Kevin W

My hot water had become inefficient and my old but very reliable boiler which had just about survived a recent water dowsing from above had very limited support. After some lengthy deliberation I eventually decided to go the Combi boiler route. The Keston boilers are the only ones with small bore flues suitable for small ceiling voids. For substantial work I knew I needed a good installer so I went through Keston's list of installers in London and hand filtered it by Which? Trusted Traders. I read through all the reviews for the first eight firms. The reviews for Flush Heating & Plumbing Ltd on Which and Checkatrade were both very good.

Gareth visited a few days after I called them to do a quick survey. I received a detailed, written quote the next day which was clear on VAT. The price was reasonable and competitive and after another firm didn't turn up for a survey I took up the offer. I paid a small down payment by credit card and agreed on two days the following week for the work.

On the first day a job had over run and they couldn't attend but Gareth and Matt turned up on day two and removed my old system and fitted the new Keston. The condensate pump pipework was left for the next day and that was done in two hours. The speed of their work (and their reviews) shows they are installation specialists. I was impressed on how they managed to remove my old metal flues through small holes in my plasterboard ceiling and all of those holes got converted into (required by regulations) inspection hatches. I had discussed this with Pimlico Plumbers back in 2016 they were going to charge me a fortune to leave gaping holes in my ceiling. I was pleasantly surprised by how minimal the disruption was to cold water and gas during the installation. They cleaned up at the end of the day and explained how the controls worked on the new boiler.

Overall I'd say the job was very well done. The electrical cabling could be a tiny bit neater and there could have been more communication on the one day delay and when to expect them on the day and if any preparation was needed (I removed a shelf that was in the way in advance to speed things along).

As expected, this sort of work is noisy making it incompatible with having meetings from home if you are working from home.

If you just need a tap fitting you can go to almost anyone. If you are spending thousands of pounds on an installation particularly ones with long flue runs then you should invest much more time to find an experienced reliable tradesman.

I used Checkatrade to attempt to get some quotes for a thermal store replacement back in January. This firm was one of the three that the site suggested presumably using some sort of algorithm.

When I called them they seemed to know nothing about the job, it's not clear if that was an issue with Checkatrade or them. I mentioned I was looking for a quote to get a broken thermal store replaced and "it will cost 150 plus VAT per hour" was barked back at me. It was also clear that the person I was talking to did not know what a thermal store was. I queried how this would work for a job that required a component that might take a week or two to arrive and it wasn't clear how long I was going to pay the gas engineer to gawp at my half-working thermal store before ordering a new one. Another curiosity was their web site had the call out rate as 120 plus VAT.

Based on this phone call I would not use this company for replacements/installations or emergency work.

Over the last couple of years we have had a series of problems with our bin stores and a gas cupboard which can be accessed from the street. This has ranged from people sleeping in them, defecating in the area, drug use (I try and avoid the area but I've found two syringes), vandalism. The trend appears to be one of escalation.

Our property manager has done little to address this and does not keep the leaseholders or residents well informed on any actions they may have taken. Some leaseholders get drip fed with information from one other leaseholder via email, I imagine the rest are in the dark. At some point the council may agree for some gates to be moved but until then interim solutions are required.

I'm now reading a report from neighbours about the police recently attending to investigate why eight people were inside the bin store with a load of "new TV boxes" and "drug-related activities" had taken place. I welcome the police's action here but it's concerning to say the least that our property manager's inaction is putting the residents at risk here. I suspect the police have got better things to do and would prefer our property doesn't offer opportunities for illegal activity.

I am now seeing a discussion in email about a harebrained scheme to screw the bin store shut. A previous one had been screwed shut with normal screws, possibly by a desperate resident. It's farcical to think that miscreants with FB keys aren't going to carry or find a screwdriver too. It's bizarre that a property manager is incapable of providing a working bin store door that can be locked with a non-FB lock if necessary.

Ignoring their alleged inspections of the property, they've had 20 days since I told them about it to remove the paint pots that their contractor stored under the stairs here. The paint is still there, of course.

