WHAT has happened to customer service and good old fashioned honesty? I'm only in my mid-40s but even I can remember a time when people said please and thank

WHAT has happened to customer service and good old fashioned honesty? I'm only in my mid-40s but even I can remember a time when people said please and thank you, gave up their seat for pensioners on the bus, and businesses who accepted a contract, either verbal or written, honoured that agreement. A recent experience brings this to mind. Picture in your mind a Saturday night, an invitation to a close friend's 50th birthday party, it's a sit down meal in a restaurant, perhaps a couple of hundred people in the room, you fancy having a drink so in the spirit of Christmas decide not to drive and order a taxi. You realise the taxi firm is going to be busy so you pre-book some two hours before you are ready to leave the house. We're ready five minutes before the taxi is due, at 7.15pm. We wait, and wait, until 7.30pm arrives and still no taxi so I telephone the taxi company to enquire of the driver's whereabouts. "Sorry we're running 10 to 15 minutes late, he should be with your shortly." At 7.40pm I ring the taxi firm again only to be told "he's in a silver Berlingo and he should be with you any minute". I don't know about you but I couldn't careless if he turned up with a Trapnell's donkey and a fire engine as long as he gets me there in a reasonable time. In a state of mild annoyance I get the car and drive to the restaurant.My wife and I arrive at the restaurant acquire a drink, and thanks to the taxi firm I'm reduced to drink cola, as I now have the car with me. We walk across the dance floor as a couple of hundred pairs of eyes enquire what we are doing daring to come in this late. The meal turns out to be exceedingly poor but at least I could drown it with a drink or two. Oh! I can't. I've got the car!After all this stress and thanks to the taxi firm who couldn't give a monkey's about its customers, I've taken to smoking again after six months, so when I've ceased to become a burden on the NHS and my family are standing by my premature gravesite they can all say thanks to the taxi firm. To rub salt into the wound, all they could say when I phoned to complain and to cancel the return journey was "Uh! Ok!"KEVIN HEARN - Marindin Drive, Weston