Reuben Frankau

In fairness to Bettervits, from October 2023 to December 2024, I placed numerous orders, each of them on a one-off basis, & never had any trouble at all. There is a very very obvious box to tick if you don't want to subscribe! The number of people complaining on Trustpilot that they were signed up against their wishes is baffling. Did they not bother to tick the right box on the form? How hard can it be to do that?!?

Delivery always very speedy, & the Omega 3 does seem to make a difference: one time, I decided not to order any more (because I wasn't sure it was making much difference, plus I was short of money), & within a week I was creaking badly! So I ordered more straight away. Whether it's the best Omega 3 available I don't know (busy researching that question right now!), but it has helped me noticeably.

From the number of whingers who also say they couldn't get through to Bettervits customer service to resolve their issue, it sounds like there could be a communication problem the company needs to address, but that's not been my experience, my experience in over 12 months has been 100% positive.

p.s. I am not a shareholder or a drinking buddy of the Managing Director! Just someone with achy joints...

Yodel driver dumps a parcel on the ground at the roadside, not even within SIGHT of my house, instead of delivering it to the very very clearly signposted safe place. And then he actually claims he has left the parcel in my safe place! Which is blatantly UNTRUE!!! Dear Yodel driver, if you aren't interested in actually delivering parcels, I really suggest you should look for a different job, because you are ABSOLUTELY RUBBISH at your current job. You are a total disgrace, and so is Yodel.

It wastes so much TIME when this happens, emailing back & forth, hunting round the village, asking neighbours, etc. etc. etc. And quite often, claiming a refund because the item cannot be traced! Tedious and time-consuming.

From November 2020 to date, numerous complaints about Yodel have made zero difference: they just keep dumping parcels wherever they like, they never come to the actual address, and Yodel apparently is fine with this level of service. In January this year, after yet another failed Yodel delivery, I tried writing to the Stockton depot manager directly, to see if we couldn't fix the problem once and for all. Response: zero! Stockton depot manager ignored my letter, and now the same problem has recurred yet again. Stockton depot manager doesn't care what his drivers do with people's parcels.

DPD you have really surpassed yourselves this time! Instead of delivering the parcel to the wrong house, you have CLAIMED you delivered it to the wrong house, without ACTUALLY delivering it to anybody at all!!! Your photo shows an empty stretch of track on the common land behind my house. Thanks to Amazon, I've already got a refund on the item. Honestly, I'd prefer to have actually RECEIVED the item.

Your customer service is also 100% useless, your complaints resolution system is a sham that achieves NOTHING other than wasting yet more time...

When the delivery instructions SPECIFICALLY REQUEST you to leave the parcel in the VERY VERY CLEARLY signposted place, AND NOWHERE OTHER THAN in that very clearly signposted place, why on earth would you ignore those simple instructions??? On second attempt, Amazon wisely sent the order by Royal Mail, who successfully deliver here six days a week. IF ROYAL MAIL CAN ACHIEVE THIS, WHY CAN'T DPD?????????

Despite my house having a very very clearly signposted Safe Place for parcels, and despite the fact every other delivery service manages to deliver here reliably week after week, Yodel persistently FAILS to deliver.

Why not recruit drivers who are capable of actually delivering a parcel?

After at least three missing parcels this year, the latest excuse is the driver "can't get his van down our lane." This is funny, because I can get a 35-seater bus down it, the coal man can get his wagon down OK, my next-door neighbour has heating oil delivered down here by tanker, and the little red Royal Mail van gets down here just fine, six days a week!

And, on the day in question, I had a Royal Mail delivery and an Evri delivery, so clearly the lane was not blocked that day. The driver is a f***ing liar: it's as simple as that, sadly.

Without any warning whatsoever, they deemed my account "dormant", even though there were regular payments going into it!

I have spent the past EIGHTEEN MONTHS (as at March 2025) trying to get access to my own f***ing money. These people seem to take a sadistic delight in making that impossible.

If it's a choice between Lloyds Bank or just keeping your money under the mattress, my advice is: mattress every time!

Bone-idle idiot driver keeps dumping parcels at the local pub, which is a mile away, instead of actually delivering them to my house, which is less than 100 yards from the main road, for crying out loud!

The idea of a parcels service is YOU TAKE THE PARCEL TO THE ADDRESS ON THE LABEL, surely?!

p.s. The response from Yodel below led to zero action and made zero difference, they really are just a rubbish outfit.

After TWO YEARS of grossly inaccurate estimated readings and insane bills, at long last an actual meter reader came on 22nd February. A month later, on 20th March, the company printed YET ANOTHER insane bill, once again using grossly inaccurate ESTIMATED meter readings.