My previous reviews have more background on this.

I have used Screwfix on and off for a few years, more so since sadly abandoning my local neighbourhood DIY shop for its poor service.

I had to return a faulty item today and there was an apology and zero debate. At a few small shops you might be there for ten minutes arguing and then be concerned it would be chucked back into stock for the next mug.

Click and collect appears to be the safest way to guarantee they'll have the items in your local branch when you get there.

I've just had a typical interaction with some people who wanted to inspect our water pump. I told them we didn't have one over the intercom but they were adamant and wouldn't go away. I met them to see if they were the usual miscreants trying to get into our building. I couldn't see them before I opened the door as the small glass window in the door is covered with graffiti. I told them there was electricity equipment in one room and lift equipment in the other. They had a look and they finally agreed with me that there was no water pump to inspect. It sounds like this is part of a project to increase the pressure in another building. It's not a comfortable feeling when the property manager is instructing these people and they don't even know where the existing pumps are. The maintenance here is so poor I'd also have concerns for a new pump if it doesn't always fail with a bypass.

Our property manager tells us regularly not to store things under the (communal) stairs. There is, of course, paint now stored under our stairs which has been there for about three months. That was left by one of their contractors who was doing some touch-up work in the communal areas. There are supposed to be six week inspections which would identify an obvious issue like this...

After 34 months of "property management" some of the leaseholders have finally managed to cajole our property manager to attempt to move our gates with a planning permission application to reduce anti-social behaviour. The previous company, Montalt Management, screwed up a similar application in 2020/2021 and, frankly, the council weren't helpful as they appear to adopt a find-a-reason-to-say-no-to-anything approach.

In email from neighbours I see our property manager threatening legal action against a fellow leaseholder for not paying an additional extraordinary charge that looked remarkably like a duplicate request for payment. In a normal customer relationship you'd think they might spend 2 minutes to just phone you if there was a missing payment, but no, a solicitor's letter appears to be the normal course of action. This is a textbook way to waste time and money collecting funds and damage customer relationships. Clearly, they don't care as the disinterested freeholder is so unlikely to terminate the contract and they don't have to live here.

Innsbruck airport has a useful location in the middle of the ski region in Austria. The baggage handling including oversize is astonishly quick - you'd still be walking around other large airports in the time you've collected your luggage and left Innsbruck.

There's a frequent F bus into town where you can catch a train to many of the resorts or get close enough for a reasonable price taxi ride. Trains are good value in Austria and your ticket can include buses at either end including the F bus. If you use the timetable search (rather than ticket search) on OBB it will also show you the WESTbahn trains - a rival operator.

The airport is in a valley which creates some issues with landing with poor visibility and unusual winds. Occasionally flights will divert into Munich which can leave you in the wrong city (and country).

The lounge always has a slow moving queue to enter on Saturdays in the ski season. The lounge itself is pleasant but it simply isn't big enough if there's a single delayed flight. The food selection is poor and the food is uninspiring.

There are strange notices about a maximum 2.5 hour stay in the lounge. It's rare to be able to check your luggage in that far in advance so for many this will not be an issue. It's unclear how or if they police this bizarre rule.

I've flown with Vueling before and noticed the price of a bag in the hold was more than the ticket which didn't make much sense and the price was higher than any low-cost carrier I had used prior to that. I'd guess I've flown on at least 40 low-cost flights with four carriers, possibly more.

I was booking a flight today and I realised that the price varies for each flight even with the same departure and arrival airport. This is such a blatant way to produce a deceptive headline ticket prices and makes comparing flights exceedingly laborious on their web site unless you are travelling with underseat bag only.

If I look at a set of flights on a day in April, the price of the first hold luggage addon you see is 77, 40, 40 and 63 EUR. I just did some further checks and remarkably the luggage add-ons vary according to the selected currency. For the example flight I'm looking at it's 64.52+77 EUR. If I switch to GBP it's 57.22+85, the 77 EUR luggage addon becomes 101.06 EUR equivalent! Caveat emptor.

