David Kane

ABN took a full month to respond to my recent insurance claim - asking me questions in piecemeal - before eventually rejecting me for tenuous reasons. Then, when I went to cancel my insurance due to a house move, it wasn’t possible on the app and the convoluted website experience required upwards of 10 clicks to finally get to the right page. And don’t bother calling - they’re only open for 3 hours per day!

Poor customer service, fake products sold as authentic. Twice I have purchased items sold as genuine, and both are fakes. The first time, it took a longer than the required 2 day return period to work it out. The most recent time, I had a seller who promised to ship me the item prior to me leaving the county for 3 weeks, he didn't "the shop was closed" apparently. So A friend picked it up for me, thus me missing the 2 day return period although i refused to accept the product was OK option before seeing it, and once i did it was immediately obvious the item, a Stone Island vest, was fake and then i took a QR scan on the label that confirmed it. The delivery time and the seller promising the product was genuine was all in the chat history, yet Vinted have refused to do anything about it.

Good price, fast delivery, StockX tends to get it right most of the time, would recommend.

After being recommended to Setfords, I have a distinctly average experience speaking with one of their solicitors who turned up more than 45 minutes late for our (expensively) scheduled call. The advice offered was fairly obvious; "has the lack of work on the property left you out of pocket?" yes, it has. And my follow-up emails were left unanswered.

First found out about Soak&Sleep at an AirBnB i stayed at. The cushions were so comfortable I decided to buy a pair of Soft As Down Microfibre Standard Pillow Pair which were very reasonable at 35 GBP. Only negative was the DHL courier initially sent them to the wrong address, but that's not the fault of Soak&Sleep!

Have had a really bad experience booking flights to Greece from Amsterdam with lastminute.com. In short, Transavia cancelled our flight, lastminute.com offered an alternative which I accepted and received an email confirmation of. Then, without telling us, the alternative flight I chose wasn't available, so they booked us onto the flight a day earlier. We found this out a week before the holiday. The only way to contact them was through instant chat, which seems only to provide delayed/no solutions.

The operator kept mentioning she'd refer my preferences 'to the team' but refused to change airline provider so we could still fly out on the same day, albeit an indirect flight. She didn't reason why beyond a "computer says no" type of excuse.

Once upon a time Palace were an edgy skateboard brand that could probably get away with treating with their customers with little regard. But now they are a successful business that collaborates with hugely successful corporations (adidas, Gucci, Mercedes, EA, etc) so they should know better.

I bought a tee from the recent Umbro collaboration which was too big, paid registered to ship it back within the 14 day return period, and for reasons unknown it was refused by sender and sent back to Nottingham (random, as i live in Amsterdam). I have shared the full tracking history but after 6 emails without response I’ve given up any hope of getting my €125 back.

End has got this.

Great selection, delivery times and fairly reasonable prices. Some sort of loyalty membership scheme where you accrue discounts after spending a certain amount would be appreciated. Oh, and the Launches thing, i must have entered 200 of these and was successful once, when the item didn't sell out but that's a personal gripe.

Terrible customer service, incomplete refund.

Having spent $80 on a book that took two weeks to be initially shipped and then went round and round various shipping depots in the US, before eventually returning to the sender after two months. So the book never made it to Europe, let alone to me in Amsterdam.

But that didn't stop Biblio sending a refund minus $30 worth of shipping costs, inexplicably. Even though Biblio clearly state "you are eligible for a full refund of the purchase price, including shipping costs" under the refund conditions. This aside, the customer service experience was poor. The 'reply to' address went to customerservice at booksfromca.com (a third party support?) who asked me on two occasions to contact Biblio direct with my concerns. While the different case handlers responded to my emails with a general lack of accountability and contrition.

I won't be returning, nor will I give up on the full refund.

After investing far too many hours into compiling evidence of; photos, tenancy agreements, quotes, invoices, and email promises from our former tenants to fix the breakages (they didn't) for a deposit dispute, Mydeposits took a cursory view of the case and rewarded us with less than half of the costs incurred to fix breakages and clean the carpet.

