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At 9:30am the phone rings. It's customer service, the engineer has called in sick. No one else is available. This is taking the piss. Called in sick on a bank holiday? Guess what he's been up to. I have no choice but to reschedule.

Given Virgin Media were going to charge me a tenner, shouldn't I be entitled to do the same as they missed their slot? Maybe this would provide an incentive for the company to start providing a proper level of customer service. What a prick of an engineer. What do you think I should do?

Looking at the long list of dates - UPS may as well wave a red rag in front of me. Unbelievably, I even sent them a Google map and they still couldn't deliver. I sent Amazon the same map. They replied to me with a very automated response, and then seem to have done nothing at all. A week passed and despite their claim to be "building Earth's most customer-centric company" I hear nothing at all. They don't seem to have picked up the phone to give UPS a kick in the rectum or to let me know what's going on. 

Having had enough I cancel the order and take the opportunity to make a complaint to Amazon. Mohanraj, at Customer Service, advises me the delivery "reflects negatively upon Amazon.co.uk and the feedback that you have provided will be used in reviewing the service provided by UPS. I have forwarded your comments to relevant department and they will investigate the issue."

Translation: nothing will happen and I certainly don't expect to hear any outcome. Interestingly, no reference is made to Amazon's own customer service failings and in not following up with UPS after my earlier enquiries, nor updating me at any stage.

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The package should have arrived next day, but over a week later and it still hasn't arrived. The driver couldn't find the address. Seemingly unquestioned by a supervisor, the driver marked the package up with " incorrect address".

This address is one of those saved on Amazon and has been delivered to umpteen times before. Nothwithstanding this, if you actually type it into Google Maps, it's clearly displayed. In fact, astonishingly, I went to the trouble of saving a google map with the address pin pointed and sent it through to UPS support. They responded to say they've forwarded the email "to the relevant department", but the package still hasn't arrived. Is it me or does good customer service seem to be a thing of the past? A company reaches a certain size and they couldn't give a monkey's about your business any more. They're too focussed on the share price. Or are the staff in Cork sitting around eating peanuts?

Where's my effin package?

The letter says:

My first thought was "I've been had", my second was, why did Tesco store my bank details for the year? My third thought was, look at the premium - £456.75. This is over two and a half times more expensive than the cheapest quote I had received for a comparable policy, from Swinton.

My fourth thought was, I'll never use these cowboys again, how can they get away with it - and try to pass it off as though they're doing me a favour and being done in the name of high standards?

What'll it be next? Will I find some of the staff in my living room opening a bottle of wine. "We decided to help ourselves, every little helps!"

All three had their own dissatisfied tale to tell about Tesco Customer Service.....

1. At the supermarket the groceries were being scanned as if it were the new speed event in the 2012 Olympics. As I struggled, near defeat, with separating plastic bags and trying to pack, the cashier was finished and was now busy texting on her mobile phone, completely oblivious to me.

2. At the partly flooded convenience shop I bought a chicken ceaser wrap. The cashier seemed to clear a bonus of £2 from the transaction. I handed him £4, and watched as he registered £2 cash received on the till. What happened to the other £2?

3. At the petrol station - I wrote about this earlier - a queue even though there are free pumps. What are the staff doing? From the corner of my eye I observe a manager emerge from the nearby supermarket. He takes a closer look, albeit at long distance, at the queue and scuttles back inside the supermarket. What do the staff do? Nothing!

I think the petrol stations are designed to work without supervision. When I finally make it inside to pay the two chuckling cashiers decide to swap tills while us customers wait.

Going to Tesco gets you in such a bad mood! Grrrrrrr......

They have all being banging on about this outrageous practice, and asking questions like,why are the savings accruing from the weak sterling/euro exchange rate not being passed on by the likes of Tesco.

There has been so much written it has caused Brian Cowen, Taoiseach, to call members of the National Consumer Association "f*#kers", indeed this must be a serious issue.

As the newspapers ask the stores to explain, what are they doing?, exactly the same thing. I buy a newspaper almost everyday, and on Sunday this extends to 2 or 3. All these newspapers carry dual pricing in Euro and Stg£, and here are the prices being charged and what the should be charged if you use £.79 exchange rate.

