Pricewatch: You spot the prices, we ask the questions

Fred Johnston from Galway has been in touch to express his "anger and deep frustration" at the unexpected costs associated with having his car stolen from outside his house one evening in September. It was found, "in a bad state and probably undrivable, in a field" and taken into storage by a private recovery firm where gardaí carried out a technical examination of it, which was completed within 48 hours. Ten days passed before he collected the car. Having decided to scrap it, he went down to the recovery company to pay for the storage and was handed a bill of €288 plus an additional €96 for disposal. "Furious, I stormed out. Who regulates these fees?," he asks. "Yes, I had expected storage fees - but this?"

We contacted the Garda press office who said that the recovery of vehicles has been contracted out in recent years because Garda stations no longer have sufficient space to store cars which have been recovered or impounded. There is no set fees contractors charge for the service, the spokesman said.

He said charges had to be introduced because an increasing number of people were not collecting their cars until insurance claims were paid so they wouldn't be out of pocket. Others would take one look at their recovered car, decide they no longer wanted it, and abandon it to the care of the Garda. The State then had to pay for disposal and as a result introduced the storage fees and contracted out much of the work.

The bad news for Johnston is that the thieves were never apprehended. The good news is that the recovery company did waive most of the charge and only ended up charging him for disposal of the car. Incidentally, although he may have thought he was being doubly penalised after the unfortunate theft, the €28 per day storage cost is not unduly harsh when compared with the charges imposed by the Garda if they impound a car because it has no tax or insurance. In such circumstances your car will be impounded and you will be charged €125 for the first 24 hours and €35 for each subsequent day it remains in their hands.

What's more . . .

New soup A number of readers have written in praise of Browne's fresh mushroom soup, which was not included in our recent soup review. It is made by a small family business in Tipperary and one reader, in Skerries, describes it as "delicious", while another, based in Carrigaline in Cork, says it is "streets ahead of the others".

Frothy coffee A PriceWatch reader has written in to highlight the substantial difference in the cost of a cappuccino between two Dublin hotels. In the Merrion Hotel's drawing room a cappuccino will set you back a hefty €6, while across the city in the Westin "you can have just as nice a cappuccino in five-star surroundings for €3.50 including a plate of lovely biscuits," the reader writes.