Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Your Consumer Rights




All Right: 1. Tina Leonard and Maura Derrane; 2. Claire Byrne; 3. Claire Devereux and Tina Leonard. (Pix. Londubh)



According to Your Consumer Rights, a new book by Tina Leonard, Ireland’s leading consumer expert, Irish people are losing millions of euro every year by not knowing their rights as consumers and not insisting on retailers and service-providers fulfilling the terms of their contracts.

It’s a leaner, tougher economic environment. Yet people who are intelligent and savvy in other areas are losing hundreds, even thousands of euro by not being vigilant when shopping online, by not reading contracts with service providers properly and being penalised when they change providers, by not complaining effectively when they feel that the product or service they have paid hard-earned money for is not doing the job it was supposed to do.

Above all they are losing money by not knowing their statutory rights. Armed with this knowledge consumers become powerful negotiators and satisfied consumers means better business for everyone. Tina Leonard’s Your Consumer Rights in Ireland is a clear, foolproof guide to knowing your entitlements and making sure you get them.

Tina Leonard is an independent consumer expert and was formerly Director of Ireland’s European Consumer Centre. She writes the weekly ‘Smart Consumer’ column in the Irish Independent and has a weekly consumer slot on RTÉ Radio 1’s Today with Pat Kenny and on RTÉ TV’s Four Live. She was joined by friends and fans alike at the launch of the book which is published by Londubh and available now.