Newspaper	€ price	£ Stg Price	€.79p exchange
The Irish Times	1.80	1.00	1.26
Sunday Independent	2.40	1.40	1.78
Sunday Business Post	2.40	1.70	2.15
Sunday Tribune	2.50	1.65	2.09

I buy 5 Irish Times and 1 each of the Sunday Newspapers it would cost you €16.30 for the week, this would be £9.75 and this translated at .79p it should cost me an Euro equivalent of €12.32. The difference is €3.98 , which means that the above Irish Newspapers are, on average are 32.30% more expensive in Ireland than in the UK eventhough they are produced here.

So if the newspapers want to be the consumer advocate should'nt they get their own house in order first? and start explaining why they are'nt practising what they preach.

It was always a place where I disliked buying books primarily due to the "langers" that worked behind the counter. Many if not all were college graduates who had the ambition and drive to work in a shop,albeit a book shop. They always looked unkept and could'nt resist having a peek at what you were reading and then snootingly packing then into a bag before handing them back to you.

On Tuesday I was in Dublin and decided to call in to the Waterstones shop on Dawson Street, as I had never paid a visit. On entering at approximately 11am I was overcome with a strong smell, I said "whats that". It was so powerful it stopped me in my tracks, I looked around and realised that it was the smell of vegetable soup, thats right vegetable soup, wafting in the air from the restaurant on the second floor.

Christ it was terrible, the pong filled the air so preventing you from having a good browse. Additionally would'nt you think that due to the "higher intellect" of its staff they could have cooked a nicer smelling soup, for example tomato and basil.

Why cant we live in a world where book shops sells books, coffee shops sells coffee, and cafes sells soup.

Needless to say I did'nt stay very long and I certainly w'ont be back

          I work as shop manager in a small, independant retail outlet. One of the things I hate most about working in this place is customers spending next to nothing and then having the cheek to ask for discount!

          As a small, independant retail outlet you are striving to keep the business going all the time. There is always a bigger shop offering cheaper prices then you right around the corner. You pride yourself on being able to offer the best competative prices and a more personal service then the cooperate drones nearby, but the average joe-public seems not only to be totally unimpressed with your service but he tries to push you into giving him discount for nothing.

          For example- a customer puts two £1 items and one £2 item onto the counter. "That's only £4 please" you say to him, and so it is. It's not £868.93 or £60, it's a petty 400p. The customer hands me £3 in change. "Hang on!" I say, "that's only £3, the total is £4 please". The customer pulls a smug grin; "How much for cash?" he says. There is a pause for a couple of seconds whilst I give him a chance to consider that he just asked me to discount three items adding to a grand total of £4.00. "It's still £4.00" I point out in a dead serious tone. "Are you sure?" he says. "Yes" I say. "Sure?" he tries once more. "Yes I am" I say. The smug git turns to his wife next to him and says "Didn't go to the same school as us did he". "No I didn't" I say with a smile, whilst thinking "no mate, in the school I went to they taught us how to add up to 4"...

         This happens more and more frequently all the time. I can see why in our outward spiraling economy you might be tempted to ask for a discount- we would all like to get things for a little less. We are actually happy to offer discount, as long as the customer is after enough of the same item from our shop to get a discount from our suppliers. We are not happy to offer discount to annoying cheapskates who are trying to get the price of fish reduced for nothing whatsoever. Do you barter with your local supermarket over the price of a tin of beans? No? Why not? They not only have a much larger profit margin then our small independants but they probably make several billion pounds more then we do every year. If they don't offer discount why would we?

          My point? Don't ask for discount unless you definately think you might deserve it. Less then 10 items of less then £3.00 each- not worth discount. We have customers spend £200 and expect no discount at all, what makes you so bloody different?

Take for example a cup of coffee, there are a number of places that you can buy a cup of coffee where I live, additionally there are as many prices but generally they range from €1.50 to €1.95 a cup.

The only exception is the coffee shop selling "Fair Trade" coffee at €2.95 a cup.

