ZeusOlympus

Getting fed up with all the pop-ups reminding me about renewing my AV. One even said they had cancelled my licence and I had to click subscribe to continue my subscription! Lots of different prices. £69.99? They must be joking! Any more of it and I go for a free AV, eg. Bit defender anti virus free for windows. Gets v. good review in which mag. report - better than the AVs you pay for.

UT very good product and service as usual. Had to send it back though for personal reasons. Evri seem to have lost it and I expect (from previous experience) a long, hard fight to get my money back from them. Fortunately I have the Consumer's Association Legal Service to assist me!

19/10/24
I didn't have to take Evri to court, send in the bailiffs, etc. after all as UT stepped into the breach and gave me a refund, even though they hadn't received (and probably never will receive) the goods from Evri. Several real people contacted me from UT about it: service like it used to be decades ago before the Rise of the FobOffBots. I am pleased to upgrade UT rating to 5*.

Planted a row of carrots, Flyaway F1. Not a single one sprouted!
Planted a row of parsnips, Haflong White, 5 sprouted.
Planted a row of spring onions, White Lisbon, 4 sprouted and then stopped growing.
Total waste of money; don't buy!

Excellent tech support. They take as long as it takes to sort out your problem.

Good service, good price, and a free biro as well! Will definitely use again.

The items I ordered were only loosely put in a plastic bag and then despatched which gave them no physical protection whatsoever against the rough handling in the carrier's transport system. Inevitably, when the order arrived, boxes had their corners bashed in and their contents damaged. Foamboard sheets had their corners and surface damaged. Any other online supplier I use would have wrapped the items in bubble wrap and put them in a cardboard box. I shall not use them again!

Re mens unisex (??) wellies. UTTL760_1
I've got average sized feet and they are too tight across the widest part of my foot, even with thin socks on. With thick socks they would be even tighter. They are 0.5" narrower than my existing men's boots. I suspect your feet would get very cold very quickly in snow.

Bought a Hornby R60028 vent van last week, though not from Hornby. When it arrived it was different to the picture on the supplier and Hornby websites (it had running no. B777345, no white markings on the side). I took this up with Hornby and they said that the image was of an earlier product which was later changed by the design team. Since they didn't chage the image on their website I sent in a review pointing this out. The review was very quickly removed. The image on their website still hasn't been changed to the correct one. They obviously have total contempt for their customers!

Did my first online order with them recently. Checked with Trustpilot afterwards and saw their abyssmal rating so nearly cancelled it. Further checking showed all other supermarkets just as bad so left it. All went very well. They had got all the things I wanted, delivered them on time and all items present and correct (I specified no substitutions). Will use again.

Online Models Ltd, Derby
I recently bought some Berko (ready assembled) colour light signals from them (B302). They were each in a bubble pack. They were posted to me in a padded bag which gave very little physical protection in transit and when forced through my letter box. On opening, two of the bubbles over the signals were crushed and one of the signal heads had broken off. Ironically, the comments on the back of their "Customer Advise (sic) and Guarantee" card supplied with each signal states that you should not use postal bags to return goods!
They debited my credit card five days before dispatching the order.
They didn't tell me when the order had been dispatched or what carrier they used (as far as I could tell it was Royal Mail first class) and so I had no idea when it would arrive. Royal Mail don't redeliver and so you have to go to the nearest sorting office to collect parcels if you are not in.
I emailed them over a two weeks ago and complained but have heard nothing so I thought the problem should be given a wider airing.

Service excellent, but packaging could be better. 1 small item packed in large box. Inadequate packing meant it moved around a lot in the box.

Emails are a very insecure form of communication (which is why more and more organisations are implementing secure message facilities). All information in them can and is used by criminals to carry out fraudulent activity in the sender or recipients name. This has been known for decades. However it is clearly a totally alien concept to eonnext. They insist on sending out monthly bills attached to emails with both the bill and the email containing large amounts of personal and account information, despite the fact that I have set all of my Message Management options on the eonnext website to "No". Other organisations such as banks and cedit card companies just send a very brief email telling you your monthly statement is ready with virtually no personal information in it, and what there is is disguised with *s. If anyone from eonnext reads this, contact the Consumer's Association and ask them to give you a presentation on email and text message security: you obviously haven't got a clue!

8/10/21 Hello, Emma, are you there? I sent you my name and email address on 5/10/21 as you requested but have heard nothing from you. I have written a document to support what I said above, including proof that you have breached accepted email security measures. Contact me and I will send you a copy. Zeus.

Ordered 3 bookazines online and they arrived within the specified time (5-10 working days - actually 5, but included a weekend). Only gave them 4*s as they didn't email me when the goods had been dispatched and tell me who the carrier was and the level of service used by the carrier. I need to know this to ensure I am in when the goods are delivered. (Sent by Royal Mail 48hr service).

