We're all familiar with the scene. You're stuck on the end of the phone, to yet another call centre, you're on hold due to "significantly high call volume", you're paying premium rate for the privilege of being on hold and a disembodied voice interrupts the on hold musak to say "your call is important to us, please continue to hold".

Well, obviously not that important, because if it was that important than there'd actually be someone to answer the phone. Add into the mix that it's way outside of normal peak hours and you realise that "significantly high call volume" really means "we've only employed two people, one of them is on holiday and the other is taking their only toilet break of the day".

So far, so familiar. The curse of the non specific, applies to everyone, on hold experience. But oddly nowhere near as bad as when the non-specific, applies to everyone approach transfers to email and a company threatens to sue you if you don't renew.

This is an open letter to Andy Bond, Chief Executive of Asda and to Mike Duke, CEO of Wal-Mart. As a British citizen who travels a lot in the US I understand that the "customer service" ethos which is so prevalent in the US doesn't travel or translate particularly well in the UK. I also understand that it's almost naive to expect that since Asda was taken over by Wal-Mart in 1999 any type of US values would transfer to the UK arm. I also understand that the UK supermarket business is highly competitive and that through Asda, Wal-Mart is competing head-to-head with Tesco, Morrison's and Sainsbury's. I understand and accept all of this.

What I do not understand and what I do not accept is the sheer bloody-mindedness and rudeness of your staff, especially those of your online retailer business.

Let me explain.

As a family we tried out Asda, as their prices are extremely competitive compared to those of their competitors, so on the 19th of October we booked a delivery slot for an online shop; the order wasn't particularly large or complex but it was still in excess of £100.00. The only delivery slot available was from 8.00 PM to 10.00 PM the following day.

Think about the following three scenarios for a moment ...

Scenario One. You go to a conference. It doesn't matter where or what the topic is but you turn up because you've been invited or because you've paid to attend. Breakfast is included in the conference package. There's 400 people attending the conference but when you get to the breakfast table, there's none left because they've run out of food. When you ask the conference venue why there's no breakfast they throw up their hands and say "The company who provides our food assured us there'd be enough for 400 but only enough for 200 turned up. What can we do?".

And now Scenario Two. Same conference. Same venue. But this time there's only 200 chairs in the venue and you've got 400 people trying to cram into those chairs. It's getting pretty cozy and people are ending up standing or going home. You ask the conference venue why there's no chairs and they throw up their hands and say "The company who provides our chairs assured us there'd be enough for 400 but only enough for 200 turned up. What can we do?".

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".