A READER CALLED Joe wonders if the use of the word “express” in the title of his local Tesco on the Lower Rathmines Road is intended to be ironic.

“It is not a great shop to visit if you want to get in and out quickly,” he writes. “They have two self-service cash registers which have not been working properly since the shop opened several months ago and the staff have a knack of vanishing, so there is nobody operating the other two cash registers.”

He sent an email about the problem to Tesco head office some weeks ago and got a response saying his problem had been relayed to the “local management” but it just became worse.

“On my last visit when the self-service registers were broken, I said to a staff member: ‘These are the worst cash registers in Dublin’. He asked me in a sarcastic tone of voice: ‘The worst in all of Dublin?’ I said, ‘Yes’, and told him I had sent emails to Tesco head office. He did not seem to be bothered.”

Joe says there is a more efficient Late Shopper convenience store down the street which will now get his business. “It is interesting that in a recession Tesco has such appalling customer service standards.”