Organisation was of a very high standard. Under the untiring and unstinting stewardship of chief exec Michael Green, the conference committee and the hard-working BCSC staff, plus the backstage and front-of-house personnel at Edinburgh's International Conference Centre, the whole event went with a bang.

Cutting out the expensive employment of a celebrity 'host' must have brought major economies to the council's costs and there were so many other hosts and chairpersons of this that and the other that a 'famed personality' was not missed.

They always say that if you come away from a conference with two or three good ideas, it's been worth it. I came away with one, by now, fairly well worn, but staggering, statistic. It came from catering consultant and fellow Shopping Centre columnist Jonathan Doughty, who heads up the BCSC's Customer Care Committee: "Eleven out of 15 retail staff, in a survey, did not know anything about what they were trying to sell -- but they did know what the extended warranty cost."

This column has expressed amazement over the last year or so that the BCSC has only recently taken to recognising the absolute essential retail necessity of customer service.

Customer service has been with us since the first merchant laid out his carpet on the ground and then shook the dust off it for the benefit of customers before they hunkered down. It is a crying shame that it took until the 21st century to catch on in some quarters.

Censure must go to the employers. Failure to train staff in what are the basics of retail is frankly disgusting and stupid. It ranks as a greater crime than that perpetrated by highly paid 'Human Resources Personnel' who fail to observe even common courtesy by responding to applicants for jobs.

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