Thomas S.

Out of the blue, I received an email from Bureau Works asking me to define a password:
'Hi (my correct name)! It's a pleasure to have you on our platform. In order to gain access to Bureau Works, please set your password by clicking on the link below:'
I have never visited the site or registered. This behaviour is suspect.

I don't appreciate spam calls, particularly not from people who cannot even speak English.

I recently signed up as a photo contributor.

Their support system doesn't work. If an expert user replies to a ticket first, you are emailed a link that doesn't work. I reported this problem a week ago, and nothing has been done.

The approval flow between the various categories is undocumented and confusing.

If a photo is rejected because of a minor issue that is easily corrected, you have to resubmit the whole thing from scratch, as there is no resubmit button.

They use AI to check if keywords entered match the photo, but it doesn't 'understand' everything, so if you have a photo of a cat in a cage, it tells you that 'cat' is not relevant to the photo and forces you to remove it. There is no way to override this dumb AI police officer.

The payment methods they offer are limited to expensive PayPal (which takes 8% out of all payments from USD to EUR), Payoneer (which requires an annual minimum turnover) and Skrill. Solutions that don't rip off the user are ignored, for example Wise.

All in all, a very user-hostile experience, which feels amateurish.

My local SEUR/DPD driver must be super lazy or super incompetent, as they have now for the third time dumped an Amazon parcel at the local petrol station instead of trying to deliver it even though I was at home. I got no notification by text or email until over 6 hours after the time it said on amazon.es that it had been delivered. By that time, Amazon had already refunded the order, and I had ordered a replacement.

Total waste of time and money.

• Fake engagement mails auto-generated by the site, for example when you have looked at a profile: '{user} wants to get to know you better! After you visited the profile of {user}, she was waiting for you to contact her but you didn't get in touch. She would like you to at least say hello.' No, she wouldn't because this is a lie written by the site.

• Mass-mailing feature allowing a user to send bulk messages to a large number of profiles in one go, including to users that do not meet the sender's criteria such as age. If you reply, you never get any reaction.

• No function to temporarily suspend your account in case you want to focus on a specific person. You have to get support to do it manually and then restore your account if/when you want to continue.

• No smartphone app.

• Large number of profiles without a single photo.

I have tried many dating apps, and Expatica easily gets bottom rating. Save your time and money.

Positive:
Great way to get paid from the US, the UK, Canada and other places into EUR. Very reasonable and transparent commission for changing currency, and the possibility of local bank account numbers and balances makes it possible to change money when the interest rate is favourable. Also great they pay interest on balances. Customer service staff are also helpful. The debit card and direct debit facility are also great, as is the ease of use.

Negative:
1. It is getting increasingly difficult to find a form to contact customer service, and the contact info in their help article about contacting Wise is incorrect, as there is no email and phone support to be found there. Not everything can be sorted out with the help articles and chat. I do not trust a payment service provider if I cannot send them a written non-chat message. This needs to be improved. You cannot simply eliminate customer support to save money and believe your customers will keep trusting you.

Update in response to Wise's reply: the contact options they mention were simply not working when I posted my feedback during a weekend.

2. It's a great shame that they have chosen the jurisdiction of Belgium for interest payment, as Belgium grabs 30% of your interest even if you are liable for tax in another country. In principle, I could get half of it back, but then I need to go to my local tax office with paper forms and then post them to the tax authorities in Belgium. All this would cost more time and money than the refund is worth. So it's 30% of all account holders' interest down the drain. A jurisdiction like Luxembourg would not have done this. A big minus. It's clearly for a reason that Belgium is not an international financial centre. They think foreign residents' money belongs to them.

Update in response to Wise's reply: they simply confirm what I say, that 30% of account holders' interest is going down the drain in Belgian tax even if the account holders are not tax resident in Belgium. And as I said, I could get half of it back, but the manual paper bureaucracy required is too cumbersome to bother. And also, as I said, if Wise had chosen a more suitable eurozone jurisdiction like Luxembourg that does not operate tax withholding on foreign tax residents' income (when their foreign tax numbers are recorded), this 30% tax grab/waste could have been avoided, and the interest only taxed in the country where the account holder is resident. There are probably reasons why Wise chose Belgium, but in terms of tax on interest, it is one of the worst choices they could have made. Of course, it is the account holders' money that Wise is throwing away, not their own, so why should they care? As we can see in their reply, they clearly don't.

I bought my Via 130M 11 years ago. It has been working very well, but suddenly the voice control button disappeared. Even though it's such an old device, support still took the time to get it fully sorted out and get the device's update queue cleaned up. I believe this was UK support. Not many companies would bother today.

