Another PriceWatch reader, Fran Vaughan, writes to express surprise at the price of kerosene home heating oil in the Dublin area.

After ringing around several outlets across the city in the last number of weeks, Vaughan found that 1,000 litres of the fuel cost around 490.

"I was prepared for an increase, being aware of world events, but not to the extent that I was being quoted. So I telephoned two suppliers in the North, and was quoted £250 sterling \."

Unfortunately, distributors in the North are not allowed to supply users in the Republic. "Even taking the currency differential into account and the different VAT rates, what else can explain the large variation in price?" Vaughan asks.

Recently, when buying tickets for a performance at the Everyman Theatre in Cork, Alison McCoy from Bantry was charged an extra 1.25 per ticket handling charge, through the theatre's own box office. "I feel this is a sneaky way of putting up prices without advertising them as such," McCoy writes.

When contacted by PriceWatch, the Everyman Theatre defended its policy. "The only reason we impose the handling charge is that we are charged in turn by the company we use. If we didn't impose the charges for credit card bookings taken over the phone, we would be unable to take such bookings," a spokesman said. He added that, while he understood customers' frustrations with the fee, it was not a secret charge, and that the 1.25 fee the theatre imposes on each ticket bought over the phone was lower than that charged by the majority of theatres and booking companies. It is certainly lower than the 2.70 levied by Ticketmaster and the €2 fee the Dublin Theatre Festival is charging.

But not all Irish theatres impose such a charge. "We're very unusual in that we don't impose a booking fee," a spokesman for the Abbey Theatre said.

The Municipal Theatre in Galway city does not impose a charge, nor does the National Concert Hall in Dublin. One theatre source believes the handling charges to be exorbitant, but said they are very likely to become more commonplace in the future.

David O'Brien from Rathfarnham in Dublin writes to express his dismay at the cost of a toasted ham and cheese sandwich at the Dunbrody Café in New Ross, Co Wexford. He was charged a "whopping" 5.95 - over €2 more, he says, than he would normally expect to pay for such a sandwich in the capital. When he queried the cost he was told the owners were happy with their pricing policy.