YOUR CONSUMER QUERIES ANSWERED:A reader from Cork went to a Boots outlet in the Wilton Shopping Centre last week with a prescription. She asked that a four-month quantity of the item be dispensed. "The pharmacist said she could do this as the prescription was for six months but would have to charge €7 for each month of dispensing."

Our reader asked about the price of the prescription item, as this was the first time she had been prescribed it, and was told it was €18.37 for a 30-day supply. “The four-month supply, for both the drug and dispensing cost, would have amounted to more than €100,” she writes. “I was taken aback that there would be a dispensing charge for each of the four months, but was told by the pharmacist that ‘Boots had lowered the costs of their drugs so much’, they had to make the dispensing charge.”

So she took her prescription to O’Sullivan’s Pharmacy in the same shopping centre – where she was told that the charge for the items for four months was €53.30. “There was no dispensing charge as ‘these had been done away with’. Caveat emptor.” Indeed.

Shoe moves to the other foot for Dublin sports store

Last week, we published an item about a reader who had a trying experience after buying a pair of shoes from O’Neill’s on Talbot Street in Dublin.

Well, another reader was prompted to get in touch after reading it. “I have purchased all my shoes over the years from O’Neill’s,” says Ann Gallagher. “I have had no problems, and very good service. I have purchased from different assistants on many occasions and each one has gone to great lengths to find me the correct shoe.”

Grand so.

SuperValu fights back over 'uneven playing field'

Alan Condron who owns a Super Valu outlet in Clane, Co Kildare was prompted to get in touch after reading our article on supermarket money saving tips last week. He found it incredible that we could not find “one positive thing to say about the two Irish supermarkets in the country”.

He says Irish retailers have had to fight on “an uneven playing field with planners” who treated their planning applications differently to those of Aldi, Lidl and Tesco.

“We also had the ex-head of consumer affairs Ann Fitzgerald telling customers to go north first and then shop in Aldi and Lidl. This office was funded by tax payers and for her to show bias towards any one retailer was a disgrace,” he claims.

“Now you are telling people to do the same. As another option would you not have considered suggesting that people spend a few more minutes in their main supermarket whoever it be, and actually look for the value that is there,” he suggests .“If people looked there is a product in almost every commodity with at least a third off.”

Condron also points out, correctly, that we did not mention the Supervalu own-brand which he said was “as good and in most cases better than discounter brand and main brand” and “comparable on price to the discounter”.

He says retailers such as him “have not said anything for years because we were accused of not being able to handle the competition”.

However, he says, “we have handled the competition very well and grown our business as a group. This in the face of the stiffest competition and a media who take the easy decision to send people to overseas supermarkets that have no interest in Ireland other than bleed out profit.”

These prices are bananas

A reader was in his local Superquinn recently and bought seven bananas. The bananas were in a plastic bag which carried the store’s label and a big red sticker which read ONLY €2.

For devilment, our reader took the bananas to the weigh scales in the fruit and veg department to see how much they would have cost had they been sold loose. Superquinn was charging €1.25 per kilo for its loose bananas and the total cost of his seven bananas was €1.02 or nearly half the price the store was asking him to pay because they had gone to the effort of putting them in a bag he neither wanted or needed.

Water, water everywhere but it cost more to drink

Staying with the same retailer, a Dublin reader called Donal contacted us recently about the store’s own-brand sparkling waters. It sells Superquinn and Superquinn Essentials sparkling waters. The former costs 35 per cent more than the latter but has, as you will see from the picture, the “same volume of the same water from the same listed source and with the same trace element composition”. Donal points out that the the only difference is the label. “I guess that extra green ink must be what makes it worth the 35 per cent price hike up from the plainer labelled option. Amazing.”