Anne

I broke down on the M6 and the Motoring Assistance lady on the phone quickly realised I'd need recovery to a garage. The recovery vehicle came in little more than an hour, even though it was Friday evening with the M6 very busy. My garage repaired the car but on collection it did only ten miles before failing again. This was in the dark in an unsafe place. Thankfully Motoring Assistance came to the rescue again and in 40mins we were recovered again, back to the same garage. This time the mechanic repaired it properly.

We found a roofing company through Checkatrade. It had good reviews. They did a poor quality job for us causing great distress since the work was urgently needed to allow my frail mother to have a bedroom downstairs. I later tried to give the company a bad review but it was blocked by Checkatrade. They asked for numerous documents as evidence: quotes, invoices, contract, photos, emails, etc.
I have sent these documents, giving much evidence of the delayed and low grade job and we will see if they ever upload my review. But making unreasonable demands for proof prevents many genuine customers from leaving bad reviews. There are no demands for proof when leaving a good review. This selection of which reviews to post will lead others to suffer as we did. Positive reviews are deceitful if negative ones cannot also be posted.

My tenants in a Kenilworth flat switched to Octopus. After 6 months Octopus came to replace the meter, I had no say in the matter. On May 31st the poor tenant rang in alarm when he was told the gas supply was being cut off and he would be unable to cook. The reason the technician gave was that the 'boiler looks unsafe'. But I'd had the annual boiler safety check done only a week previously and both I and the tenant had copies. The safety certificate was issued by a qualified and experienced gas engineer, while the Octopus technician is only trained in changing meters. He had seen marks on the wall made when the boiler was installed in 2017 and somehow imagined them to be significant. This technician cut the gas pipe to the boiler. My engineer was disgusted, saying similar things had been done to other customers by Octopus when changing meters. Octopus staff are told to cover themselves by cutting off gas supply if they have any safety doubts, but they don't have the training to assess safety. I had to pay the engineer to visit, restore the supply and re-issue the safety certificate. I immediately complained to Octopus and they have effectively done nothing, with 'holding' replies for 3 weeks.

When Lloyds Bank has a change in its terms and conditions it sends a secure message. On my old phone that is hard to open so I have to use a laptop. I rarely do that for Lloyds because they encourage you to use the app, so signing in becomes difficult. Eventually I read the change in Ts and Cs. But when Paragon Bank for example has a change in Terms and Conditions they simply email it, because its not confidential.
When I try to complain to Lloyds I'm directed to a machine answering which asks silly, irrelevant questions. It then says that if I hold on for half and hour a human will respond. But since the site quickly logs me out when waiting, there is never a human response.

When Paragon make changes to their rules they tell you simply, by email, in clear English. Other banks make you login, download etc. as if the changes were private and confidential.
Paragon also gives good interest rates, is simple to login, phone calls are answered quickly etc.

I had a 4" bathroom extractor fan installed in Sept '23. It began to run noisy so it was often turned off. In Feb '25 it failed. It looks as though Cawoods has been buying cheap, tacky fans. Now they have quoted £163 for a replacement and had the cheek to demand half that cost before even providing an date for the work. Disappointing - they used to be good.

Covea insures our block of flats and we've been paying them year in year out. When the roof was blown off one section in Storm Darragh they rejected the claim. They wanted evidence for inspection and maintenance and when given it they wanted more. It has been a long struggle and that struggle continues. I will avoid this company for the rest of my life.

I wanted to leave a review about a nursing agency, but it was blocked with the 'explanation' that the agency had no website. Firstly, its not true, the agency concerned has a functioning website although it says its under construction and its a poor website. Secondly, it should make no difference whether a company has a good website or any website. It is a functioning nursing agency which supplies nurses to NHS hospitals. So why is it not possible for people affected by the company to leave a review? Is this corruption or gross incompetence?

