Lisa and I are due at Amelie's school in half an hour for our first ever parents' evening. We've been given ten minutes to grill - and be grilled by - her teacher, so Lisa's preparing a list of questions and I'm wondering what we can use as a bribe.

But while Lisa fits a hidden camera into a ten-gallon hat, and mikes herself up in case of trouble, I feel I should write the final brief chapter in our long-running Asda saga.

Keen shoppers will remember that we left the story last week with our groceries delivered and a promise from Asda to refund half our bill. Well the good news is that they did a lot better than that. I checked my credit card account on Thursday to discover that they'd refunded the total cost of our shopping.

That's the good news. The bad news is that I then checked my debit card account to find that they still hadn't refunded the cost of the original, undelivered, and subsequently cancelled order. So although I wasn't down on the deal, I wasn't actually up either.

I waited another day, but when the money still hadn't appeared on Friday, I rang India for (if you're counting) the 10th time in eight days. The nice lady on the phone checked my account and assured me that Asda had never actually taken that money, they'd only 'reserved' it. Apparently when they authorise your card, that money is ring-fenced but not taken, and there can be a delay before the funds are released back to your account.

She suggested that if there's a problem, then it's my bank which is at fault, not Asda, although as I don't bank with RBS, that didn't seem very likely. I did nothing until Monday of this week, but when I still wasn't in receipt of my money by mid-afternoon, I phoned the debit card hotline. They seemed to suggest that it might be Asda's fault that the funds were still marked as reserved, so I've no idea what the truth is, but ultimately it didn't matter. They were able to release them for me, and when I checked my account yesterday, the money had been returned.

So all's well that ends well, and I'm happy with the outcome. Although when it came to getting the shopping this weekend, I drove down to the marina in person.

Well, in the words of Haley Joel Osment, "I see dead people". Although in this case, it's the Asda delivery man. Just when I was beginning to think he didn't exist, a nice chap from Asda turned up at 8 o'clock last night with a trolley load of groceries. I didn't know whether to kiss him or punch him. My wife feels the same about me sometimes.

Lisa had phoned the store manager at lunchtime, who assured us the order would be arriving that evening, and promised us 50% off the bill. Which made me wish I'd ordered more. We haven't actually received that refund yet, so I'll believe it when I see it, but if it does materialise, then I suppose that's a reasonable end to the story. Asda haven't exactly inspired me with their ability to sort out a problem, and a half-price delivery doesn't quite make four days of frustration worthwhile, but it's enough to placate me for now.

To be honest though, we were lucky to get the order at all yesterday. I'd paid for it with my credit card this time, and with immaculate timing, I had a phone call from Barclaycard at 10am yesterday, to say they'd put a temporary stop on my card due to suspicious transactions. Apparently I lead such a dull, predictable life, that the moment I shop in three different towns, the fraud squad swing into action.

Personally I blame the kids. Amelie also likes to swing into action, but in her case it's with a Wii controller, so whilst in Haywards Heath last Wednesday, I bought her a couple of second-hand games. Unfortunately, I generally only use my credit card for paying bills, taxes and debts to society, so the moment Barclaycard spotted me having fun, they put my card on high alert. It meant that when I turned up in Hastings three days later and bought a pair of shoes, they knew there was something wrong. Clearly my card had been stolen by someone with too much leisure time and an impulsive love of footwear. It's a miracle they didn't arrest Lisa.

In reality, I'd spent my hard earned credit on these...

That's Toby standing on his own two feet in the Hastings branch of Clarks. After months of creeping and crawling, he's made great strides in the past few days, and is now spending a lot of time casually strolling around the flat as if he owns the place. So we thought it was about time he had a pair of shoes.

I think the standard of Clarks' photography has improved slightly since they snapped Lisa's cleavage four years ago. This time you can barely see my man boobs. Toby looks less like a zombie too. His sister had size 5H feet at this age, whereas he's only 4½G, so while she was an elephant, he's more of a pygmy hippo.

Unfortunately the one thing which hasn't improved over time is Clarks' prices. Frankly I think the main reason Barclaycard queried the purchase is because they couldn't believe anyone could spend that much in a shoe shop. Pound for pound, I think they're more expensive than gold.

So the result of all that is twofold: Toby will be wearing those shoes until he's three, and from now on, we're only shopping in Lidl.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "Phil, Asda might have delivered nothing but shoddy treatment and poor customer service for more than 72 hours, but now that your three-day passage to India is finally over, and you've reluctantly accepted your rescheduled Sunday evening grocery order, how does it feel to finally have your shopping?"

