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Diesel differential

John Dundon from Tipperary was driving from Limerick to Cork recently when he noticed something which struck him as puzzling. "For as long as I can remember there has been a price differential between unleaded petrol and diesel fuel and the advantage in diesel's favour has typically been in the order of five to 10 cent per litre."

Not any more. He says that in recent days he has seen the price difference virtually evaporate, and now diesel costs just one cent less than petrol. "Is this just another shame-faced attempt to maximise profit margins by the fuel companies or forecourt owners, or does this reflect another change of which I haven't been aware?"

It is not just out of idle curiosity, he says, as he has only recently bought his first diesel car, after almost 20 years of driving, to save himself a few bob. "I now find the financial savings are rendered insignificant. Indeed, considering the price premium buyers are still forced to pay for diesel-engined cars over the petrol-engined equivalent models, I find this development nothing short of a rip-off."

We contacted the head of Maxol Ireland, Tom Noonan, to see if he was able to shed light on the narrowing of the price gap. He told us that as diesel has multiple uses - principally as home heating oil and car fuel - demand in Europe during the winter months was significantly greater than in the summer, hence the closing of the price gap between it and petrol. He said that the full wholesale price of diesel was now actually higher than petrol. Last week the wholesale price of diesel (excluding VAT and discounts) was 98.59 cent, while the wholesale price of petrol was 97.39 cent.

While he might not make any savings on the forecourt, Dundon's diesel car will give him much better fuel economy than a petrol equivalent, although he will need to do more than 10,000 kilometres a year for the next five years to overcome the ridiculous premium car manufactures charge for buying a diesel car. They continue to add this premium - of around five per cent - onto diesel engines because, they claim, the development costs are higher. While that may have been true at one time, it certainly isn't now, and some car manufacturers such as BMW now charge the same for their diesel and petrol cars, a precedent, it is to be hoped, which will be followed by all car makers in the near future.

Faux, Harvey, faux

Kieran O'Hare from Drogheda got in touch with a complaint about Harvey Norman. He and his girlfriend were in the market for six leather dining chairs, and a set on display in the aforementioned shop caught their eye.

"As there was no mention of what material the chair covers were made of I asked the salesman if the chairs were leather and he said they were," he writes. Delighted to have found what they were looking for so quickly and at a price they considered reasonable the couple put down a deposit and left.

A couple of days later our reader was looking at the Harvey Norman receipt when he noticed, much to his dismay, that it described his chairs as "faux leather". As he most certainly did not want fake, faux or imitation leather he rang the store and asked to speak to the chap who had sold him the chairs. He was reassured that the chairs were actually leather "and this must have been a mistake in the way the item was entered in the system".

His girlfriend subsequently called to the store to pick the chairs up but before she paid the balance checked with staff once again to make sure that the chairs were actually leather. Once more she was reassured that they were. She paid the balance but, on the way to the pick-up point, looked underneath one of the chairs on display and saw a label reading "PVC cover". This was "a huge surprise", O'Hare says, so she returned to the salesman with this information, who then went to speak to his manager who also said he thought they were leather. It wasn't until the label which said PVC cover was pointed out to him that he apologised and offered a refund.

"The episode caused great inconvenience for us as we had essentially wasted six weeks and were still without chairs. I wonder how many customers do not check the labels like we did until they have taken delivery of furniture from Harvey Norman?"

We contacted the store last week to see if it could explain the confusion but, despite a number of calls to the store's Dublin head office, no one was in a position to shed any light on the issue.

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