Royal Mail / Post Offce weren't looking like great value for a small 2.9kg parcel - over 2kg is the issue here. I thought I'd have a look elsewhere. I found Parcel2go and it appears to search a large array of parcel companies. I avoided the cheapest one as I regard them as sub-mediocre, I chose DHL for my parcel.

I had selected the option to print the label at the "drop shop" as I do not have a working printer at home. One concerning issue was the website showed an icon with "Printer in Shop Unavailable". If that means the shop cannot print labels then the shop should not be listed as the recommended drop shop. If it relates to other printing services unrelated to labels then this should be made clear. This is a very basic feature. Parcel2go/DHL clearly have some data about the printer being present/working. I thought I would simply visit the shop to see what was there.

A lot of not-particularly-useful emails appears. The website had a download for a barcode which sounded essential. I would have preferred the barcode to have been included in the first email barrage.

This morning I visited the first shop nearby and the shutters were down and it looked very closed. The second shop was more of a walk but I headed in that direction. I could peer into the second shop, the lights were off and I could see a small pile of parcels. It was difficult to know if it had been open the previous day, week or month. I then walked to the third shop which by some miracle was actually open. The third shop had a label printer that worked too.

I spent about an hour walking around in the cold. I'm not sure if that's a good use of my time. Based on this experience, I would only recommend Parcel2go to those with spare time to waste. Perhaps I am unlucky but this has left me with a poor first impression of this service.

Note: this service asks for an email for the recipient and sends them a notification including the contents - this reveals the contents and therefore may ruin the surprise of a gift.

I booked an apartment through Expedia a few months ago. I realised it was on Vrbo but I use Expedia a lot and that seemed convenient at the time. The confusion started with a series of emails direct from vrbo. These ones had links which worked to use the messaging feature. The disturbing thing about these links is some went to abritrel and homestay which I have never heard of - this is very bad practise from a security point of view. Expedia should not be encouraging users to click on links on other sites that are unrelated to their booking and that the user is likely to never have heard of.

I am now two days away from the stay and I need some critical information from the apartment's host but the links in the old emails do not work to access the messaging. I just received a fresh email and those also don't work, they try and encourage me to create an account on a French site, a language I don't really speak.

The only good news here is that after 10 minutes wasted with the virtual assistant and looking for phone numbers I eventually found Expedia's phone number on their site and called them. When I finally got through I was told that you can login to their sister sites like Vrbo with just the email address. I had always found the codes they email you annoying as I have a password on Expedia rendering them pointless spam but it turns out these codes in emails allow you to log into other sites even if you do not have an account there. This is a form of account integration which is both functional and pathetic from an IT point of view. They should simply provide links from Expedia that automatically log the user in to the relevant site seamlessly - this is sometimes referred to as single sign-on.

This was a stressful waste of my time and a waste of Vrbo's helpdesk's time.

I found out about Draenog from the BBC story covering Anwen Roberts' designs being stolen and sold on Temu.

I found the web site which has a wide range of products. I ordered some of the hedgehog cards, two types of tree ornaments and a jumper. The cards and ornaments have been appreciated by the ultimate recipients and the jumper owner loves it.

Fast delivery and nicely wrapped inside.

Back in June our front door closer broke and fell off. It had had a few episodes of being poorly attached and I think the movement caused the the loose screws to wear away their holes. I could see some evidence of a previous poor attempt at reattachment but this time the arm was completely broken preventing that.

I reported it via the web portal and answered a puzzling question about where the front door was - there's only one! It was quickly fixed which was good. I looked at it and the new one was significantly smaller and didn't implement or wasn't set correctly for the two speed close. It did close the door properly so I didn't think much more about it.

Two weeks ago the door must have been opened to the fullest extent (common if you're helping someone to bring a large item in) and the door closer made a large dent in the wall spreading plaster dust everywhere. We've just paid for that wall to be decorated and tidied up and now we're going to pay again and perhaps again if they don't fix the real issue. Our property manager had 3-4 months for a regular inspection to check and see this shoddy work.