Well I wouldn't know. Because it still isn't here. In fact, I'm beginning to think the Asda delivery man is a bit like Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense.

We stayed at my parents' on Saturday night to celebrate my Dad's birthday yesterday, and with the shopping rebooked for 7-9pm, we were planning to leave there around mid afternoon, coast back along the coast road, and then feast on three-day-old groceries. Unfortunately that all changed at about 11am. I was just getting into my car to take Amelie to the nearest branch of Poundstretcher, when my mobile bleeped. It was a text message from Asda. And it said this:

"Delivery order XXXXXXX8675 has been cancelled due to your payment being declined. Please call us by 10:30pm to rebook for a different day."

Funnily enough, I didn't wait until 10:30pm. To Amelie's displeasure, I marched straight back into the house and phoned India there and then. To cut a long, angry and frustrating story short, the explanation is this:

Asda don't authorise your payment card until the day of your delivery, just before they pick your order. I paid for our original order with my debit card, which had about £200 of available funds on it. Our order was for about £115.

Asda took that payment on Thursday, when the order was supposed to be delivered. Obviously it wasn't delivered, but they didn't cancel it until Friday evening when the shopping was rebooked. And by Sunday they still hadn't processed that refund.

So on Sunday morning, they attempted to charge my debit card again for the 'new' order (which was actually the same order rebooked), but having failed to refund my money from the order they hadn't bothered to deliver, there wasn't enough money in the account to cover it. So the payment failed.

In addition to that debit card, I have a credit card registered on my Asda account, so you'd think that if the first card fails, they might use the second one. At the very least, you'd expect them to phone and ask what I want them to do. But no. If the first card fails, they just cancel the order and send you a text.

I spoke to another lady in India, and like her seven predecessors, she was unable to do anything. Despite the entire situation being wholly their fault, she said there was no way they could deliver our shopping on Sunday. Once an order's been cancelled, it has to be rebooked, and the earliest that any order can be rebooked is the following day.

I pointed out, calmly, and with only slightly murderous intentions, that this order was already three days late, and had now been cancelled PRECISELY BECAUSE THEY'D CHARGED ME FOR AN ORDER I HADN'T RECEIVED, but apparently there was nothing she could do. And nothing her supervisor could do. Or their manager either. In fact, I suspect that had I asked everyone on the Indian subcontinent, I'd have failed to find anyone with enough power to act.

So they rebooked our order for this evening. And while I stomped off to Poundstretcher with Amelie, Lisa phoned the Brighton Marina branch of Asda and demanded to speak to the manager.

She doesn't work Sundays. But they said she'd phone us back in the morning.

She hasn't.

And it gets worse. When I called India on Friday night, the chap gave us a £10 e-voucher as some kind of compensation. That was knocked off our order when it was rebooked for Sunday. Unfortunately, when we got home last night, and I logged into my Asda account, I discovered that because they'd cancelled that order, the e-voucher had been cancelled along with it, and they were now charging us ten pounds more for exactly the same order.

You have to laugh. Unfortunately I can't.

At 8:45pm last night, I decided to make our seventh call to the Indian branch of Asda customer services. Despite having had three hours to dial the number, the lady from the Brighton Marina branch didn't appear to have phoned them at all. Unless they've all gone down with amnesia. So I'm beginning to think she was some kind of charlatan, or possibly a passing customer who picked up the phone and was winding us up. I have visions of all the staff down at our local Asda hiding behind the deli counter every time the phone rings, and pretending there's nobody in.

Fortunately, the man I spoke to in India was very nice, and told me that he won't rest until we get some answers. Although he was about to go home for the day, so he said we'd have to wait until today. In the meantime he gave us £10 (which is not quite as "significant" as I'd imagined) and agreed to rebook our order. Unfortunately they couldn't do Saturday morning as requested, so it's rescheduled for Sunday evening. Which will make it just over three days late.

The chap told me that he starts work today at 1:30pm and that he would personally find out what's been happening and call us back. Unfortunately we're going to be out this afternoon. But let's face it, they've promised to call us about a dozen times, and so far, the phone call score is 8-1 in our favour. So I don't think we'll miss much.

As it happens, we're heading over to my parents' house for the weekend. If he can last another day, my Dad will reach the significant milestone of three-quarters-of-a-century tomorrow, so we're giving him the gift of our presence. Our actual gift is much cheaper.

In the meantime, here's a short public information film which explains why our day out in Milton Keynes earlier this month didn't start until 2pm, and why we're unlikely to be sharing lunch today with my parents...


We'll still arrive before our shopping though.

