Mark

I just had a 23 minute phone call with customer services about an item which arrived damaged months ago, which I emailed about immediately, several times and then phoned, and was told I would get a phone call back from the Dartford store. That did not happen so I phoned again today. They said they couldn't do anything because the Dartford store was responsible. Not as far as consumer law is concerned as I bought it from diy.com, not the Dartford store. He also said he couldn't provide a refund as it is outside the 90 day window in their refund policy. But consumer law says I have 6 months, or 6 years if I can prove the item arrived damaged, which I can as I emailed them photos the day after it arrived. He claimed he could only escalate to the store, but the store previously did not phone me back when they should have.

Note L M Electrical Spares Limited and Qualtex UK Limited are both registered at the same address on companies house (Unit 1 Denton Hall Farm Road, Denton, Manchester). They trade on ebay as lmelectrical / L.M Electrical. Do not buy from either.

They advertised some grease filters as having a grease saturation indicator, but this was not the case. I tried contacting them about this, though they initially indicated a willingness to replace, this proved to be empty words.

I was given a "24 hour Limited time offer" for Lasting Power of Attorney alongside my will for £80. But this offer was still presented to me when I visited again 4 days later.

Had the Hyderabadi spiced aubergine, Laccha paratha and Okra do Pyaza. All very nice. Think they deserve to be a bit busier than they were when I visited.

I got a text on Monday 23rd September at 08:06pm that my package would be delivered on Tuesday. Within about an hour of receiving this I rescheduled for the Wednesday as I was going to be out all day. But they ignored it and delivered on Tuesday, and didn't even bother leaving with a neighbour but left it outside in full view. Luckily my neighbour saw it and took it in.

Received a spam marketing email from them, beginning "Aware we have not yet connected", with no indication of where they got my email address.

I received another marketing email despite having opted out at least 3 times already on 20th November 2024, 2nd December 2024 and 15th April 2025. I have unsubscribed a 4rd time just now, really hoping this won't happen again.

I signed up for a free trial for whisky 52, beer52 and wine52. It was strongly implied at sign up stage that you could cancel via email (after telephone number, a link called "Or contact us" with a mail icon), but this was not the case. You are only directed to a phone number when you want to cancel. The phone call to cancel took 21 minutes and 49s, including being on hold. A bit annoying, though I knew what I was getting myself in for there.

The main reason for me leaving this negative review though is the review gathering tactics used. The person I spoke to on the phone said that I would be getting a link to leave some feedback, and this was not for a review of the product, but about her service for "brownie points for the boss". But it turned out to be a link to leave a trustpilot review, which is obviously a review of the company, and will be interpreted as such by visitors to this site. So quite a dishonest way of gathering reviews. It seems they are trained to do this - just look at the number of reviews for whisky/beer/wine52 based solely on customer service from a particular person.

I signed up for a free trial for wine 52, along with beer52 and whisky 52. It was strongly implied at sign up stage that you could cancel via email, but this was not the case. The phone call to cancel took 21 minutes and 49s, including being on hold. A bit annoying, though I knew what I was getting myself in for there.

The main reason for me leaving this negative review though is the review solicitation tactics. The person I spoke to on the phone said that I would be getting a link to leave some feedback, and this was not for a review of the product, but about her service for "brownie points for the boss". But it turned out to be a link to leave a trustpilot review, which is obviously a review of the company, and will be interpreted as such by visitors to this site. So quite a dishonest way of gathering reviews. It seems they are trained to do this - just look at the number of reviews here based solely on customer service from a particular person.

I signed up for a free trial. It was strongly implied that you could cancel via email, but this was not the case. The phone call to cancel took 21 minutes and 49s, including being on hold (that was for 3 subscriptions though). A bit annoying, though I knew what I was getting myself in for there.

The main reason for me leaving this negative review though is the review solicitation tactics. The person I spoke to on the phone said that I would be getting a link to leave some feedback, and this was not for a review of the product, but about her service for "brownie points for the boss". But it turned out to be a link to leave a trustpilot review, which is obviously a review of the company, and will be interpreted as such by visitors to this site. So quite a dishonest way of garnering reviews. It seems they are trained to do this - look at the number of reviews here about a particular customer service person.

