When was nine years old I collected the World Cup soccer stickers for the 1970 World cup in Mexico city.

I remember the time like it was yesterday . You got a half a dozen player cards with photo's and stats and a flat block of chewing gum.

The surprise was in unwrapping the packaging and seeing if there was a Pele or Rivelino inside!, the gum was incidental.

After months of collecting I picked up the soccer album which came free in the shop and stuck all the players in their places.

I was short loads or had doubles or trebles of other. Much of the fun of the cards was swapping and trading them with friends, in a constant effort to complete your collection.

Anyway, being incomplete my mother and I sat on the floor and wrote down all the numbers of the missing players on sheets of paper and posted them to the address in London.

It much have taken the woman forever. Back in those days its funny how I never imagined at the time that my parents were ever young, but now when I look back I realise my mother was only 33 years old when we collected those soccer cards, a kid herself really.

Anyway, we sent the required post and packaging and a couple of weeks later the little parcel arrived, with every single missing player for my album inside.

I was never so excited in all my life, a full complete 1970 World cup sticker album no less… until years later when some bum stole Pele from the Brazil page and left my prize possession incomplete, not to mention knocking a couple of zero's off its antique value 38 years later. I still have that album, in pristine condition. I mention this only because I recently collected two dozen tokens for the Daily Mail DVD classic movie collection, one coupon per newspaper over a month or so.

I Sent them, along with a cheque, to the required Dublin address. And waited. And waited. Two and a half months later I went to the trouble of tracking down the email of the department in question, London, and sent an enquiring polite letter wondering how my DVD collection was doing, only to be told in so many words to sod off, we have no record , goodbye.

Is this a way to get people to innocently buy newspapers they would otherwise not read? Am I to believe that the Daily Mail promises gifts to entice you to buy their paper only to bin the tokens once you send them? I hope not.

I hope that it is no more than a typical example of how little the customer matters these days. 38 years ago my mammy would have given them a piece of her mind.