A rant about professional fees In Ireland.....

Re: Is this a record for dentist fees ?

rabbit said:
I actually was chatting to a few friends from England and America recently, and the fees they pay to dentists, accountants etc are much less than we pay in " rip off Ireland", as Eddie Hobbs calls it. Of course there are those who charge high fees in New York and London, but the average overheads in a small town in Ireland - never mind the level of expertise or experience probably - are not like in the centre of Manhatten or London.
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I wonder do they pay their financial advisors the €700 per hour that Mr. Hobbs has been reported as charging for consultations?

Are you saying that accountants in small Irish towns are charging similar rates as firms in Manhattan or London? I very much doubt if this is the case. There already exists a significant price difference for accountancy services between Dublin and the rest of Ireland. I doubt if Dublin rates are any higher than in the world's financial centres. The multinational orporations that are the bread and butter of the large accountancy and consulting firms would hardly tolerate any significant discrepancy in this regard?

Btw, I don't know why you are lumping together dentistry (a regulated profession in which only professionally qualified and accredited dentists can operate) and accountancy (an open profession in which anyone can set themselves up as an advisor or service provider, even if they have no qualifications, professional accreditation, experience or even expertise).

rabbit said:
So you think it should cost € 24,000 to value a very small business, whose accounts were already done by the same firm for many years ( and whose annual accountancy fees are not included in the € 24000 ) ?
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I have no idea how much it would cost as I don't have any of the facts to hand. What I do know is that valuation of businesses is a very specialised area, and one which by its very nature is best left to specialist expertise. As a Chartered Accountant with almost 20 years experience in providing services and advice to small business customers, I would never even dream of attempting to value a business in a professional capacity, without reference to specialist valuation expertise.

If you have a complaint about the conduct of a particular firm in a particular situation then you should consider the various remedies open to you including reporting them to the appropriate regulatory body or institute. In the meantime, don't try to tar all with the same brush.
 
Taking the pricing to extremes - assume I am a computer specialist and someone comes to me looking to get some work done. They describe the problem, I 'ooh' and 'aah' for a while and tell them it's going to cost €10,000. They think about it and agree because this problem is causing them production problems in work.

I go to their office, click here, click there, change a setting and everything suddenly starts working. I have a smug grin on my face, having earned €10,000 for one minutes work.

They have agreed to the price beforehand, so by some definitions this is not a rip-off.

However, by another perfectly reasonable definition they have indeed been ripped off because they work involved for me in no way warranted €10,000 payment. They had no way of knowing what was involved in the procedure and so estimated the cost of the procedure against the cost of not getting it done.

This is indeed market forces at work - demand for a skill in short supply driving up the price - but that does not also mean that it is not a rip-off.

If anybody believes that this example is not a rip-off then perhaps it is because they choose to believe there is no such thing as a rip-off, and if this is the case it is possibly worthless trying to argue whether *anything* is a rip-off if they are of the belief that nothing can be a rip-off.

z
 
Going to your office, clicking here, clicking there, changing a setting: €1.00
Knowing where to click and what setting needed to be changed: €9,999.00
 
zag said:
This is indeed market forces at work - demand for a skill in short supply driving up the price - but that does not also mean that it is not a rip-off.
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Hi zag
Market forces can be very effective in punishing scamsters and rip-off operators. If someone is ripping off their customers (ie taking advantage of customers to charge levels of fees that are unwarranted in the context of the service provided) they will find it difficult to sustain enough repeat business, no matter how wide their customer base. Businesses than cannot generate repeat business generally fail. On the other hand I think it is reasonable to conclude that businesses who enjoy repeat business from repeatedly satisfied customers, and who prosper by doing so, are not ripping off these customers, no matter how high their fees are.

Btw, the same market forces work in relation to employees and employers. Not all employees are paid the same by their employers and some employees can command very high wages from their employers. Except perhaps in certain situations where managers control their own pay levels, it would be ludicrous to suggest that highly-paid employees are collectively ripping off their employers by virtue of the salaries they command.


Dearg Doom said:
Going to your office, clicking here, clicking there, changing a setting: €1.00
Knowing where to click and what setting needed to be changed: €9,999.00
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Or as someone put it to me recently
"How long did it take you to do that" - "Five minutes , & twenty years"
 
Re: Is this a record for dentist fees ?

ubiquitous said:
Are you saying that accountants in small Irish towns are charging similar rates as firms in Manhattan or London? I very much doubt if this is the case. .
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No. I doubt if most accountancy firms in Manhatten or London would have the neck to charge € 24,000 for what should have been a few hours work, but which was badly done and which I,in retrospect, even as though I am not an accountant, could have made a better stab at.


ubiquitous said:
In the meantime, don't try to tar all with the same brush.
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I am most certainly not. No body which has thousands of members is the same.
 
Not all dentists are the exact same. For example, some I know work half as hard and charge twice as much as other dentists.
 
In fairness rabbit you have said yourself you are not an accountant I also suspect you do not work in corporate finance or else you might understand how difficult and complex it can be to value a private company.

Would you make a better stab at a root canal as well or maybe some reconstructive surgery or even a complex vat case at the ECJ.

