StewC

Dainty eco friendly and careful packaging, fast dispatch, beautifully presented in the wrap and really good quality sample atomisers which I have never seen anywhere else. It’s a great selection on the site too, and such fast response to a customer query. Absolutely flawless.

Items really do not last. Terrible quality. A couple of years in, and the chrome was blistered off the bath feet (warranty: only one year), the veneer was off the cabinet (to be fair, they replaced this, after a lot of faffing about and delays), and now eight years in, the handle has come completely off the mixer tap, the porcelain basin waste cover has come off the plug, the chrome feet look 30 years old and perished, and the waste cover for the bath no longer holds in the water. There is honestly not a single item apart from the porcelain toilet that looks like it is a newish eight year old bathroom. It all looks broken and tired, and has done for a couple of years now. I’ve just ordered a new bath waste cover, I hope it is just that, otherwise we will have to get the plumber out. So disappointed with the quality of all of it - it’s a well ventilated, lightly used bathroom.

Previously a five-star company for me. This has changed drastically. We chose a hive thermostat a couple of years ago BECAUSE of the subscription-free model. I use the weekly and yearly heating history to keep track of our heating compared to previous years, and to check up on the week’s stats to be sure it’s all still running ok while we are away on holiday, otherwise what's the point of a smart thermostat really.

We were really happy with hive, and about to start putting in all the radiator valves and switches etc to move the whole house over to smart control. And this morning I've just found out that we are now locked out of some app features, particularly the heating history, because all the features we bought it for are suddenly subscription only?

Posting this partly to help anyone who hasn't realised yet and might have been on the verge of buying further into the network, like we were, and partly because I am very pissed off that now I need to research alternative systems to move away from hive instead.

The downgrading of previously good-quality products and services really puts me off any brand that does this. We can and do leave any service that pulls this con. £4 a month to access your own data from your own monitor that you bought, and then paid to have installed?!

PS the webchat customer service is below par too, no indication of wait times or your number in the queue which is just really basic standard info for customers to use to plan their time while waiting. Plus their answers on Trustpilot appear to be AI, not real customer service.

I love Topping’s. We’ve visited Edinburgh, St Andrews and Bath so far. I love the special edition and local books that I struggle to find elsewhere, the locations/buildings, bookladders, dog friendliness and sometimes even a tea if it’s quiet. Good natural history/nature section. Huge fiction and genre sections. Lovely staff.

I love Whittard’s teas. I like the new customer loyalty programme and the little taster bags you get in store. Also the in-house taster pots on the stove you sometimes see. I wish they’d not discontinued the monsoon malabar coffee bags though! My favourite is spiced chai tea - best blend I’ve tasted for our water. I’ve shopped here for years now, I try other tea shops out too everywhere we go, but Whittards plus one other (local, indy, single site) shop are the ones that can never be beat for me.

We went with Llama to costa rica and everything ran like clockwork. A super busy itinerary with lots of pick ups, transfers, excursions and location changes and it was seamless. The travel guide companies used were friendly, reliable and down to earth, and the accomodation was almost all really good and with character apart from the in-transit city hotel for airport drop offs and pickups. We also tweaked the dates slightly to accomodate a scotland departure rather than london and that was easy too. Highly recommended.

We bought a washer dryer from OnBuy specifically because of the prompt delivery date they had on it. We could have got it cheaper elsewhere. Our old washer broke - the week before christmas, with all the guest sheets in it! We’ve never bought from OnBuy before. We thought it was great - early guaranteed delivery date of 18th (confirmed on followup email from OnBuy), another email two days ago to say it had already been dispatched from the warehouse - thank goodness. Well, it was all total misinformation. After contacting the vendor, the date OnBuy had actually booked our delivery for was 24th (Christmas Eve, a week away!) The item had NOT been dispatched from the warehouse at all, when they said it had. Luckily (ish), contacting the vendor directly (not OnBuy, and we phoned the vendor directly from their own website instead of using the poor 48hour-email-reply contact form which was the only option available from OnBuy) has now got us a delivery on 20th, the day our guests arrive. Not great, but better than the nonsense from OnBuy. We found it was almost impossible to contact OnBuy directly, in fact. Our experience was that OnBuy is an actively misleading company, and they don’t make it possible to get directly in contact, so we won’t be back - thought we’d best warn others if a timely, accurate delivery is vital when shopping for your item.