Why is the coffee from the Fair Trade coffee shop so much more expensive?. I understand and appreciate that the growers are, or at least are meant to get, a better price for their coffee. You can be assured that they are not getting the 50% premium that you and I are being charged.

Are you meant to feel better about yourself when you buy free trade coffee?, I certainly d'ont , I feel ripped off.

Next time you are in the supermarket look for the "Fair Trade" section, most of the multiples have them, and carry out a simple comparision purely on price. Then ask yourself are you willing to pay that much extra? I know I'm not.

One final thing what have penguins got to do with "Fair Trade" ?

So there you have it, the credit crunch is as a result of the Banks lending money to people that could'nt afford to repay,lying about the value of these "assets" and hoodwinking some into thinking that they could afford bigger mortgages by giving them "discounted introductionary offers".

Unlike other businesses that are usually allowed to go bust when they make a bollocks of their business, banks are given assistance,( Northern Rock and Bear Sterns), to fix the problem and preserve their vast profits by Governments and Central Banks, only yesterday the Bank of England announced its making £50bn available to UK Banks to assist in increasing liquidity as banks now are'nt lending to each other, because they c'ant trust each other.

Who will end up paying for all this, you and me in the form of higher interest rates, lower returns on stock markets, lower house valuation the list goes on

Really really annoying shit

Their eco-marketing literature says we’ll see them work with "customers .... to combat climate change". As part of the plan they’re introducing a 5p charge for plastic bags from the 6th of May, to help reduce the amount sent to landfill. Until then, every shopper will get a free bag for life with their food purchases.

I got one yesterday. It was handed to me, neatly folded, after I finished packing my purchases into the environmentally damaging plastic.

Pardon me for stating the "bleedin" obvious – but shouldn’t the free bag be handed out first – are you really serious about Plan A, or is this just more marketing to mug the consumer?

Aer Lingus "copped on " to this problem after 2 hours and after some 100 people had "availed" of this offer, and paid with their credit cards, which would appear to satisfy the law of contract, but no! Aer Lingus cancelled all of these peoples bookings by sending them an email and "inviting them to re-book".

I heard Enda Corneille, Director, no less, of Corporate Affairs speak on Morning Ireland and saying something to the effect that people should have realised it was a honest mistake, I almost threw the radio out the window.

I heard recently of someone making their way back from a trip and the return date was incorrect on the piece of paper.The return date was entered incorrectly by the person, a honest mistake, but that person had to pay €400 to get home, and Aer Lingus's attitude was " its your fault you pay for it".

So when Aer Lingus makes a mistake, its our fault for not realising that the price could'nt be correct, when we make a mistake again its our fault. One would begin to wonder if you can trust anything that would appear on the website by way of prices.

If Aer Lingus are allowed to get away with this what is stopping them from changing the price of flights after you have paid for them?, I know that sounds silly but were are the customers rights here?. More importantly due to the advent of internet shopping, is the law of contract no longer valid? from this situation it would appear so.

I cant believe that they did'nt simply say "right we f*#ked up let the people go for the fiver", they could have actually used it for good marketing, I know thats an oxymoron,but no,they came out with a defense that frankly in the same class as "the dog ate my homework".

At Cafe Rouge, about five minutes from Brighton's seafront, early on Saturday evening, people were being turned away because there were no tables.

They were lucky.

This would have been anything but a treat.

The service at Cafe Rouge was so bad I think it is the first restaurant I ever walked out of without leaving a tip.

We waited an hour for the Salade de al mer, a main course which, unbelievably, was smaller than the side salad. Is it a main course, or have we been mugged and served a starter portion?

There is no one to ask. We can’t even order another drink as there is no service. Not once did anyone visit the table to see how things were.

Having waited twenty minutes for a coffee I complained about the children’s meal. There was no banana. The waiter didn’t seem to understand.

I cancelled the coffee. Just bring me the bill, I hissed.

People were still being turned away. Not because the place was so busy, but because the service was so abysmal.

Outside I look back, take out my camera and photograph the facade. I make a mental note: never return, dissuade anyone from going.