Kevin W

A follow-up to my previous review. I'd been told to wait 14 days for a refund which seemed a bit odd given the efficiencies achieved in the 21st century and this modern world of streamlined, straight through processing. Nothing turned up so I tried emailing the email address that had been recommended for help. Nothing happened there so I opened my first ever eBay case. I didn't want to spend any more of (emphasis) my time chasing (emphasis) my money and I wanted eBay to have some data on this vendor.

Capitalism may have its faults, reviews on the world wide web are certainly fraught with authenticity issues (even on TrustPilot), but I hope those two will come together to eliminate the frustration of those gullible enough to engage in business with the UK incarnation of this company.

Ordered two components for central heating a while back. Arrived quickly and both parts were what I ordered/wanted.

Their delivery company seemed easily confused by delivering to a large business address. The two boxed components were delivered in a rather flimsy clear plastic bag. Perhaps their slightly clueless courier looks after items and this is reasonable but I've not seen that before. I don't like over packaging for environmental reasons but I think this one swung too far the other way, there are lots of strong plastic bags used for packaging.

A nice range of affordable electronic kits particularly for the BBC micro:bit. In particular, the zip "pixel" LEDs are a useful, cheap alternative to Adafruit NeoPixel and with some being purpose designed for the micro:bit. The (no soldering required) :MOVE buggy kit looks fun too and makes for a nice gift.

Ordering process worked well, good email updates, quick delivery. Only obvious omission is some way to either order out of stock items or see an indication of the likely restock date or subscribe to stock updates.

I've been buying books from Book People for a while now. They don't have the range of the larger online book sellers but they do have very good prices particularly on books which were targeted for last Christmas or things like Atlases which are due for an update. Hot-off-press Robot Wars: Build Your Own Robot was offered at a very good price recently so there's a bit of deep discounting on new books too.

Short version: avoid.

I found Printerpix from a well regarded shopping referral site (not Groupon). I thought the jigsaws would make a nice gift and ordered a few in early October. After a few weeks I had not received any indication of a delivery date so I called them up on their expensive, advertised 0844 number. A polite person told me they were busy and they would be on their way shortly without being specific. I followed up once more over the online contact form and got same polite vagaries. I repeated this as two months was approaching without any indication of a delivery date with a "sort it out or cancel it" message. I then called them to cancel on a free phone number 0800 2922452. I was pleasantly surprised how easy that was. A mysterious up to 14 day period was mentioned for refunds. I'm currently in that period waiting...

I can't work out if this company is genuine or not but they do not give indications of delivery dates, their timescales are completely out of line with modern expectations and customers face both time wasting and frustration in any interaction. At best they are a case study for an MBA project on how not to run a business and how to trash a possibly franchised brand.

Fortunately I still have enough time with another company to get these for Christmas. I'll post my experience of other company when/if the jigsaws arrive!