AS a rule, I don't like causing a fuss in shops, but driving back to the superstore I was able to work myself into quite a paddy, ready to give them a right going-over.

The more I thought about it, the crosser I got. Two hundred quid for a bike, I haven't had it five minutes and the pedals are falling off.

Receipt in my back pocket, I park outside the store and haul the bike out of the boot. The anger is just simmering nicely, and I'm ready to demolish the first stroppy store assistant who gets in my way.

And then I get stuck in the automatic turnstile at the entrance.

Too late, I realise that I should have wheeled the bike under a barrier to one side of the entrance and collected it after I'd been through the revolving gate. But owing to the red mist of fury I'd been able to whip up, I had gone for the more dramatic entrance... a Rambo-like lunge at the turnstile, trying - and just failing - to lift the bike over the top.

The handlebars became entangled in the mechanism, which only turns in one direction, and under the curious and amused gaze of the store assistants I had come to berate, my only means of unlocking what had become something like a very tricky Chinese puzzle was to do a giant Basil Fawlty-type step, climbing right over the top of the gate by grabbing my left trouser leg with my right hand and heaving it into the air.

I looked, and felt, a complete idiot and could have done myself a very unpleasant injury to boot. Every ounce of aggression and determination gone, I went meekly to the cycle counter. A lamb to the slaughter.

"Excuse me, sorry to trouble you, but I'm afraid I've got a problem with my bike. I've got the receipt."

Stern looks from the staff.

"Yes," I babble, "it is an unusual thing to happen but the pedals keep falling off. I haven't been rough with it. See, they are loose, aren't they? No, I don't mind if you can't do anything about it for at least a week and it won't be a problem at all if I have to come back. Thank you for your help."

This is the real me talking, of course. I simply am not cut out to stand in a shop, raise my voice and complain that I just haven't got what I paid good money for. And the trouble is that this seems to be happening more and more. Either I'm distinctly unlucky, or quality standards are falling.

It's so exciting to take home something from the shops - a big, heavy package, full of promise. And it's so bitterly disappointing to unpack it, work your way through the instructions and find that it's already broken.

You stuff it all back in the box, flog back to the shop... where they don't give you another one - or your money back - but insist that it will have to be sent off for repair. Whether they're entitled by law to do this, I haven't a clue. But as I'm not made of the right stuff and find it impossible to stand my ground and demand instant satisfaction, I accept meekly that my new purchase will have to be sent away to some distant head office and I'm certainly not going to see it again for ages.

You know that there lies ahead a series of hopeless, frustrating phone calls and return visits to the store, when you will never manage to see the same person on two different occasions.

You'll be told your item will be back on Thursday next week, or that it has been sent to the East Wittering branch by mistake. They may even lose their record of your purchase and the manager will always be on holiday.

And you'll hear yourself saying "thank you" as you trudge out disconsolately.