Your paying for expertise that is limited in supply. Its basic Economics I am afraid.
 
Re: Is this a record for dentist fees ?

rabbit said:
@ 600 an hour, thats 24,000 per week for a 40 hour week. Whats so special about his knowledge ? Does he think he is Gods gift to the economy, the arrogant greedy git ?
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If I were taking in €600 per hour, I wouldn't bother working a 40 hour week.
 
Taximan said:
In fairness rabbit you have said yourself you are not an accountant I also suspect you do not work in corporate finance or else you might understand how difficult and complex it can be to value a private company.
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I saw the accountants figures all the way and the mistakes they made. The very small business was not even a private company - it was a sole trader.
You must be an accountant yourself! with " expertise that is limited in supply". € 24,000 for basic economics I am afraid.
 
rabbit said:
Not all dentists are the exact same. For example, some I know work half as hard and charge twice as much as other dentists.
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So? If they all charge the same, they're a monopoly.

Just what do you consider a fair price per hour?

Do you count in things like specialisations within dentristry, where the person put in a few extra years training? Do you count the fact that they are top of their field and engaged in teaching the next generation?
 
A lot of people have become very rich in ireland in the last 10 years due to increased property prices and plenty of employment.
Professonal and quaified educated people want to be superrich also,so we have very high fees,especially where the professionals have a representative body to control the numbers.
We have many polish construction and hotel workers ,but the polish dentists or teachers or doctors are restricted from working here in their professions by silly rules.
All our graduates think they should get a big salary and all this contributes to professional class wage inflation.It doesn`t help that we have an expensive country.
Undoubtedly talented and experienced people deserve to be well rewarded, but what is not so good is where an accountant or solicitor can charge an exorbitant fee ,justifying it by saying they saved a "captive" client even more money....for example during the big tax amnesty accountants could claim that they saved a client from a tax bill of 40k and charge him 10k...even though the work took maybe an hour .
FARMERS and a lot of private sector workers have seen low wage increases.
A grasping mentality has taken over our educated elite.....they all feel they deserve big money.Recently on the news,unniversity top dogs felt they needed a big rise....a headhunter gave his tuppence....if these univ presidents were in the private sector,they would command a salary of 300k+.
Well why don`t they quit their univ jobs and apply for private sector jobs?
Simple... they want to be payed for their status , not for doing any tough private sector work.Directorships etc are reserved for people who have done big favors such as ex politicos.
Despite a vast amt of graduates which should restrain salaries ,salaries and fees are at very high levels.I humbly suggest that competition is stymied by restricting the amount of entrants to either private or public sectors so remuneration remains very high.
APPrentice solicitors can`t get positions.
Our gov won`t hire our unemployed teachers for fear of upsetting permanent teachers....a small reduction in the perm teachers salary would see 10000 more teachers employed at no extra cost and at great benefit to our students education.
Our teachers look at solicitors and accountants....these in turn are casting envious glances at tribunal barristers and property millionaires.
Rant over.
 
sunrock said:
Our gov won`t hire our unemployed teachers for fear of upsetting permanent teachers....a small reduction in the perm teachers salary would see 10000 more teachers employed at no extra cost and at great benefit to our students education.
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Why on earth should the existing teachers be expected to pay the price for proper staffing? If we need more teachers, they should be hired and paid for from general taxation.
 
RainyDay said:
Why on earth should the existing teachers be expected to pay the price for proper staffing? If we need more teachers, they should be hired and paid for from general taxation.
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Nothing against teachers who are a fine lot.
HOWEVER just using them as an example of a section of our workforce who are cosseted,protected, unfireable and not subject to competition from their unemployed counterparts.Into the bargain they get benchmarking and very good pensions.
The above argument was used in the 80s when we had high unemployment. The people in the "protected" sector did not want to pay extra taxation to have more employment.....inevitably people like teachers would have to pay more taxation to facilitate this process and of course they were opposed.
Yet the private employees are in most cases exposed to full wage competition both from irish and foreign workers.
There are clearly double standards at work here.
 
So if you want to level the playing field for teachers, how would you propose that their stock options are calculated?
 
sunrock said:
Nothing against teachers who are a fine lot.
HOWEVER just using them as an example of a section of our workforce who are cosseted,protected, unfireable and not subject to competition from their unemployed counterparts.Into the bargain they get benchmarking and very good pensions.
The above argument was used in the 80s when we had high unemployment. The people in the "protected" sector did not want to pay extra taxation to have more employment.....inevitably people like teachers would have to pay more taxation to facilitate this process and of course they were opposed.
Yet the private employees are in most cases exposed to full wage competition both from irish and foreign workers.
There are clearly double standards at work here.
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Agree with most of what you write except I think not all teachers are a fine lot. There are a few who are not. Some have cost the lives of their students dearly. Yet they are unfireable as you say, they have long long holidays, good pensions and often do other jobs / nixers etc.
 
Have to agree re: teachers and other jobs. Take all those male teachers/ex gaa players that are radio/tv presenters. As the gaa championship runs doing the summer months it means these teachers can work full time as presenters as well as getting thier holiday pay as teachers. I thought they needed long holidays to recover from the hard slog of teaching during the year!!!
 
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