Mr John Newman

A couple of weeks before my car insurance was due for renewal, I received an online quote that clearly stated it was valid up to the expiry date. The day before the expiry, I set about going with the quote, only to find that the price had increased by around 10% (all the same details).
A series of conversations with Tesco revealed that in fact the quote was not guaranteed as the wording on it indicated.
Feeling misled, I decided to get the insurance elsewhere.

Update following Tesco response:
There is nothing to investigate - the facts are as I have described. I have already had several calls with CS & although they **eventually** agreed to honour the lower price they insisted that they were within their rights to change a price previously indicated as fixed. It's all a matter of trust.

Charge you immediately you place an order (best practice is not to charge until the order is despatched), but refunds can take a couple of weeks, often blamed on the courier........

In reply to CT's response...... at 07/06/25, still no sign of a refund despite the assurance.

10/06/25 - No further information & still no sign of a refund
11/06/25 - Refund at last arrived. So in summary.....I was charged immediately for an order i was not allowed to cancel minutes after I placed it & as instructed, I refused delivery. However, it still took 3 weeks to issue the refund. Not exactly impressive.

I raised an order by mistake and rang immediately to cancel it. However it takes 20 mins for orders to appear on their system. Called back 20 mins later to be told there is no cancellation facility.....I have to wait for delivery and then return the items. How ridiculous.
In response to CT's reply:
1) At 5pm today, Evri says they are expecting my order within 48 hours, so the story about instant despatch from the DC is nonsense. If customer services can't see an order for at least 20 mins, nor can the DC.
2) No other online retailer I have ever used has had such an inflexible cancellation policy. Amazon sets the standard.
3) I expect to see a full refund (including postage) and no charge for the return......we'll see.
What a paraphernalia for something that could have been nipped in the bud, not to mention the environmental impact of shipping to and fro unnecessarily.

They claimed they could save me £500+ p.a. on gas=electricity without knowing my consumption or the tariff I am currently on.
A complete nonsense & waste of time.

It's a shame there is no zero. Despite the pride they say they have in their standards of customer service, I have always found it appalling - polite, but appalling. To prove how bad, I have now received 2 amounts of compensation, one enforced by the Ombudsman.
They have now started using a child's version of AI, so it will only get worse. So, no, I would not recommend to friends & family.......or even my worst enemy.

The order confirmation dated 21/04 stated that my order would be despatched by 24/04, but by 30/04 had still not arrived. The response to my email query on 30/04 promised a response within 7 days & gave me a "request number". Having followed it up and still heard nothing by 10/05, I rang the CS dept. to be told my order was not "scheduled" for despatch until July!!!!. There was no mention of this on the order confirmation (nor in the original ad as far as I can recall) and it didn't stop them debiting my credit card on the day I placed the order - not illegal but certainly sharp practice - charging customers when orders are physically despatched is considered industry best practice.
No explanation for no response to my email queries
Requested a refund, would not use again.

I needed to contact the depot, but the only phone number provided is to the call centre who claimed they had no way of passing a message on. Total nonsense, as the depot had called me earlier but from an undeclared "private number". Most unhelpful.

From the Autoglass response, I now have to email someone else to repeat what I have already said. What's the point?

An online order for 4 of an item. Order accepted & payment taken almost instantly. Next day, order cancelled (by them), with no explanation, but advice the refund will take 5 days – all contained in what was obviously an off-the-shelf response.
Clearly their stock records and their inventory control process are rubbish, which I mentioned in my complaint. Their response was yet another off-the-shelf message full of clichés – it could not have sounded less sincere – and apparently the refund might take 10 days.
They clearly have no real interest in customer service and are content to just go through the motions. I for one, will as they say be voting with my feet – never again.

Having a dialogue is impossible. They are always "experiencing a higher number of phone calls than usual", or passing your secure message on to the "relevant dept" who "will be in touch shortly". Delays on the phone of up to an hour are not uncommon & the relevant dept never does message back. If you are lucky, whatever they are doing for you might be trundling on, albeit slowly, in the background, but don't expect to be kept informed of progress & don't expect any deadlines to be met. You can raise a formal complaint, but this process is just as poor as all the others - uninformative, slow & vague. Heaven help anyone who needs money out urgently as they only have one pace & the "rules" have clearly not been designed with customer service in mind.
I have honestly never come anything quite so poor.

Part of my order is long overdue and nobody has the sense to realise by now it has been lost in transit. Bad enough, but email communication with the customer service dept is a nightmare. The published address returns a server error. When you find the contact form, all you get back is a standard letter based on the topic, not specifically addressed to your issue. After trying other routes you might be lucky enough to get an email response, but sent from a no-reply address, so you cannot respond.
Why they don't just provide a single email address that allows a normal conversation is beyond me.