Uniqlo products last well and are good value. Also the staff in the Westfield store were helpful to me last time I visited. But I find the frequent promotional emails to be excessive so tried to unsubscribe. The website doesn't permit that so I've been stuck with numerous unwanted emails for months and there doesn't seem anything which can be done to stop them. The law says unsubscription must be possible, but like so many laws its not possible to enforce.

The dehumidifier 2850e is good, but at £279 its expensive. since I've only had EBAC dehumidifiers I'm not in a position to compare with other companies. This product was reduced from an even higher price. Its always slightly disconcerting if a product is on reduction with no reason given.

The flats where I'm a leaseholder, in Kenilworth, is insured by Covea. The roof came off one block in Storm Darragh. Covea have done nothing. We have never claimed on the insurance previously. Now, in dire distress, we have been abandoned. With no insurance payment the block has had only attempts to provide temporary cover by the same pathetic management company which chose Covea. Each day that more rain comes it does more and more damage so now it looks as if the whole block may be destroyed by rain, causing huge financial loss.

Open Rent found me suitable tenants fast, that bit was fine. But they suggest to tenants that if they deal directly with landlords there's a risk of their money being stolen, or of their deposit not going into a scheme or that their data is at risk. They use fear to tempt tenants to request contracting through Open Rent. I found this process horrible. The tenancy agreement at first stated that the rent would be collected by OpenRent. Shocked by this I may have missed other aspects which were not as good as the NRLA agreement I normally use.
If landlord and tenant work together without OpenRent coming between them the tenant usually pays the first month's rent on the day they move in. Using the OpenRent process my new tenants paid weeks in advance and I've not seen my money yet and won't for at least 10 days. Open Rent has it for a considerable period and must benefit from the interest.

Paragon has been easy to deal with; good customer service. But now the interest rates are dropping and other banks are offering more.

It was easy enough to join, but how can I possibly be asked to give a review at the start of the year?

This time the plants arrived correctly. But I spent a long while yesterday getting through to Yodel on the chat line and emphasising that since previous deliveries had gone astray that I requested special care this time. Eventually an agent, Kavita, understood and said she'd message the depot at Borehamwood. That may be what made the difference.

The parcel doesn't seem to have ever been delivered. Delivery men always use our porch (not locked but items in there are out of sight) but the message from Yodel says it was left behind the bin. There was no photo sent.
Next day a message from Yodel asked me to contact an email address with various information. So I did, but the email was returned as undeliverable 'invalid mail address, must have a domain part'
Why ask an already frustrated customer to use an invalid email address?

The wallflowers arrived in a sorry looking state, I'll try to upload a photo. I planted them immediately but they've not perked up yet. Possibly they will, but when weak and not growing they are vulnerable to slugs. It would be fairer to ask for a review in spring but this silly request for immediate review means I have to guess now about how they will do.
It seems that Thompson & Morgan use a combination of two transport companies to deliver their plants, which makes delivery slow.

I began with fear because it was so extremely hard to obtain my 25% lump sum last year. The investments with L&G have not performed well but I am not in a position to know which of their investment options might do better, or whether they all perform badly due to high fees. The documents sent are extremely wordy and obscure rather than clarify what I need to do.

I've used the DPS for several years. When a recent tenancy ended the tenant had some difficulty and delay getting his repayment, after I'd cleared it from my side.
With interest rates high the DPS must be making vast sums on the money given to them by the government requirement for money to be held by such schemes. They have too much incentive to delay repayments.
Starting another tenancy was convoluted, since the website didn't save my prescribed questions form and crashed with an error message for no obvious reason. The DPS requires landlords to send their lengthy terms and conditions to the tenant and presumably penalises the landlord in any dispute if this is not done. The DPS does not benefit tenants or landlords, only itself.

Two problems. The company offers an option of UK only cover, but in practice this isn't available, only UK + Europe or worldwide. Secondly I have no documents because although I tried to register a message came later saying registration incomplete. But I couldn't log in to complete the registration because it said my email address was already in use.