I’ve been trying to buy a popsocket for a week.
I registered my email, got sent a welcome discount code, and it doesn’t work. So I fill out the contact form and wait a few days - no answer. I do another customer service request, wait a couple of days, nothing. I’ve now written a third request because I keep getting emails saying “We can’t save your basket for much longer!”, but so far, nothing, another day after the third service request.
I guess I won’t be buying one then. It’s a shame, because if they were good I would have liked a few different ones, but I can’t exactly buy from a company that doesn’t seem to want to sell to me.

Honest roundup:
1) This is one of those subscription companies that notify you when your order and payment has been automatically taken, NOT one of those (more ethical, to my mind) companies who notify you that your order/payment is due shortly so you can make any adjustments if needed this month.
2) Some people might have a bit of digestive bother with the artificial sweeteners
3) However, I would say overall a good product, tastes good and mixes fine, convenient packaging - fairly happy with product compared to others on the market
4) Reliable delivery of goods so far

I will continue to buy, although I will do so intermittently by pausing my subscription and ordering manually, since I can’t trust them to notify me when my subscription is coming up (rather than after it has been taken) like some other companies I subscribe to for things. I would prefer a non-artificial sweetener option if one had been available.

This is the third time I have watched a DPD driver get to a location nearby, and then decide he just couldn’t be bothered delivering our parcel. There is no way that the huge turreted private school with the big sign that he took a picture of - “sorry you weren’t in!” - could be mistaken for the residential cottage right under the satnav postcode pin he was meant to deliver to. It’s an extraordinarily nice day today, I believe I was the last delivery, and I was kicked to the curb almost an hour before the end of my delivery window. Thanks for nothing, Calvin. I’m sure it was worth the extra hour off in the sun, especially since DPD don’t let customers review drivers that close down the delivery early like this. Customer services chatbox are useless, as they cannot contact drivers. And it seems like there will be no notes or training delivered to the driver.

I have used this company for years and didn’t have a single problem until it changed to Travel Perk recently. I am sitting in an absolutely filthy hotel - apparently Travel Perk cannot be trusted anymore to offer a basic decent quality of hotel for corporate travel - and for some reason they will only provide online chat support if you sign in. Which the new site is currently refusing to let me do. So I try the “emergency” phone line. Which puts me on hold forever, and then cuts me off. This hotel is properly, down-to-the-bones filthy and there is no support to be had through any portal. Deeply unpleasant and uncomfortable experience - what has happened to this company? (Used to be Click Travel)

Incidentally, I’m not picky - I’ve never left a bad review for any hotel. This one is just so mouldy/greasy and sticky, I can’t believe it is included on a corporate travel site.

Parcel sat in the depot for six days, unmoving. Even then, we thought, ok - everybody’s having trouble just now, so we’ll wait. Couldn’t get through to them on the phone anyway.

Then today received an email saying our delivery was “closed out” because they attempted delivery today and we weren’t in.

Not only were we in, but we have a door camera to prove the driver definitely never even approached the house at any time today.

After twenty minutes in a phone queue, they switched their phones to an out-of-hours message at ten to five.

If the redelivery I have selected for tomorrow does not arrive, I will update.

First time using this company, will avoid in future.

Total scam. I haven’t bought concert tickets for a couple of years due to the obvious. Feeling very stupid since I am obviously out of practice and assumed the several top search results on google that were viagogo must mean the site was equivalent to the usual reputable top sellers.

If you are taken to the page for your concert, bypassing the front page as I was, there is nothing obvious to let you know you are on a scalping website and not a reputable ticket sales website.

You will pay double what your tickets are really worth, and will not be told you have bought from a “trader” (scalper) until the confirmation email.

Absolutely disgusted and now have a bad, sour feeling about an event that I was really looking forward to.

Do not use this website. It is a front for scalpers.

Good customer service. We’ve had parcels from them before and the products have always been good. In addition, this time our parcel was delayed in transit by weather (Not Donald Russell’s fault in any way) and the support by customer service during this delivery has been excellent. They’ve let us know what to expect, when to expect it and guaranteed a replacement if things still go awry. Really pleasant and relaxing to deal with. A good bunch.

Really great. Used them a lot for two older dogs. Easy website access, excellent prescription upload options, good prescription storage, quick service, friendly customer service on the one occasion I rang with a quick question.

Good, trustworthy company.

This is so strange, because the “regular DPD” (with the red branding instead of the blue DPD Local) is really good. But we’ve had previous issues with DPD Local, and now I have just watched a driver, Andrew, drive himself literally past our window without stopping, and mark us as “not in”.

