MLH

Patisserie Valerie isn't the same standard it was a few years ago, when it felt like a real treat to go to the cafe. The cakes back then and overall experience was lovely. But now, there's not anything to offer that I can't find better in my local small business cafes. The cakes are very small - I know they had to cut back due to severe financial concerns a few years ago - but at least make them good quality. The baked cheesecake I ordered was dry on the top as though it had been sitting out for too long, and tasted like a bog standard one I could get at the supermarket. The tea wasn't nice either, and the teapot looked grotty. The staff uniform looks grotty too (wearing old jeans and t-shirts) - not smart like they did some years ago. The interior of the cafe is looking shabby. So I was really disappointed on my recent visit, after not having been there for some time. I don't feel like my money was well spent, and I won't be going again.

If I would have written this review 3 or 4 years ago I would have given Prodigi 5 stars without a doubt, but not any more.

On the whole the service is relatively easy to use and items get dispatched mostly on time, which is great. The ordering system is one of the most straightforward I’ve used from print on demand companies. I really like their annual update from their CEO – very honest about how things are going, what any issues are they are dealing with and what they hope to achieve in the future. It’s nice to get that kind of open communication from a company.

Some products are better than others. There have been a couple of products where quality issues have occurred over time, so I had to stop selling those, which was really disappointing, because they just didn’t fix it. But other ones I sell are pretty good.

There are a few reasons why I can’t justify 5 stars for Prodigi any more. In the past year or two there’s been a steady decline in some features. Considering you rely on them to print and ship to your customers, it’s really important that all aspects of the service are reliable and accurate.

My biggest complaint is their customer support, as this has really gone downhill. Before, you’d get a great response from support and quickly, usually within a few hours or same day. Now it takes longer and the responses feel very ‘stock’, and the support staff don’t seem very knowledgeable, kind of like you get when companies outsource support.

This is a problem if there’s an issue placing an order, or if there’s a problem with an existing order. Having to wait a few days (I have an example of waiting over 4 days ) for a reply and resolution means your own customer’s order is held up, and this becomes very frustrating, especially when you don’t know when you will receive a reply or what the end outcome is going to be. You can lose orders because customers expected their order in a certain time and now it’s going to take longer. That doesn’t help your business or Prodigi’s business either. This never used to happen (in my experience) . Maybe their customer base has just grown too quickly for their support team to cope with, or the quality of operations has declined so they have more support requests. Either way I wish they’d do something about it.

It would be nice if they offered support later on Friday (rather than just till 4) or even on a Saturday, so you can contact someone if there’s a technical issue placing an order on their site. But they don’t, so you’re left waiting till the following week, and then a few days because their support is so slow now.

Another thing I wish they’d improve: they introduced a status feature which is supposed to show what status the order is in (printing, quality check etc.) at first I thought this was fantastic, but I’ve found out that this isn’t accurate at all, so there’s no point it being there. It will show being ready to ship on a certain date, but then it doesn’t ship, and the date’s updated the next day to say it will ship that day etc. and so on. Not reliable.

Also some of the shipping services have changed over time and aren’t always reliable, and the info about shipping time isn’t accurate.

They don’t have up-to-date phone case models for all the types of phone cases they sell – a bit disappointing when other companies can do it.

I do hope Prodigi address these issues, and things don’t get worse, as otherwise they’re a good print company compared to some others I’ve used.

I've had more than one PC built by PC Specialist ( 2 desktops, 1 laptop) and found the service reliable and good, and would certainly recommend them.
The configurator for custom builds to add the components is easy to use (it will flag it if components don't match). The order process steps are very well explained and you are kept up-to-date by email as to the status of your PC build (it's a great feature). It's not super fast unless you purchase the build time & dispatch upgrade, but that's okay and a matter of choice. The support staff are knowledgeable and helpful. You can choose between custom builds and pre-built machines - the latter are probably better for those less tech savy.
I certainly feel confident about using them again in the future.

When this company was Vidahost the support used to be fantastic. Now, there is no support chat and no support phone number - so you can't talk to anyone in real time about issues, and it's taking a day or more to receive support ticket replies. This isn't acceptable, and many other hosting companies do offer these support services.

Their website says there's chat but there's no chat link when you go to support, only the ability to create a ticket. And no phone number on the support page.

This is a real issue when running a business. They've had a major email server issue which meant no access to emails for 3 days (as someone else has posted about here too). And then they report that it's fixed when it isn't - all my email folders are still lost with the emails in them.

The frustrating thing, apart from the time it's taking them to sort this out, is that you can't even speak or chat to someone about it to find out what's going on and how long it will take to resolve. Having to wait a day or more for a ticket response doesn't cut it when you are running a business. I'll be moving to a new provider.

Very poor seller support service!

Etsy is a nice marketplace if you want to find unique handmade items. But as a seller their support service is shocking. You are sent standard copy and paste type replies to queries that are not even applicable to your problem. It seems that they don't even bother to read the queries, just fire out some general reply. Or they just eventually ignore your support request. I don't think some support staff fully understand how their own systems work!

There are so many posts on their forum of sellers saying the same thing. Amazon and Ebay have better support services. Plus Etsy has so many different fees which get applied to sales, but really poor explanations of how these are applied in their support pages sections.

There was a recent incident where Etsy was overcharging sellers on fees. Sellers had complained in the forums and contacted support but were met with no resolution, ignored emails, brush offs, or telling sellers the fees were correct. There were so many complaints and sellers up in arms in the end they had to address it, and finally admitted they HAD been wrong and overcharged!

Another incident was a seller not getting their sales revenue deposited when it was supposed to be. The seller had to contact support numerous times and still it wasn't resolved. It was only when they posted an open letter to the CEO that they finally took notice and fixed the problem. Is that really what it takes for support to do their job there?

Support is fine if you have a general query like 'How much are the fees' where they can just send you links to support documentation, but woe betide you if you have something more serious that needs addressing - then you have an uphill battle.

If you are going to sell here beware! Double check all the fees you are being charged on each order, and that your payments go through on time.

Adobe has some of the best software out there for graphics editing and design. I think that's part of the problem - they may have become too big and too arrogant as they have a large share of this market. These large companies get too cocky and don't give a toss about real customer support because of their large share.

Although the products are good the customer service is poor. I contacted support via chat (there is NO phone support for UK customers!) . To solve the small issue I had the agent wanted to uninstall. In the process of doing so,and after assuring me my custom presets would remain all my custom presets were deleted - a different agent later said I could get them back, but his method did not work - they were gone for good, and contained items I needed.

After two hours of not being able to reinstall the software the agent, without saying anything, not letting me know what the problems were or if maybe he would get back to me and try again later, just disconnected the chat support! Yeah, just quit!! Left me there without having finished reinstalling my software or knowing if the original issue was fixed. I couldn't believe it.

This was terrible customer support. I'm paying for this product, I expect competent support to go with it. If you don't know how to solve something say so, then find out then get back to the customer.

If you need Adobe products like Photoshop for work you may have no choice but to use them. Otherwise I'd look at alternatives FIRST out there and there are free ones that have good reputations first. E.g. Gimp, Krita.