Gavin Montgomery

The booking experience was relatively hassle free but as you're going through the process you will be offered the opportunity to purchase "cancel insurance" for a dollar day. At the very bottom of the page, just under the credit card statement, you will find a reassuring statement that they understand that "plans can change" and you will be able to cancel free of charge up to the time of your reservation. In other words, the "cancel insurance" is just a little upcharge, a stupidity tax if you like, because customers are dumb. It's a very standard business practice but still insulting and dishonest. I wish companies wouldn't do things like this as it makes it so hard to trust.

A relative ordered a product from T2tea on-line as a present for my girlfriend and me. It was apparently distributed from the UK by a company called Great Bear using the parcel carrier DPD but never arrived. DPD claim that T2tea didn't fill in the customs forms properly but would deliver it if I agreed to take on additional charges. Great Bear could only be contact by email... which they didn't respond to. T2tea finally responded to a Facebook message with a cheery suggestion that I email an account that I'd already tried contact with no response. So, no communication, no delivery, no interest in serving their customers, no integrity and no accountability. Just a bloody useless organisation wasting everybodies time with their excrable and embarassing service.

As a hilarious follow-up, after becoming the first person to rate and review the company I ticked the box to let the company know about my review. I checked back the next morning and found the average rating had risen from the one-star I had given to 6.1, which strongly suggests that T2tea gave itself a five-star rating. Hilarious. I did mention the lack of integrity, didn't I?

I ordered a product distributed by Great Bear more than two weeks ago. Sadly, they chose to use a delivery company called DPD which, of course, has failed to do its job. DPD doesn't have a call centre or any other support for customers, just a bogus on-line form which generates an email that says that they will look into your concern and get back to you. They don't. Great Bear is similarly hard to get hold of and don't respond to customer emails either. All of which means that I have no idea when or if the product I've already been charged for will ever be delivered and no obvious way of querying this failure. Having had no response to my queries, I've reported both business to Trading Standards and am now considering other options. There are so many other things I could be doing with my time. I don't know why any company would use DPD. Their Trust Pilot rating should be a sufficient red flag.

I have been waiting for a parcel for more than two weeks now. According to DPD's tracking app it's in the ether somewhere. I've tried contacting the company on several occasions - there are no complaint lines or telephone numbers, just a very complicated form which generates an email that says that somebody will get back to me. They never do. This is not the first time I've had this problem with them and, sadly, it's unlikely to be the last because on-line retailers insist on using them rather than our far more effective postal service. I am now asking IMRG and BritORA to ask their members to use alternative parcel services because I am so frustrated with being ignored and treated like a cipher. Hopefully we can persuade retailers that it's in their best interests to use a service that doesn't treat their customers like dirt.

Adding insult to injury, DPD have just sent me a bill out of the blue for a product that I didn't order and which they didn't deliver to me. So, by their bizarre logic, some random can send me a product and they can charge me for not delivering it. A truly diabolical, hopelessly disorganized, woefully inept and quite possibly fraudulent business. Utterly shameful. I can't understand why anybody who choose DPD to represent their brand or deliver their products to customers. You'd have to be insane.

Trustpilot is extremely useful for shaming companies that behave badly into doing the right thing. I've found that businesses are far quicker to respond when you go after them on social media, and all too willing to ignore you if you don't. You'd think that they'd learn that the best defence is to robustly respond to upset customers and resolve the situation before they go public.

My only complaint about trustpilot is that it sends far too many notifications and there doesn't seem to be an option to switch off updates notifying that reviews have been published or responded to. A single posting generated 6 emails, which is 6 more than I wanted or needed.

I booked a car with Holiday Autos last month and was notified that they would charge a small management fee to my credit card but nothing more. Scroll forward 30 days and I have found a far more substantial, completely inexplicable charge to my account. The company has no reasonable explanation of that - they just felt like it, I guess - and still have the cheek to charge a management fee after I cancelled. Life is just too short to deal with idiots like this. They're going to rip you off, they're going to waste your time, don't use them.


-- Oddly, I cannot reply to the reply below. While I am completely aware of the fact that I cancelled the booking, what has not been explained is why money was charged to my credit card without my permission and in direct breach of my agreement with Holiday Autos. Nor can I see any reason why I should pay a company that breached the agreement between us and behaved in this way a CHF 55 cancellation fee. It strikes me that as Holiday Autos broke our agreement and has behaved in a particularly skeevy and unacceptable manner, they should be compensating me for my lost time and effort rather than rewarding their own dishonesty by looting my wallet. I stand by my view that this is a disgraceful and disreputable business and I believe the alacrity with which they are defending themselves on line, and the deceitful and disingenuous response below which happily ignores the fact that I cancelled because of their misconduct, shows that they are too used to dealing with such criticism of their behaviour.

My rental Goldcar went reasonably well except for the one hour queue to pick up the car from Malaga airport and some slightly sneaky fees. They failed to mention that they'd be converting my payment to a non-euro exchange rate at an unfavourable rate and charging a 2% conversion fee and I was given the choice of paying extra for insurance or handing over a far larger deposit than is the norm for the rental industry, both of which left a bad taste in the mouth. It's a sad reality that the car rental industry, like almost every other aspect of the auto industry, is given to small underhand tricks to extort extra fees from customers and left a slightly sour taste in the mouth during what was an otherwise reasonably positive experience.