In the ideal world either the subcontractor would do a good job and fit an appropriate closer in the proper, safe location or this would be inspected on one of the regular inspections and noted as sub-standard work and fixed (for free). In the real world the leaseholders pay for the shoddy work and then pay to have the damage it caused fixed and then maybe pay again and again.

On other matters I have received a section 20 notice of intention. The only description in it is "Required works following an EICR" with no more detail and no suggested places to read more about the project. There happens to be a meeting next week where this is likely to be discussed but I cannot attend that and it's not mentioned. This is a shockingly poor level of detail for a document that by law invites comments. Why is it so difficult to put one page in that explains the work. It begs the question as to whether this is deliberately vague to try to avoid leaseholders submitted observations. I've looked back at a newsletter which does mention some issues and describes the "EICR". Why there was no reference to that newsletter, I do not know.

We also have an uneven flow of information to leaseholders. Some leaseholders are kept more informed than others by the property manager and they forward some information occasionally to another subset of leaseholders. This is bizarre.

We're at 31 months now and I think the property manager is about to arrange a planning permission application to move some gates to reduce the loitering, littering, vandalism, urination and defecation that occurs there. I'd expect the property manager to explicitly ask leaseholders and perhaps residents for comments on this and evidence to support this. Instead I have a leaseholder asking a subset of leaseholders (including me) for this on behalf of the property manager. This is clearly an sub-optimal process and an unfair burden on the leaseholder in question.

In general, I'd say TrustPilot is a useful site. I've been using it for a while both as a conscientious reviewer contributing the content that makes the site useful. And as a cautious reader, largely ignore numeric scores and wading through the reviews in search of the useful and genuine-looking ones. I've contributed 53 reviews over 7 years with 41 helpful votes.

What I don't like is the emails requesting more information that include: "If we don’t hear from you, the company may not be able to recognize your
review as genuine." I know more information can be useful but I don't like the implication I'm authoring fraudulent reviews, nor the threat of removing my carefully crafted, helpful review. It's also odd given there are highly dubious reviews on this site.

I know we are still in the interim period where we all try and work out how to get high quality, unbiased, ideally long-term reviews for very low cost or free. I don't think that aim is improved by sending emails like the aforementioned one to valued reviewers like me.

I bought a nice ESA t-shirt a few years back. I had a look at the current online shop and there are some nice designs. After some confusion using the website over having to choose a size and colour for a t-shirt only available in one size and one colour I put a child-size t-shirt in my basket for 22.41 pounds - expensive but I was hoping the quality would be good "from ESA". The postage came up as 19 pounds!! I know it's from Italy but even if Giorgia Meloni delivered it by hand to the UK I'm not going to pay 19 pounds for that. Farcical.

There is a link on the site to what they refer to as the vintage range. That is a completely different site and the one I ordered from last time. They currently have free shipping (from Germany). No brainer!

I've been a Majestic customer for many years. I lost my local one and now do occasional orders over the internet for delivery. I ordered some items on the website on Wednesday for Christmas.

The first issue I noticed during the ordering process was a default selection on an "accept substitutions". I certainly didn't want any for my wine and I missed unticking the default of yes the first time I was preparing my order. That needs to either be more clear or have a default of no. I can see other people ordering some beer for an unimportant event might want this, but I don't. I think some sites offer per product substitution.

The order acknowledgement email appeared with a vague delivery date range of 1st to 6th. I thought checking my account on the website would help narrow this down but that gave and still gives "We're sorry, an unexpected error occurred" if I view my order.

I phoned the shop once and they said it was due to go out on Friday. It's Friday and I haven't received any emails or SMS to tell me to expect a delivery. I called them again (Friday 3pm) just to check it was on its way - it is so I just had to wait around at home.

Just after 5pm the delivery turned up. The delivery guy had already spotted one bottle was missing, fortunately. Unfortunately, I've now go to hang around for another day for the missing bottle.