They also continued to ignore key details of the case as we appealed. A very disappointing experience.

ukhealthtesting.com are clearly one of those unscrupulous companies making money out of the pandemic. Flimsy packaging aside, I never received my test result and having contacted them about the matter I was eventually and rudely told that the sample arrived 11 days after posting and that I would not receive a refund because:

"As stated in your instruction pack, we advise not to ship tests back to us on the weekend as Royal Mail do not deliver on Sunday's and tend to have big delays with any postage collected on those days."

Just to be clear, there is no 'no refunds' policy on their website or packaging when sending a sample on a weekend.

Received a faulty iPhone XR which didn't allow me to make or receive calls or access roaming data.

Got in touch via the website contact form, which promises a response within 24 hours, nothing. Spent 4-5 hours on the phone trying to get through to them, sent various emails. Finally, I got through to someone 5 days after my initial message who was able to confirm that I would not have to pay to ship the faulty phone back (which is was the website alludes) also said he would include free accessories as compensation. Didn't happen until I had to remind them of the promise, and they sent me a 'car phone charger' even though I don't have a car. Don't waste your time and money with Mobico.nl!

Great customer service in-store, fast delivery once i ordered the product online.

Very useful for finding a painter at short notice for good value.

First of all it should be pointed out that HLM rebranded from Countrywide earlier this year. If you look up Countrywide on Trust Pilot you will soon know why, they have a one star rating and terrible reviews.

A name change certainly hasn’t improved things. HLM aren’t just a painfully incompetent property management company. They are easily the most disorganised, least accountable shambles of a business I have ever come across. Is this due to sheer inability or unscrupulousness? I’m not sure, possibly both.

Why? Let me tell you...

Having bought our property almost two years a theme began to develop when it came to Countrywide / HLM: they would send a 'service' charge bill for £800 every 6 months and include a property manager's details for queries. I would respond by asking the property manager for a breakdown of the costs, the property manager ignores my email. I send a follow up only to find that there is now a new property manager and they would have to 'check the records' and get back to me. This would continue almost every other month, we have had at least 7-8 property managers. And in two years I am still yet to receive an itemised bill for charges, and barely any actual 'services'. In fact none in 2019 that weren't a matter of life or death.

Earlier this year there was an incident where a neighbours kitchen caught on fire and smoke began bellowing out into the main hallway, because the fire alarms are broken there was no warning, just the thick smell of smoke to alert young families of the imminent danger. Fire safety is a mere, avoidable detail to HLM/Countrywide. But there's always another £800 service charge.

It was at this point where my fellow property owners in the building decided to work together to coax HLM off their horses from the wild west and, you know, do some actual work for the thousands of pounds they have been charging us each year. So we made a consolidated list of issues together with photos and videos for supporting evidence, that list:

* Front door is flimsy and the lock desperately needs replacing
* Fire alarms in the entrance halls are broken
* Fire alarms in the flats are broken
* The fire escape on the left hand of the building is falling apart
* There is a leak affecting the left hand of the building
* The exterior needs a paint job
* The interior halls need paint job
* Cracks throughout the building
* Cleaner hasn’t been around for months
* Gardener hasn’t been around for months
* Lack of transparency over sink fund value
* EICR test has failed
 
Bar fixing the fire alarm in the main entrance and 'some' of the flats (6 months after the incident) none of the above has been attended to and sadly my flat was burgled in October. The burglar was able to slip the locks using a credit card according to police, they didn't even need to break in in order to help themselves to thousands of pounds worth of goods including my great grandmother's engagement ring, which I in turn had given to my fiancé.

HLM made promises to replace the flimsy front door locks in December (i made a video of how loose the front door locks were in August) but today is December 30th and property manager no.8 confirmed to me that this will not happen. Luckily we have a new management company starting next year.

Because HLM were hired by our landlord, Pier management (another company with a less than sparkling reputation online), they just about skirted on the right side of the law it seems. But please learn from my mistake and avoid HLM/Countrywide like the plague.