Airline flop

I WONDER if your readers have been as irritated as I have been recently when, on arriving at Tesco, have discovered that their airline is not working?

This has happened on several occasions in the past four or five weeks. In my view this is extremely poor customer service. We are all human and the temptation on such occasions is to assume our tyres are OK and hope for the best. An accident could easily be the result.

When I challenged the store manager recently he admitted the airline had indeed been out of order recently and was not, in fact, 'fit for purpose', but that the engineers had been called.

As there are 12 pumps at Tesco I wondered why there could not be two or three airlines available so that, in the event of one not working, there would always be back-up. The answer to this was that the council would not allow them to take up any more parking spaces - can this be true?

I would like to hear from the council on this matter. The manager then informed me that he was on the case but could not outline any strategy that might help resolve the problem.

Sadly, this appears to follow the classic monopoly situation. Now that the mighty Tesco has priced out every other petrol retailer in Saffron Walden (bar one) it seems that they don't care about customer service (and also can start to charge what they like for petrol!).

I would urge other customers in my situation to complain to the store manager before a nasty accident happens.

Personally, I think garages should be heavily fined if they fail to supply the facilities we have the right to expect or banned from trading until customers have access to air and water. Now, that might produce some results!

Bruce Milne

Saffron Walden