WHAT'S THE POINT OF SENDING A METER READER TO RESOLVE A HISTORICAL BILLING ISSUE, IF YOU DON'T BOTHER MAKING ANY USE OF THE ACTUAL READINGS HE TAKES???!!!???

p.s. Two months later (22nd May) the same problem still persists, despite Ombudsman ruling in my favour and awarding £100 compensation which I've never received. Everything & everyone powered by sheer stupidity.

Rang to ask about blatantly excessive charges on my elderly father's account, was repeatedly told they couldn't discuss his account with me, EVEN THOUGH they have a letter on file from him dated 9th September 2021 (i.e. nearly 18 months ago) authorizing me to manage his account on his behalf.

"If you are not allowed to discuss my father's account with me," I kept asking, "then why do you keep sending his bills to me at my house? Doesn't that suggest to you that I actually AM managing his account already?"

The zombie at the other end had no answer to that, just kept stonewalling: refused to put me through to someone higher up, refused to verify any of the info I was providing.

After THREE telephone calls, by some miracle got through to someone with some brain cells & willing to help. Took him mere moments to find my father's 2021 letter authorizing me to manage the account.

Did this finally enable me to discuss what I urgently needed to discuss? Alas, no!!!

No straight answers, tariffs quoted which bear NO relation to what's actually being charged on the bills, and worst of all, the answer I received to the main fundamental question I'd rung up to ask was UNTRUE. I know this, because an engineer gave me the true answer five years ago, while we were standing right next to my father's actual meter.

So: an afternoon wasted, a serious problem still unresolved, and false information given to the customer by this tragic excuse for a company.

There are no polite words to describe how totally rubbish these people are. Rather than sign up with this shower of [you-know-what], why not just burn your house down? It'll be cheaper, simpler, and a whole lot less stressful.

UPDATE 24th March: still waiting to hear from the "complex metering team", nearly two months after this was promised (see below) ... and anyhow, what is so damned "complex" about reading someone's meter, sending accurate bills, and quoting the correct tariffs?!?

These people are evidently recruited from the same gene pool as those employed by the electricity companies: they can't read or write or spell, they never grasp what your complaint is fundamentally about, they don't look at the evidence properly (sometimes they even deny having received it—despite having earlier sent letters acknowledging receipt!), they willingly accept the company's version of events even when it self-evidently doesn't add up, and they take an excessively long time to achieve ultimately NOTHING (other than wasting your time).

In the past two years, I've taken two complaints to them, one on my own behalf and one on behalf of an elderly parent. In both cases, the original investigation missed the fundamental point of the complaint and ultimately made no difference to the problem. You aren't allowed to complain about the same thing twice—even if the same thing is still happening, because they failed to fix it before!

So, both complaints had to be taken back to Ombudsman Services, dolled-up to look like new complaints. The second investigation of my father's problem proved to be an even bigger waste of time than the first: after two years, and two successive investigations, he still has disputed arrears of £3,000 hanging over him, for reasons we still do not know—jolly well done, Ombudsman Services!

Meanwhile, THREE successive investigations of my own complaint have achieved absolutely nothing. Nor has complaining to Ombudsman Services about their total ineffectiveness: they appear to regard it as normal.

The best you can hope for is (eventually...) a paltry £50 or maybe £150 "goodwill" payment, which will barely cover your stationery and postage costs—to say nothing of your time or your stress—and which clearly makes no difference to the electricity company itself: they'll just carry on exactly as before.

If the purpose of an ombudsman is to get justice for the little guys, and hold the big guys to account—well, this so-called service is NOT fit for that purpose.

UPDATE 24th March 2023: still no further forward, several more illiterate letters from Ombudsman Services and several more totally inaccurate electricity bills, but no actual progress whatsoever...

Is having electricity even worth this much hassle?!

They can't read, they can't write, they can't add up. FOURTEEN MONTHS of grossly inaccurate bills, letters being ignored, and all the same problems persisting, even after going to the Ombudsman; don't waste your time trying to ring, either, because having an intelligent conversation will NOT be possible (try banging your head against a wall for an hour: it'll be more fun, it'll be quicker, and it can't achieve any less). How is a company this bad even allowed to carry on in business as an electricity supplier? It's enough to make you believe in Nationalization!

These people are just utterly, utterly clueless.

UPDATE 19th January 2023: several months down the line, the same problems all still remain unresolved: so, that's now TWO YEARS of consistent incompetence on the part of this electricity supplier. I've never yet had an accurate bill from them; they've ignored more than 20 letters; their estimated meter readings bear no relation to my actual consumption, and when I give them a meter reading they ignore it.

How can any electricity company be this terrible? Is it an ambition they are actively pursuing?!?