This must be one of Europe's most backward universal postal service providers.

Where other countries have made it possible to print electronic stamps at home so you don't need to keep a stock of old-fashioned stamps or go to the post office just to post a rare letter, there is no such feature on offer in Portugal. They don't know what digital service is yet.

If you do go to the post office, expect to wait 30-40 minutes before being served (Ermesinde, Valongo, Porto). Too much staff spend their time in the back office instead of helping customers, who clearly don't matter.

Most letterboxes in the street have been removed. It's getting increasingly hard to find a place to post one of the few letters still required.

I regularly shop at the rebuilt Lidl in Ermesinde, Valongo, Porto.

I had been trying the new self-checkouts when they were installed, but there was always something that went wrong, and nobody to help.

So I had stopped using them, but the queues at the manned checkouts are now getting longer and longer, probably to save staff, so I have tried the self-checkout again.

Today, it blocked me twice.

First because a bag of pão tostado com tomate e orégãos, ref. 102538-JJ.0, weighed 180g instead of 170g for the others (weighed at home). Nobody to help. I had to go to checkout 1 and ask. She reset it.

Second because the green reduction labels on 3 other products could not be scanned. This is a repeat problem. Some of them can be scanned, others not. There was a barcode number I could have tried, but it had been printed on top of the barcode, so it was unreadable. Again, nobody to help. The lady at checkout 1 called for someone, already busy with a long queue.

More waiting before someone showed up.

You encourage people to use the self-checkout, calling them faster, but they are not faster when you repeatedly have to wait for someone to show up and fix the repeated problems.

The checkout service at this Lidl is now slower than it has ever been, in fact slower than every other supermarket in this area.

You need to ensure there is someone to help when the self-checkouts don’t work, which is all the time. Or scrap them and reinstate a proper checkout service. This is not working.

Is it really beyond the capacity of a German international supermarket chain to print readable barcodes? If not, what’s the whole idea of the self-checkouts if they cannot read the labels? You are just mocking your customers.

I do not blame staff, which look overworked. I blame management for cost-cutting that is harming customer service and probably stressing the staff.

Staff is very well aware of the problem with the labels, but nothing has been done to solve the problem. I have also mentioned it to you in emails before. Why don’t you listen? Are you fed up with your customers, preferring that we go somewhere else with proper service instead?

One of the mainstream dating sites, now merged with Meetic (but they don't tell you, even when you ask).

When I first tried to register, they blocked me without indicating why. It took 5 emails to support and a week before they could figure out that they had accidentally blocked me for no good reason.

Mistakes can happen, but there is no good excuse for being unable to find my blocked account when I ask them.

Fake profiles (too many) are quickly removed when they are reported, but I don't understand why they don't make photo validation mandatory to stop the fake ones. This would also stop the many useless profiles that only show landscapes and other things and people who hide their faces.

The daily email suggestions they send, calling them 'customised' or 'just for you', are not customised at all. They do not take into account the language and smoking criteria and do not check that the two profiles have any language in common. Sometimes when you click on a 'customised' suggestion, the site tells you that you don't match the person's criteria, so you should try someone else. Such 'customised' suggestions simply aim for making it look like the site has many more actual matches than it really has. It's simply a marketing ploy. One of the profiles they suggested was fake and later removed when I reported it.

I doubt I'll find a match here, but let's see.

UPS was supposed to deliver a parcel to my business on 29/4/24, but the sender had neglected to write the building floor and door number, which I had entered in their system. Hence, the driver did not know which doorbell to use.

However, my mobile phone number was on the parcel. Nevertheless, the UPS driver failed to call to get the missing part of the address and just dumped the parcel at a pickup point. Much easier to let the client do your work.

I called UPS the same day and gave them the missing info and my phone number again. They said they would deliver on 3/5. They didn't, and the driver made no attempt to call.

I called them the same day, and they said they would deliver on 6 or 7 May. They didn't and didn't try to call.

I finally went to the pickup shop on 8 May. It is a narrow street with no spare place to park. Another driver kept shouting at me aggressively because I found no other solution than to briefly park on the pavement. I felt unsafe.

I wasted half an hour going there, from the time I left work till I was back, because delivering parcels is beyond the capability of UPS.

This is a third-world, incompetent delivery service. Online sellers who value their customers would be better off with just about any other delivery company than UnProfessional Service.

Braun shaver head received 2 days after I ordered. Invoice emailed. Everything in order.

