Ripped off? Stunned by good service? Write, blog or text your experience to us

How high for low cholesterol?

For the past couple of years, like many people, Pat from Dublin has been taking a daily dose of Flora Pro-Activ cholesterol-lowering drink. For the past year "and possibly even longer", he has been buying a six-pack of the drinks "at a price of exactly €3.68 in Dunnes and Tesco and €3.69 in SuperValu. The packaging of the six-pack indicated that you were getting four drinks plus 50 per cent extra, but I can't remember when I last saw a four-pack as such on display," he writes.

In recent weeks he says the price of the six-pack has shot up to exactly €4.61 in both Dunnes and Tesco, and he can no longer find it in his local SuperValu.

"Now the packaging indicates that you are getting 5 drinks plus one free for your €4.61. Dunnes even have material on display promoting the fact that you are getting better value in getting one drink free," he writes.

He says he recently drew the situation to the attention of a Tesco executive in its Dundrum Town Centre Branch, and was told the 25 per cent price increase was a matter for the suppliers.

"He maintained that the old pack was in fact a four-pack, making the basic price per drink 92 cent, and that the supplier was giving an extra 50 per cent free. The new pack contains five drinks, plus one free drink, so therefore each of the five drinks a customer pays for still costs only 92 cent. He claimed that it was a matter for the supplier to determine whether he wished to supply any free product and how much. On this basis, he claimed there was no increase in price at all.

"I find this cynical manipulation of prices and the pretence of providing some part of the product free reprehensible. To my mind, we were getting a six-pack of the product for €3.68 for more than a year and now we are being charged €4.61 for exactly the same product. How can this not be a price increase? And how can an increase of 25 per cent be justified?

"Price-fixing also suggests itself. A product that was precisely €3.68 in both Dunnes and Tesco over a long period of time is now priced at precisely €4.61 in both stores."

Coincidentally, another reader got in touch almost simultaneously in connection with cholesterol-lowering drinks. He priced four brands on the market: Benecol, Flora Pro-Activ, a Tesco own-brand product and a drink from Aldi. He says that while six bottles of Benecol cost a fiver and six bottles of Flora Pro-Activ cost €4.61, four bottles of the Aldi product cost €1.69, or less than half the price of the more well-known brands.

We contacted Unilever, the company that makes Flora Pro-Activ. The company said the drink had been on sale in a four-pack format in Ireland since its launch in 2004 at a recommended selling price of €3.69 - 92 cent per bottle. It said the promotion pack with 50 per cent extra free was introduced late last year.

"In August of this year, Flora changed its promotion and has now moved to an offer of 'One bottle free - six for the price of five'. However, the price per bottle has remained exactly the same at 92 cent. Thus, while your reader is correct in saying that our price point has moved from €3.68 to €4.61, it is not the case that our six-pack has 'shot up'. Our price per bottle has remained the same, offering our consumers both value and quality."