It's probably due to the amount of time I've spent in the States this year but I seem to be more and more incensed by the crap customer service that companies in the UK seem to think that their customers should accept. I may have blogged about it once or twice or, as Guiseppe Sollazzo commented on Twitter recently "your blog today looks like a customers' rights advocate".

To be fair, it's not just me; there are other people I know who are equally strident about this, be it directed at the Apple Store or O2. Most of the time, the companies concerned just ignore complaints but sometimes, they try harder and given my recent experience with Avis at Heathrow, trying harder is rather apt.

Last week I was unfortunate enough to hire a rental car from Avis at Heathrow. The italics are important here as they point to where the problem seems to lie.

I travel quite a lot for work and so it's fair to say I rent a reasonable amount of cars; all of them through Avis who are the company's preferred rental supplier. After getting off a plane, the last thing you really want is to queue to get your car so I'm a member of Avis' Preferred service; this allows me to skip the queues, pick my car up and drive out of the rental garage with a wave of my driving license. It's quick, really quick; you see your name on a board which shows you which bay you need to go to, find the car, fling your suitcase in the boot and off you go.

It typically takes around 3 minutes to get my car; and Avis in the UK makes a selling point of this, proudly proclaiming "Your keys in under 3 minutes or £20".