Watchdog releases new name and shame list
ROUNDING up in the price of everyday items such as coffee, water, bread and milk could cost the consumer an additional €85 (£50) a month even before supermarket shopping, figures released yesterday reveal.
The Consumers Association yesterday published its first ‘name and shame’ list of over 210 enterprises investigated for rounding up prices in euros since January 1.
The list, spanning 25 pages, includes 77 restaurants, cafes and snack bars, 17 bakeries, ten souvlaki outlets, four dry cleaners, 37 hairdressers and eight kiosks that added anything from five euro cents to €1.71 (£1.00) to their prices.
Almost all names on the list were small businesses and it contained virtually no big-name chains other than Zorbas and ESEL supermarket.
By contrast, the list of businesses that rounded down their prices consisted of only six pages and 114 names.
Everyday items rounded up included milk, bread, pies, souvlaki, beer, water and coffee.
Alone, increases of 10, 20 or 30 euro cents on a particular item may not break the bank but a consumer who purchases one of each of the items a day, based on the new average price, would pay roughly €13.50 or £7.90, where previously the total would have been £6.15 (€10.50).
The difference, worked out over a month, comes close to £50 (€85).
Barbers and hair salons on the list appear to have taken whatever the price was in Cyprus pounds and doubled it in euros. For example £3 becomes €6 instead of €5.13, and £5 becomes €10 instead of €8.50, thus the higher the price of the item previously, the higher the increase.
Most of the salons defended their increases, saying they had not raised prices for years. But neither had they reduced them under the recent October VAT deduction from 15 per cent to five per cent, which was part of the government’s programme to ease the ever-rising cost of living.
Milk prices are another victim of rounding up, mainly at kiosks, where a litre was previously £0.60 to £0.70 or €1.03 to €1.20.
The average price at the outlets listed is now €1.30 to €1.45, the latter which translates into £0.88 per litre or £0.18 more.
When it came to bakeries, most pies on average jumped from £0.65 cents to €1.45, the equivalent of £0.85, while a pack of five pittas also jumped from a previous average of £0.75 (€1.28) to €1.55, some £0.90 or £0.15 more.
One Zorbas outlet in Limassol was charging €2.20 for the pitta pack from its previous £0.75, which represented an increase of £0.54.
The explanation it gave to the Consumers Association was that the increase had “nothing to do with the euro”.
In fact all of the 37 bakeries concerned blamed the international price of wheat.
The more expensive pittas then spilled over to the souvlaki sector with most outlets listing their new price as €4.00 as opposed to the previous £2.00, a £0.34 increase. They all said pitta and meat prices had increased.
On the ‘rounded down’ list, a number of souvlaki outlets decided to charge only €4.00 even though their previous price was £2.50 (€4.27).
In a statement accompanying the list, the Consumers Association said although the majority, almost 60 per cent of businesses either kept the same prices or rounded down, “unfortunately a number of businesses thought that euro adoption provided a chance to increase their prices considerably”.
“We consider this practice to be unacceptable, and the consumer is urged to be careful and to avoid these places,” it added.
Similar advice was issued by the Finance Ministry yesterday. It said follow up investigation into the prices would be carried out and consumers should lookout for the results.
The Consumers Association also said that outside factors such as oil price increases would likely bring further price hikes in bread and other goods, which would have a knock-on effect.
The ‘name and shame’ list can be found on the website of the Association at www.cyprusconsumers.org.cy.
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