for as much money as possible? That was the question being asked over the weekend following the revelation that the Phoenix Stores have been wrongly charging their customers extra for The Sunday Times magazine for four years.

To briefly recap for anyone who didn't read The Royal Gazette's front page story on Saturday, the Phoenix Stores have been charging a huge mark-up on the magazine, which, unlike anywhere else in the world, it sells separately from The Sunday Times newspaper.

Anyone who inquired about this practice in the past had been told that the Phoenix Stores was itself charged extra for the magazine and, as such, was entitled to mark up the item and make a decent profit.

But The Royal Gazette discovered that the Phoenix Stores had actually been receiving the magazine free of charge all this time and had thus been overcharging its customers.

Some people found it difficult to believe Mr. Reid Young, president of Phoenix Stores Ltd., when he said that he had been mistakenly under the impression that the firm was being charged extra for the magazine by its British supplier.

Mr. Young claimed he only realised that the Phoenix Stores had actually been receiving them for nothing following an investigation by The Royal Gazette .

"It was an honest mistake,'' pleaded Mr. Young. "It was a question of the right hand not checking what the left one was doing. I'm most embarrassed by this. We have major egg on our faces.'' Quite how, though, the firm could have thought it was paying extra when it was not, nor ever has been, remains a mystery to many people.

"Either they're incompetent or they knew exactly what they were doing and were deliberately trying to cash in at the public's expense,'' a reader told the Business Diary.

"Personally, I find it difficult to believe that one of Bermuda's best known retail firms did not know whether they were paying extra for the magazine or not. What do they take us for?'' The company has been recently charging $3.25 for the magazine, a mark-up of between $1.50 and $1.95 per copy once freight costs, which vary with foreign exchange rates, have been taken into account.

For the sake of an approximate calculation, let's assume that this has been their average mark-up range since they started selling the magazine separately from the newspaper four years ago.

Since the company brings in 30 magazines each week, this means the Phoenix Stores have wrongly benefitted by between $9,360 and $12,168 over the last four years.

These are not enormous amounts of profit, on their own. But, if the company did deliberately try to make a quick buck at the public's expense, one might ask whether it was doing the same on other products.

Rightly or wrongly, the company has acquired a reputation among some in the community for imposing higher than average mark-ups on products, particularly on reading material.

Embarrassing incidents such as The Sunday Times magazine fiasco do nothing to dispel these rumours.

BANK OF BERMUDA BUC AN increase in the number of locals travelling to the United States for Christmas and the New Year sparked a foreign currency scare on Friday at the Bank of Bermuda.

The bank ran desperately short of US dollars to sell to the public and began asking customers to take travellers' cheques in lieu of cash.

The bank is bringing in between US$500,000 and US$1 million by today to rectify the shortage, said Mrs. Velda Hendrickson, the bank's assistant manager of retail banking.

The Bank of Butterfield had no such shortage, despite having to cope with extra demand from Bank of Bermuda customers who went to the Bank of Butterfield in search of more US dollars.