AK’S responses to criticisms posted here are at least consistent – their service standards are exemplary and any customer that feels otherwise is patently mistaken and only has themselves to blame. Their reaction to what I have to say here is therefore extremely predictable. I have genuinely been astonished at the attitude their anonymous, so-called “Legal Team” have taken, particularly coming from such an estimable profession. It strikes me that it is one of these organisations that insist you play by their rules and take great exception if you do not. If you do, the service would appear to be good, but God-forbid if you don’t.
Looking back, there were some ominous early warning signs when it appeared that any contact outside of what they deemed as absolutely necessary was chargeable over and above the quoted price, but at that stage I was too far down the road to do anything other than battle on.
The issue now is their unilateral decision to introduce a subscription-based club as the only means of gaining access to one’s documents, without providing a cost-free opt-out and I am not surprised to see that there are others who have found their approach and tactics unacceptable, bordering on exploitative. New customers presumably are told about these new costs and have the option to go elsewhere if they wish, but of course existing customers do not. One might reasonably regard this as sharp-practice, but AK does not like this expression so let’s just describe it as opportunistic. In my experience & by my standards, they have shown a lack of integrity, which of course they dispute.
I believe that the introduction of these new charges in this manner is outside the deal I had with them and simply wish to take my documents back & end the relationship. I am prepared to pay a postage cost or collect them personally, but not pay an additional, large “exit fee”, never previously mentioned. However, in expressing my displeasure at effectively being blackmailed, but nevertheless trying to reach a quick resolution, I have been met with some surprising accusations:
1) I am “unprofessional”, despite not claiming to be a professional. There is a certain irony here.
2) I am guilty of harassment – I’m not sure who I have harassed as all of the correspondence is anonymous – always a cause for suspicion. All I want is my documents back when it appears they are being held hostage.
As it currently stands, I have been given a “final warning” (no idea what that means) and they are refusing to deal with me any longer, only my legal representatives. They have denied me the opportunity to represent myself, a right afforded in both courts and tribunals. All their correspondence is labelled “not for publication or dissemination” – so clearly they don’t want anyone else to see their intimidation and threats. It is plain that the nameless staff in the “Legal Team” have very little legal training and even less in the art of customer service.
I suspect the staff that respond to the criticisms here are the same staff that caused them, so again, they are just a tad biased. We’ll no doubt see. It will also interesting to see the nature of their complaints process (probably handled by the same team) and which regulatory bodies are involved.
Would I recommend to my friends and family? No, one can only speak as one finds.

Update: Worth noting that AK’s response does not contest any of the issues I have raised. Persistence is sadly necessary to counter the prevarication (remembering the documents are rightfully mine) which has been frustrating, but no fair-minded person would apply any more extreme interpretation, of that I am sure.
They will of course exploit the leverage that they think holding original documents gives them. So I’ll update further when they address the outstanding issues. Readers here can judge for themselves which version of events they wish to believe.

In terms of their “business model” mentioned elsewhere in this thread, it rather sounds like the legal advisors we meet are actually self-employed, which allows AK to sidestep any culpability for incorrect legal advice. However, if the dispute is to do with the company’s commercial practices, there is no independent recourse – you can complain to them and you can appeal their decision, but only to them. Beyond that, there is nowhere to go.
Further Update: One month on and there is stalemate. AKL refuses to return my documents & has taken the highly unprofessional decision not to even attempt to find a solution. Given they cannot dispose of the documents, I have no idea what leverage they think they have & what they think the end-point will be. Ho hum. My advice to others would be to use a traditional solicitor, even if it costs a wee bit more.

A wrong item was shipped which I notified immediately. 2 weeks later I'm still waiting for the item I actually ordered with no idea how much longer it will take. Slow Internal procedures clearly get in the way of customer service.
Response to AD Reply:
Not the full story. My first notification of the error was ignored - it was the 2nd that eventually made some progress. I have run a number of large on-line warehouses and know exactly how long these "investigations" take - a phone call, that's how long. To make matters worse, the product I wanted was available under a different SKU that could have been re-shipped immediately, but it took ME to point this out. Otherwise, I might still be waiting now.

It's a shame really. After a promising start a couple of years ago, the condition of the lawn has deteriorated considerably over the past year. Someone turns up every few months, spreads some chemicals and sends us a bill. Clearly they have not been working for a while but the strategy appears just to continue as is. We have ended the arrangement for a re-think.

No substantial improvement year on year sadly. Still the standard auto response to emails claiming to be very busy, when by now it should be obvious many more staff are needed. Responses are at best slow, at worse non-existent. They clearly regard their customers as the owners rather than us holiday makers which reflects itself in their attitude to perfectly reasonable requests. It strikes me that they are happy to deal with relatively straightforward queries, but totally uncompromising when it comes to anything that requires a bit more effort on their part.
Have also come across "rules" the owners know nothing about

The thing I ordered arrived on time and worked. Why should I expect any less?

Home delivery: A simple issue of an unreasonable substitute in a home delivery order. Any other chain would have dealt with it 24 hrs. With Iceland however, 2 months on & still not resolved. Customer Service is useless. They have stopped taking phone calls and don't respond to emails or the contact form on their website. Clearly the do not care how many customers they lose and gamble on nobody taking out small claims proceedings for what is probably just a few quid. Ironically, this post will be sent to the same email address that never responds - that shows the level of interest they really have in customer service.

At least now they are back on schedule and turning up on the day they should. It would however help to have an indication of time of arrival - it is not right to ask customers to leave their property unlocked all day.

Had a dog-friendly lodge booked for months for a family holiday & had paid all the premiums accordingly & had the booking confirmed. 2 weeks out we called to check on something & by pure chance found it was not in fact dog friendly - their mistake not ours. All they would offer was a much smaller lodge but only at its normal price. A great solution for them leaving all the problems with us. And that was it. So we took a refund and will never use them again. I wonder what would have happened if we'd discovered the problem when we arrived.

This is my 3rd review on this shower and after each post the situation has become worse not better, so I still have the original problem from February. This is despite continued assurances from them all of which have come to absolutely nothing - they do not even return phone calls as promised. Their replies to these posts suggest they have done more than they really have, so don't believe them.

Greensleeves' response to my last review is a mile off the reality. My last treatment was due in Feb & nobody turned then or since. Over the past 3 months I have offered 20 dates all of which have been allowed to pass. Greensleeves by contrast have offered just a few, one of which was suitable but then they changed their mind. Nothing has happened for weeks. I was told I should have been contacted by a senior manager but that hasn't happened either, so I have no idea what they are up to.