Today marked the end of National Anti-Bullying Week (I didn't find that link myself, I forced a geeky kid to let me copy it), so to mark the occasion, everyone at Amelie's school had to go in wearing something blue. Presumably to represent the sadness of the persecuted child. Or maybe so that the teachers could all wear jeans.

Either way, the timing was very appropriate as I currently feel like smashing someone's face into the pavement and demanding that they give me all their money. Although in my case, the person is Asda. And I don't want all their money. I just want enough to compensate me for the twenty-four hours I've spent on the phone to India, trying to find out where my shopping is.

I ordered all our groceries online this week, and booked it to be delivered from Asda yesterday evening between 6pm and 8pm. Having collected Lisa and the kids from her Mum's on my way back from Burgess Hill, we got home at 5:45pm, and were in all evening.

By 8pm, the shopping hadn't arrived, and we'd had no calls on the landline or my mobile. Fortunately, I'm a patient sort of person, so I gave them a bit of leeway, and waited until 8:45pm before phoning customer services and speaking to a very nice lady on the subcontinent. She informed me that our shopping was on the van, which was obviously good news. Unfortunately she didn't know where the van was. So she said she'd ask her supervisor for permission to phone the store.

I was put on hold for five minutes, which I spent pondering why Asda customer service assistants need permission to telephone a branch of Asda, but when the lady returned, she told me that she couldn't find any managers available, and therefore couldn't make the call. She did, however, inform me that my shopping should be somewhere between the Brighton Marina store and my flat. In return, I informed her that that's about a four minute drive and I could have done it in the time I'd been on hold, but she didn't have an answer for that. Instead she advised me to phone back in fifteen minutes.

I gave them twenty. And this time I spoke to a young Indian man who asked me if I was having a good day, and then put me on hold while he attempted to find a manager who could authorise a call to the store. To my surprise, he found one, and he then put me on hold again while he made the call. Ten minutes later he returned to tell me that he'd rung the number a dozen times and they weren't answering the phone. He advised me to phone back in the morning if the shopping hadn't arrived.

Needless to say, it hadn't. And neither had any kind of courtesy call. So I phoned Asda customer services at 8:15am this morning, and spoke to a third member of the Indian call centre team. She agreed that this was completely unacceptable, and said she'd give me a voucher for free delivery on my next order. I pointed out that I've already paid for three months worth of deliveries up front. She said "Oh...". And then offered me £5 instead.

In the meantime, she said she'd get onto the store immediately and tell them to phone us straight back. That was at 8:20am. I was expecting a call by eight-thirty. I took Amelie to school at 8:40. And at 11am, Lisa e-mailed me at work to say they still hadn't phoned us back.

By lunchtime we'd still heard nothing, so Lisa made the first of her three calls to India today. The people she spoke to told her that they'd phoned the Brighton Marina branch of Asda on numerous occasions, spoken to various people, and left messages for someone to call us, and they couldn't understand why no one had. Neither us, nor anyone in India had been given any reason for our shopping not being delivered, and they seemed powerless to do anything.

So at 5:45pm today, almost twenty-four hours after our chosen delivery time, and with Lisa on the verge of requiring blood pressure medication, she demanded that India give her the number of the Brighton store manager, so that we could ring him or her direct. They agreed, and Lisa got straight through.

The lady she spoke to denied all knowledge of any phone calls, and claimed that no one had asked her to call us. She also had no explanation as to why our shopping hadn't been delivered. Until, that is, she suddenly (and mysteriously) asked if she could phone us back for no apparent reason. When she did, ten minutes later, she'd managed to formulate a questionable story about the van driver getting a puncture. Lisa asked her why he hadn't phoned us on his mobile, but she didn't know. She couldn't explain why no one had subsequently phoned us either, but she did say that she thought the people in India should have done. Which was odd, as we'd spoken to six of them, and none of them knew anything about it. Although I suppose India's a big place, and they're probably all on their way to Mars.

Oddly, despite our shopping having been on the van when it got a puncture, no one seemed to know where it was now, and when Lisa asked when it will be delivered, the lady said it will have to be rebooked. So Lisa told her we want it tonight. She said it can't be today, and she can't rebook it herself - we have to do that via India. By this point, Lisa was on the verge of screaming, so she handed the phone to me.

I spoke to the lady and she assured me that the moment she'd finished talking to me, she would phone India and tell them to call me straight back to rebook the delivery. She would then sort out some "significant" compensation. I said "And they'll definitely call me this evening?". She said yes, it would be almost immediate.

That was just after 6pm. It's now 8:20pm and we've heard nothing. I don't know whether to make our seventh call to India, our second call to Brighton, or just phone Tesco and tell them we'll be shopping with them in future.