I like to read their articles, but if you want to subscribe as a small business, they refuse if you need less than 10 subscriptions. Their billing system has last-century functionality and does not allow you simply to enter a company name and VAT number, so they manage their so-called corporate subscriptions manually. I wouldn't be surprised if they still use typewriters in their billing department.

They also give you confusing, incorrect and contradictory information, as they had told me in writing last year that even for a single subscription, my company could set up a new account and request an invoice by email. But when I followed their instructions, they refused to provide an invoice and refund the VAT, so I ended up cancelling after two weeks of miserable ‘the customer is always wrong’ customer service.

The Telegraph is a conservative newspaper and should thus be business friendly, but they only want big corporations to subscribe while small businesses can get lost. This is a disgrace.

To sum it up: utterly inept, incompetent and outdated customer service and billing.

Health insurance:

16 months into the insurance, I got an extremely painful sinusitis, which needed surgery. Instead of approving it, they falsely claimed it was a pre-existing condition with no justification whatsoever and no information about how to complain.

Luckily, I found a scan report from 1997 that contradicted AdvanceCare's baseless claim that this was a pre-existing condition. Also, Portuguese insurance law only allows exclusions of pre-existing conditions for 12 months.

The discussion with them prolonged the strong pain with two weeks, during which I had to eat loads of strong painkillers to be able to function. This is institutionalised torture and a breach of contract.

They finally approved it, but not without refusing cover for one of the necessary acts. Thankfully, Trofa Saúde accepted to do it anyway.

Twice, I had to discuss with them to get cover for vitamin blood tests, which are included. The same happened with ENT consultations. Months of discussion each time, but they finally paid. Of course they hope most people give up.

When I wanted to give notice to switch to another insurer 3 months before the expiry, they refused to accept the notice until 30 days before expiry. This is in violation of Portuguese insurance law.

Generali Tranquilidade happily break the law when it suits them. It seems to be a part of their business model, which includes exhausting the insured with endless discussion.

Car insurance:

When a careless driver reversed into my car, it was very difficult to follow the status of the claims handling. I tried to call them, but as I don't speak Portuguese yet, they said an English speaker would call back. They never did. I had to call my insurance agent. It was the other driver's insurance that had to cover the cost, and the repair was finally done correctly. At least I got the included replacement car.

I am going to get rid of the rest of my Generali Tranquilidade insurances. I don't trust them any more.

Congstar war in Ordnung, aber als ich meine letzte Rechnung von meinem Computer herunterladen wollte, wurde mir gesagt, dass dies nur noch in einer App möglich ist.

Es ist nicht bequem, ein Abonnement in einer Smartphone-App zu verwalten, insbesondere nicht, um meine PDF-Rechnungen herunterzuladen, die ich auf meinem Computer und nicht auf meinem Smartphone brauche.

Außerdem habe ich auf einem Computerbildschirm einen besseren Überblick als auf dem winzigen Smartphone-Bildschirm.

Die Sperrung des Zugangs zum Login vom Computer aus hätte mich dazu gebracht, meinen Vertrag zu kündigen, wenn ich es nicht schon getan hätte, weil ich ins Ausland gezogen bin.

Dienstleister sollten nicht in meinem Namen entscheiden, ob ich einen Computer oder ein Smartphone benutzen soll.

This is a sort of holding company that goes around buying up often high-quality translation agencies, following which they unilaterally impose pay cuts and software that is unsuitable for freelance translators, as it ties them on hands and feet. This is a good example of what happens when accountants start running a profession they don't understand, only for the purpose of squeezing more money out of hard-working decent translators. The best translators stop providing service to Acolad once they have taken over another agency, so clients using this outfit should expect low quality.

I do not appreciate your illegal spam. It is an excellent way to ensure I will never buy from you.

Helt perfekt, fra brugervenlig website til information, grundig indpakning og DHL-forsendelse som lovet, og så med en personlig julehilsen vedlagt. Glædelig jul deroppe i det kolde, snedækkede nord med julekortlandskab😊

I don't appreciate Vodafone retailers spamming me, in this case digitaland.pt, which Vodafone itself had instructed to spam me according to Digitaland, particularly when there is no unsubscribe link and I have never consented to the use of my personal data. It is a breach of the GDPR, and their website privacy policy fails to mention how to contact their data protection officer, also a breach of the GDPR. Vodafone needs to keep itself and its retailers in order because this is giving you a bad reputation for lack of respect for the recipients and their resources.

But congratulations, you have convinced me never to become a Vodafone client.

I do not appreciate being spammed, and you are doing it in violation of the GDPR, using my personal data without consent.