I believe he decided to do this because he got stuck in our neighbour’s farm track and needed towed out by a tractor, before driving himself off along the regular road on the rest of his deliveries and past our house, where he would have been marked down as two minutes late. i.e. he did have issues delivering to our neighbour, but then resolved them and was back on the regular road, fully mobile, and chose to pass within three feet of our house rather than deliver, because that would have made him a couple of minutes (less than five) late.

He used a picture of his van with the tractor from his issues delivering to the neighbour as an excuse, despite this happening, and being resolved completely, well before he reached our house. It was basically a lie, using a picture that was only true for a previous delivery. I watched the whole thing from my house.

The customer services phoned him, told me I would receive a call back today, so I waited. I contacted customer services about five hours later, as I had not received a call, only to be told it was never guaranteed. I’d actually double-checked this with the original assistant, so I invited the new assistant to check the recording as proof I was telling the truth. He said he could not, as they were in “the wrong location” to get access. Shortly afterward, he told me I “couldn’t expect a driver to wait at my house” (?!) as they “deliver 100 parcels a day”. When I replied that I didn’t understand, I didn’t need anyone to wait anywhere? - he hung up.

There does not appear to be any consequences for the driver’s personal decision not to bother delivering, or compensation, or any attempt to fix the issue.

The parcel was 24 hr delivery and will now be two days late. The first day was entirely legitimate as it was poor driving conditions. No problem, absolutely no complaint from me, they need to be safe. Today’s has just been a lie by the driver, followed by a lie by customer services, then a total refusal to recognise any issue with the service by another customer service. The nature of the package was such that the delay has now resulted in damage to my house, which I will have to pay to get fixed. I did raise that with customer service (name: Uday) who didn’t even acknowledge it.

Good things:
Great recipe selection
Tasty food
Customisable
Handy not to go to supermarket

Bad things:
LOTS of missing items over the months. At least one item missing or mixed-up wrongly every 2-3 boxes. It is REGULAR.

They do always compensate you - if you take the time to go through their contact process - but for the single item only i.e. green thai chicken curry with no green thai curry sauce = £2 compensation for the sauce packet alone, even though now you can’t make green thai curry at all, but a sort of bland chicken, green bean and rice dish. Which is edible, but not great.
Have also had desserts missing, wine replaced with a variety we can’t drink, the wrong sauce packet given, etc, etc.

So: it’s a delicious food box but you will need patience and flexibility to combat the hit-or-miss approach to packing (which fortunately we do). I see a lot of others mention the same regular issue.

Edit: Worth noting that back in January I gave this company a five star review for their really excellent recipes and convenience and, at the time, service had been 100% great. It’s just a lot more variable now.

I know exactly why I’ve put on weight - a sudden increase of sedentary desk time at my job, a new location in the country (need to drive everywhere) and an increase in sedentary home-study time for a qualification. I need to reduce my calorie intake to compensate, and I knew I’d need a very adaptable programme that could be designed around a lack of time and local resources.

I understand that is difficult, so I made sure to email the company before I joined the free trial to ask them whether the programme would suit someone with no meal-prep time and sporadic access to shops in town miles from home. I was assured that absolutely, yes, this programme was likely to really help me, and they did not see any obstacles to their particular course in my situation.

I joined, feeling really quite hopeful after the reassurance that the specifics of my situation were no barrier, and on the first day was told that the major foundation of the course relies on extensive meal prep, with almost no options for guiding you towards healthy grab-and-go snacks or meals without your own previous prep, and will rely on regular supply of fresh ingredients throughout the week. Exactly all the things I had queried and had been assured would not be an issue.

So I felt the response to me taking the time to check my current, fairly unchangeable, limitations was a bit dishonest - these were fundamental barriers for this course. I couldn’t even start, given the need to get in a large, varied shop of fresh ingredients and do meal prep for the week on a Sunday when I’d specified these two things were the main barriers for me.

This is not a course to fit around your life. This is a course that you must change your life to fit. I understand why that might be more likely to be effective- but it completely excludes those of us who need tailorable options for a period when home and work circumstances are driving our lives, with little time available to become a regular grocery shopper, meal planner and chef. I needed options to allow me to make healthier choices within the environment I am currently in.

We get good service up here. Good common sense about what to do with packages when we’re out, the drivers are hardworking but always nice even when it’s poor conditions outside.

They’re pretty great up here. I think it depends on your local drivers a lot, but ours is dependable and cheery and has a lot of common sense on what to do with packages if we’re out. Occasionally we’ve had someone else and sometimes that has gone awry and they’ve randomly dropped things at addresses on the other side of the valley a couple of times. But we use them a LOT and I’d say 90% of the time it’s excellent.