I have just received my first monthly bill from eonnext: what a rigmarole! What I was expecting (and wanted) was simple email asking me to submit meter readings. What I actually received was an email containing cartoons, spam, personal information, a bill summary and an attached, estimated bill. The overall format looked as if it was aimed at CBeebies viewers not adults, and it wasted my time scrolling through it all. I thought a major reason for going over to a new system was so that customers didn't get estimated bills. The bill summary information in the email is useless as it only tells me what the bill is in £s. What I need to know is what the estimated meter readings were that it was based on so that I can check them against the actual readings. I had to open the bill itself to find that out.

I entered actual meter readings on their website and was cross-examined on them and had to re-enter them before they were accepted. I then received a similar email to the oringinal with a correction statement attached. I then had to go through both statements to check that they actually reflected the real situation. It would be much easier to undersatand if they just deleted the original statement and produced a single new one covering the full period of the statements.

N.B. This double bill technique has also led to incorrectly calculated bills in the past. If the price of energy goes up between calculating the first and second bills the extra units I tell them about is mostly allocated to the time between the first and second bills, not spread out over the whole billing period as it should be. This resulted in my receiving a higher bill than it should have been. After a period of argument they admitted their software was faulty and financially compensated me for it. Watch out for it in September! This whole business wasted a lot of my time unneccessarily.

Their flagrant disregard for online security intensely annoyed me since I make great efforts to stay secure online. Their emails are full of my personal information (full name, account number, address, postcode), links and also attach a bill with a lot more information in; very useful as a stand alone item. All of this is extremley useful to criminals. These vulnerabilities have been known for many years and I am amazed that whoever designed their software put them in. Many organisations have a secure messaging facility as they know how insecure emails are.

Why not just send a customer a simple, one-line email asking them to submit meter readings via their online account. No cartoons, no spam, no estimated bill attached, no links, no personal information. When the customer has done that, send a customer a simple, single-line message telling them their bill is available via their online account: no cartoons, no spam, no bill attached, no links, no personal information. The customer can then log into their online account, check the bill, download and print it if required, and pay it.

Overall they have made the same mistake that almost all organisations make. They do not put themselves in the position of the customer and ask "what does the customer want, and how can we enable them to do it in the easiest, quickest, simplest and most secure way?"

I have also sent this in as a formal complaint to unhappy at eonnext.com

I tried to order something with a credit card on their website. It wouldn't accept the expiry date of the card. I spent an hour trying all sorts of different things but no go. All other fields went in ok. The card works perfectly well on all other websites. Bought the product elsewhere. This has been going on for a long time. I have complained to Argos about it on several occasions but heard nothing. Anybody else had this problem? I am running Windows 10 and Firefox.
If you read this Argos you need to pass it on to the IT department as it needs technical knowledge to sort it out.

I bought a new Brother laser printer recently and after a short time it started spilling black toner over the printouts ("toner scatter"). I bought a new black cartridge TN-247BK (3,000 page; a Brother one, but not from Brother) as suggested in the manual and swapped it with the original supplied with the printer (TN-BK, 1000 sheet). Still got the same problem so concluded it was not the toner cartridge. Contacted Brother technical support and after a bit of fault finding over the phone they sent a Brother service engineer 120 miles to my home. After a quick examination of the printer he concluded that both black toner cartridges were faulty. He fitted a new 1000 sheet cartridge and it worked O.K. He also ordered a new TN-247BK cartridge for me (free) to replace the faulty one I had bought. Excellent service.

As he was walking up the drive he saw me, stopped, spread his arms and legs akimbo and waved my parcels above his head. Also he had obviously never heard of covid19. When he reached the door he refused to put the parcels on the floor as I requested (twice) but insisted on handing them to me personally. He made no effort to stand back and was not wearing any face covering. I complained to Tuffnells via their website over week ago but have heard nothing. (Probably too many complaints to respond to judging by the comments on this website!) I shall not buy anything from any company that uses Tuffnells as a carrier in the future.

One item was damaged, a second item was the wrong size. The plastic rods were only wrapped in bubble wrap so could easily have been bent or broken in transit. I didn't take this up with bayplastics as I could live with these errors. The biggest problem was the Tuffnells delivery driver . He had obviously never heard of covid19. He insisted on handing the parcels directly to me and would not put them down on the floor as I told him to twice. He did not wear a face mask and made no effort to social distance. I complained to Tuffnells via their website and copied it to bayplastics, but have heard nothing from either after a week. I shall not buy anything from any company that uses Tuffnells as a carrier in the future.