours, she phoned the shop, to be told they would come the next day instead, because they were "much too busy" that day. This woman got into her car, went to the town's other carpet shop, and said that she would buy the carpet she needed if someone could come and fit it right away. There was someone available: they fitted the new carpet.
The following day, she waited home again in the afternoon. The original carpet van turned up, three hours late. "And where were you yesterday?" she asked the carpet man. "And why didn't you call me to say you weren't coming?"
"Sure, amn't I here now," was the answer. He unloaded the carpet she had chosen, but not paid for. He had cut it to fit. She held open the front door and he carried it into the hallway. Then he saw the spanking new carpet. Several pennies dropped at once, and a lot of them belonged to him. This is a true story.
The situation for the consumer is much more clearly defined when something tangible is purchased. If you buy a pair of shoes and the heel falls off, then that's in the faulty goods category. "With faulty goods, you are entitled to a refund, replacement, or repair," says Jean Cahill. But it is expected you will use the item for the purpose for which it was intended. "If you buy party shoes and you try wearing them in the rain up a mountain, then you can't be surprised if they leak water."
The recent court case which Tom Doran won against Pings Chinese Restaurant in Blackrock for a disputed bill attracted much media attention. Charged £2,841 for his bill, Doran refused to pay on the grounds that he felt his party of 76 had not consumed food or drink to that amount.
Tom Doran is a racehorse owner, and so one can presume he has a few more punts disposable income than most of us who might dispute a bill. "We get very few complaints directly from the public," Henry O'Neill of the Restaurant Association explains. "Most people tend to complain directly to the restaurant itself - which is what the restaurant wants. Once the person goes out the door, they start telling potential customers their complaint and that grapevine-word can affect business."
Once you sit down in a restaurant and order food from the menu, you enter into a contract between yourself and the restaurant. What you make of the food you are served depends on your expectations. A family member of mine once ordered lamb, specifically requesting that it be served without the advertised rich sauce over it. The lamb arrived. With the sauce under it. "You asked for no sauce over it . . ." the waitress explained. If food arrives cold to your table and it is supposed to be hot, send it back. If you've ordered something cooked a certain way, such as meat, and it hasn't been done, send it back. After you've taken a few bites, rather than several, which is bound to provoke the waiting staff or the chef to remark that it took you long enough to make up your mind.
Most restaurants will delete a dish from your bill if you are unhappy about it.
Other problems are waiting too long to be served. How the individual restaurant deals with this is up to them, but once I had the happy experience of being served a bottle of wine on the house - without complaining at all about the wait.
Still a problem in many restaurants is the vexed question of smoking and non-smoking tables: or rather, people smoking at non-smoking tables. Ask the waiting staff to point this out to the offender, rather than engaging in it yourself. This usually works - unless of course, you get the kind of enterprising waitress I once encountered in Waterford. She went over to the non-smoking table next to mine, where a couple were both having a post-prandial puff, and exchanged the non-smoking sign on it for a smoking one. "That's a smoking table now," she informed me when next on her way past.
