I meant to post this earlier - I knew there was something I'd forgotten to do - maybe it deserves a home of its own anyway. Yesterday, I took the monkeys shopping to grab some new jeans and other kid paraphernalia and we dropped into Costa Coffee for a snack - small person went for the bacon roll and her face dropped when she opened it up to find this (pictured) on her plate.

Now I'm a pretty easy going kind of guy. I hardly ever complain about anything - but when it comes to the kids, I can be a little bit of a Fuhrer. Only because I don't want them to grow up thinking that getting or giving crap is acceptable. It's a slippery slope and it ain't happening on my watch.

Anyway, the last time I was shaken enough to bother complaining about something was a couple of years ago and I went off the rails a bit at how a company like that could still function in a high street these days. Maybe I'll post a copy of the letter I wrote one day, but it wasn't very nice.

Back to the bacon sandwich: I am ashamed that I actually spent some time writing this letter to them but I keep on looking at that picture and immediately feel vindicated:

Hi. I'm a frequent visitor - at least once a week - to your store in Westwood Cross and various other venues on my travels. Yesterday evening, I had my kids with me and one of them chose a bacon roll to eat. I have to be honest here, the disappointment on her face when she opened the heated roll to find the meanest single slice of wafer thin bacon in the roll was something to see and prompted the comment "Is that it?".

I took a picture of the roll if you would like to see it. I figured there was no point in complaining to the staff as these rolls probably aren't made on site, but that was basically your shot at customer satisfaction you know and you blew it.

That roll will stay with her for a long time - and with me too - as being a really mean fisted, crappy sub standard product that you provided. It's not like it was cheap either. I like Costa a lot, always have but (struggling for ways to describe this without using bad language) that bacon roll was simply shit. Could any less effort actually have been made with something so simple?

Times might be hard out there and competition fierce but screwing over long term customers - unintentionally perhaps - by providing shoddy end products isn't going to make things much better is it.

A £20 outing ruined by a single bacon roll. Is it really worth it? I can't believe I am even complaining about a bacon roll - I might even be more angry that I actually feel the need to bring myself down to this level, but at some point, you have to stand up and be counted - even if it is over a bacon roll.

According to their website, they will get back to me within seven days. Personally, if I had a complaints department, I would insist that seven minutes is pushing the level of customer service - and if you get so many complaints that seven minutes isn't long enough to deal with everything, you're getting too many complaints and you should get back in the kitchen and remember what it's like to wash dishes for a living.