I like Majestic but this isn't a great ordering/delivery experience. This low standard might have been common 30 years ago but it isn't acceptable anymore, more so for a high value delivery. I like that I can phone them and speak to someone quickly but it's not always efficient and it would be nice if the website just worked so I didn't need to do that. If there were delivery notifications the day before and on the day that would be useful.

There were also 2 out of stock bottles on a mix-six offer. It would have been good to have some way to efficiently order those as part of my order.

All of this is a cue to try elsewhere next time.

I used to occasionally buy Seggiano extra virgin oil but then switched to Pasquini. I haven't found a good source for the latter since Camisa and Sons sadly closed. I had a look around at the super market offerings and noticed the now mini-chain Lina had no choice bar their own and decided to go back to Seggiano.

I saw the products on Amazon but thought I'd go direct to their website. The shipping is a bit slow compared to modern online (mail order) retailers, it arrived 5-6 days after ordering which was fine for me.

The two oils I got are excellent but the packaging is disappointing.

I've noticed a lot of packaging over the last 2-4 years has switched from plastic to various forms of biodegradable packaging based on cardboard and paper. It's possible the foam pieces are made of cornstarch but there's a lot of standard bubble wrap in there. I buy from other retailers that are happy to ship high value products in glass bottles without using plastic packaging. This all seems especially odd for brands that are organic.

As a regular car renter I'm now seeing many of the issues that occur. I've always been thoughtful about choice of parking spot but after an unusual incident with SIXT I've become even more careful and selective.

I hired a car back in June from Enterprise at the Lille Europe rail station to go to Reims and visit the Champagne area. The trip went well and I thoroughly recommend it, particularly Billecart-Salmon and My Vintage Tour Company. On the last day I went to pick up my car from the local car park. I'd parked up against a wall to minimise my chance of damage. My car on the non-wall side had a scratch about 2 inches at waist level on the rear door, down to the metal but not dented! It was difficult to believe it was accidental but also wasn't long enough to be typical "keying" vandalism.

I returned the car and showed them the damage. Enterprise have a good policy on minor damage and they have a physical card they use to assess the size. My scratch length was right at the edge and was referred to the manager.

I was pleasantly surprised when I found I hadn't been charged for this damage. I do have an independent excess insurance policy which are great value but I'm not sure what a claim would do when it comes to renewals. NB: these policies are typically only valid for covering an excess, if there's no cover at all like SIXT sometimes offer then they aren't valid.

I now hire from Enterprise all the time due to their damage policy and more spacious car park. The staff at Lille are also very friendly.

After ignoring the poor state of our buildings for about 2 years this property manager finally started some work to tidy it up which is now complete. I thought it was 50 thousand for our building but they asked for 66 thousand in the end. For that it was painted, we got a new backdoor, a new mat and three corridors and stairs covered in grey plastic flooring with visible tile edges and patterns on it that look like light-coloured mud.

We previously had what looked liked a cheap office carpet which had never been cleaned, we now have the 70s-80s East German apartment look. I wasn't consulted on that expensive replacement and I'd say they did not pay regard to my comments on it.

The bin store chaos has moved to a different bin store and the car park gate by it now is often broken. The previous one and the meter cupboard next to it were screwed shut. Locks have been in use for security for a few thousand years, I don't know why (standard) screws are in vogue here.

They've had 30 months to do something about this car park gate which has a history of problems partly due to its problematic recessed positioning attracting loitering criminals but nothing has been done. There's been bizarre amounts of rubbish in this area, signs of defecation and the recent piece de resistance was was two littered syringes. I reported those to the police a few weeks ago and then tidied them up myself a few days later to avoid another excessive charge from our property manager.

We've very recently received a bill for an extra 50% on top of the annual service charge for a myriad of expenses that allegedly could not be predicted/modelled.

The only positive is they do not appear to be dishonest so far, unlike our previous deceitful property manager, Montalt Management.