Bit cheeky that you have to download the app and sign up to get a 2 hour delivery window. And I was informed of my 2 hour delivery window after it at started, which wasn't very useful. Would expect to be told well in advance.

Went to checkout. Saw they had automatically checked the checkbox for shipping protection by Route, for an extra £2.00. This includes "Coverage in case your package is damaged in transit, stolen, or doesn't arrive.".
But as a seller they are responsible for ensuring the goods arrive undamaged, under the Consumer Rights Act 2015. So this is a complete mis-selling. Didn't buy in the end.

Wasn't syncing to Google Fit. When I contacted support, I got generic, presumably copy pasted instructions which contained nothing more than what I had already described I had done.

Signed up for Club Avanti, promised perks included 10% off first journey. What they do not tell you until after you have signed up is that it is only valid on a return ticket, which is way, way more than 10% more than 2 singles. So of no benefit whatsoever.
Multiple technical issues with the website. It seems there is quite a low character limit to passwords, except it doesn't validate when you sign up, it just truncates it. So after I signed up my password didn't work and I had to reset multiple times before I got under the character limit.
Also, been trying many times to enter my mobile number to get sms alerts at station, but the form doesn't work and it doesn't handle the failure and show a message in the UI, I'm just staring at a loading spinner forever.
I contacted them about this. Amazingly, the contact form doesn't allow entering parenthes but it didn't tell me what character I had used was the issue, so I had to delete stuff until it worked. Mind boggling. The automated message said they will reply within 28 days, which was quite generous to themselves. 28 days later they haven't replied.
It doesn't bode well for my train journey going without any issues.

It is not possible to checkout without agreeing to save your card details for future use. There is a checkbox with the label " I agree that my Card and Billing Address combination will be saved for future purchases. *". Unless this is checked the "Contine checkout" button is disabled with a not-allowed cursor. Also, there is no corresponding information to the asterisk.
This is obviously not GDPR compliant.

Quite a frustrating experience. I reviewed trustatrader, who rather cynically tried it on and flagged my review as non-genuine or non paying, and it was removed after being scanned by automated software. The fact that I have left 150 reviews, and never failed to supply proof when required apparently counted for nothing.
After supplying documentation, my review was put back online. But then I updated the review to reflect the fact that trustatrader had flagged it as non-genuine in bad faith, which caused trustpilot's automated systems to remove it again!
My review should have been marked as verified after I supplied documentation, and it should not have been removed a 2nd time.

I bought some mango & aubergine chutney, gooseberry whole fruit jam and indian spiced lime pickle. I haven't tried the first one yet, but the spiced lime pickle and gooseberry jam are both excellent. The lime pickle is 65% limes, and has no artificial flavours or preservatives. The jam has plenty of fruit in it, and all the better for being whole gooseberries.

Update:
Trustatrader quiet cynically tried to get my review removed by flagging it as a non-genuine or non-paying experience. Even though they knew it was genuine, and the vast, vast majority of reviews here, clearly aggressively solicited, are not for a paying service.

I reported a trader to them (my only option since I hadn't got them to do any work myself) after they flyposted dozens of leaflets in an alleyway near me, which pretty much amounted to littering too as almost all of them had blown out of the fence panels were they had rather hopefully been placed, and the rest were destined to.
Trustatrader's inital response was to rather credulously swallow the trader's claim that they got a leaflet provider to distribute the leaflets. As I pointed out it is quite implausible that they paid a leaflet distributor to distribute leaflets a minute's walk from where they had just done a job.
I subsequently provided trust a trader with evidence from fix my street that they had engaged in a much wider campaign of flyposting around the area, including attaching many signs to lamp posts. This included replies form the council indicating that this was unauthorised, and therefore illegal flyposting. Trust a trader did not respond, and they have not done anything about this trader, as far as I can see.

A really well run competition. It is great to receive some sort of feedback, and I love the philosophy and the transparency of their process. I will be happy to continue entering the competition, even though I hold no real hope of winning - it still provides motivation to improve at any rate.

I reported one of the so-called influencers on Buy Me a Coffee, who recently damaged a protected area in Skye, as reported in several newspapers including thenational.scot, the International Business times and Yahoo news.
He is still listed on their site, and they have not even responded 2 weeks later.