HAVE YOUR SAY: Customer left with egg on their face over prices
MARIANNE Dunne got in touch to give out about Dublin’s Fallon and Byrne and their duck eggs in particular. “We all know so many cliche expressions about eggs and putting them all in the one basket, but one thing is for sure, if you’re using duck eggs don’t buy them in Fallon and Byrne,” she writes.
She called into their food hall on Exchequer Street at the beginning of this month and spent €3.99 on six free-range duck eggs.
“I carried on on my way to the Asia Market on Drury Street to pick up some other items. A few stalls into the shop, I noticed free-range duck eggs from the same farm, same sell-by date and probably laid by the same duck. What left me speechless was the price tag of €2.50. That is some price difference,” she writes.
She phoned Fallon and Byrne to ask if the price of €3.99 was a mistake? “I was told by one of the slightly unhelpful staff who went to check the price that it wasn’t a mistake. I asked why the eggs were €1.50 more than a store around the corner. He said he hadn’t got a clue and asked me to call back later. I said that was not a good enough answer and I wouldn’t call back later and that a manager could phone me. He took my details and said a manager would phone me. That was on Friday at about 2pm. I’m still waiting for my phone call.” She says she is disappointed by the “blatant rip-off price” but what has left “a really bitter taste is the extremely poor customer service”.
We contacted the shop to find out more. A spokeswoman accepted that the price differential was as outlined by our reader but was at a loss as to how that could be the case. She said the Asia Market price of €2.50 was the cost price it was paying for the product. She said that the store had been in touch with the supplier and confirmed that it was selling the eggs at the recommended retail price. She said they would investigate further to see if they could get to the bottom of the discrepancy. She then contacted us to say that while other high-end shops such as Avoca were selling the duck eggs for €3.99, there were some butchers who were selling them for €3.50, so, to bring Fallon and Byrne into line with them, it has now dropped the price by 49 cent.
In connection with customer service, she accepted that our reader had been let down and that was “a failure” on the shop’s part.
She said that on the Friday in question, phone calls to the office were directed to the shop floor as a result of a technical glitch, and the call had obviously been handled by a shop assistant rather than someone in management. “We take all complaints very seriously and are very active in dealing with them so we are disappointed this person did not receive the level of care that she should have,” the spokeswoman said. We put the two in touch to see if any lingering issues could be resolved.
Choo-chooing over a refund
Julie Brosnan got in touch in connection with an experience she had with Iarnród Éireann recently. “I booked a ticket on their website and paid for it on my Laser card. Because of changing circumstances, I had to cancel the trip a few days before my journey,” she writes. She was entitled to an 80 per cent refund – and we have to extend kudos to Iarnród Éireann on this score because there are not many travel-related businesses that offer refunds of any kind. The kudos kind of end there, mind you. “I booked the ticket on July 28th and the money was refunded to my account on August 26th . That’s a month. It might not seem like much to some but when money is tight, it does seem rather a long time to be waiting.”
A fan of good service
Jim Bruce sent us a e-mail last week because he thought we “might like to hear a good-news story about great service from an Irish company”. He wasn’t wrong.
“Just over a year ago, Domino Design in Bray fitted our new kitchen. We were very pleased with both the product and the service, and I would have been more than happy to recommend Domino to anyone needing a new kitchen. However, after today’s events, I have moved from being a passive ‘referee’ to an active advocate for this shining beacon of outstanding customer service,” he gushes.
And what happened? At 9.30am on the morning of writing the e-mail to us, he phoned the company to report a problem with the extractor fan. “A few days earlier it had ‘died’ when I turned it on. Wally Kavanagh, one of the directors, promised me a new one immediately.
“Within four hours, the company’s chief fitter, Cathal, arrived with a brand new fan. He removed the old fan and fitted the new one. He took away the old fan and all the packaging from the new one. He even thought to leave me the bulbs from the old fan to keep as spares. The fan was probably out of guarantee but there was no quibbling from Domino. I simply stated the problem without asking for any specific remedy. Given the current gloomy atmosphere in the country, I hope you can give some publicity to this story as it shows how indigenous companies can beat the recession: by providing superior aftersales service, ensuring strong word-of-mouth referrals.” Done.