One of my new neighbours has realised she regrets buying here. Her building has a lift that's been broken for ages. I don't blame her, I wish I lived elsewhere too.

I like writing reviews on TripAdvisor, i.e. providing them with the content for free that enables their business and in my case the reviews are genuine unlike a few iffy ones I see on certain areas of their site.

I don't like the fact that they have no feature to download the reviews I have carefully written. I would like to store these myself too.

It's difficult to understand how they can comply with Europe's GDPR article 20 Right to data portability without this feature.

We have the misfortune to have Freehold Managers PLC Ltd as our freeholder. It took an eternity for them to acknowledge that the previous property manager, Montalt Management were a disaster (see my many reviews for the details). They only allowed leaseholders to select a new one from their preferred pool and we ended up with Principle Estate Management LLP.

It's been 24 months and they are just about to start doing some much needed maintenance work on our tatty buildings. In that period little has changed or improved. We've had a single leaseholder survey. I welcome those but that one felt a bit like a lazy way of doing a property inspection. They've spent our money on the eternal search for asbestos in our modern buildings and pointless inspections of our standard brick wall insulation - latter is a reaction to cladding (Lakanal, Grenfell, etc) but our buildings are standard low-rise, brick with no cladding.

Recently, we've had three months of bin store chaos partly due to mismanagement of the keys/access with local council. My mother would comment on some of the cobwebs here but that's the least of our issues. I've observed other residents dumping their rubbish on the street which is probably a reaction to the trauma involved in a bin store visit. Anyone on a short-term tenancy must be pondering a move.

They are very slow to respond to correspondence and their procedural approach to Section 20 work is iffy at best. This leaves the work prone to delays from challenges at a tribunal.

For a small four storey building they are about to ask for around fifty thousand pounds to paint the communal areas, replace a rear door and swap our carpets for lino. I have seen no evidence of majority support for that last change. A few leaseholders have commented that the property manager allocated to us is the best one so far. It will be interesting to see how that work goes.

I have been hiring cars around the world for the last 25 years without a problem but after a recent incident scratching a car as I returned and parked it in the Lille Europe rail station car park (see my prior reviews for details), I've learnt a lot about SIXT and the industry and realised I need to be a far more cautious consumer. A renter is exposed to a lot of risk when hiring from companies that are willing to abuse the asymmetry between a large international company and the individual.

A recent email from SIXT is asking for payment for the aforementioned damage. I have already paid that as I could not risk them setting some aggressive debt collection agency on me - they had made that threat despite the case being disputed currently at the European Car Rental Conciliation Service (ECRCS). Do they want me to pay twice? Is this just basic incompetence? And will SIXT actually refund me fully or partially if the ECRCS judgement requires it?

That email also seems to prejudge the ECRCS case. I'm not sure why SIXT feel the need to tell me their opinion about the dispute, there's very obvious (short-term) commercial bias to their point of view.

Another serious issue not unique to SIXT is the lack of briefing and checking of existing damage at the time of rental and return. I am not in this position but I can clearly see the risk at SIXT of returning a car and then getting an invoice for damage that occurred after I left the car in the car park as they do not inspect immediately on return in the presence of the renter. I now take photos of all existing damage and do a short video walk-around at collection and return time to try to protect myself from this. This feels way too onerous on the user of the service but I would say this is essential nowadays with these sloppy procedures.

One issue that may be unique to SIXT is third-party only insurance. Another reviewer highlights that this invalidates the useful extra car insurance excess policies that can be bought nowadays. The tedious car insurance hard sell by the rental industry (clearly a nice money spinner for them) seems to have softened in my recent experience but SIXT are offering a service that is very sub-standard with their third-party only insurance. That's obviously just an aid for SIXT's hard-sell of their over-priced insurance.

There are some similar issues with other car rental companies with respect to the inspection regime.

I will no longer use SIXT based on this experience. I'd prefer not to have the threat over Christmas of a debt collector trying to collect payment for something that I have already paid for. Disgraceful is a gross understatement to describe this behaviour.