Kevin W

In my last review I described how I damaged a car but how SIXT had created a scenario where this was highly likely to happen to anyone. If this was the UK I would have simply taken them to court as I understand the system here and have used it successfully several times against various misbehaving large companies. However, an international business effectively hides behind the extreme hassle and high costs of contracts under a different, distant legal system.

After some reflection I disputed the damage to SIXT inspired partly by the difficult-to-parse comment left by SIXT on TrustPilot. Their prompt response was a pointless quotation of their contract conditions.

I had discovered the European Car Rental Conciliation Service (ECRCS) which caters for disputes for cross-border rentals and thought this was worth a go. I registered a complaint with them about two weeks ago and we are waiting for a review of the case. When I say "we are waiting" I mean I am waiting and SIXT are emailing me threats. Today I received a demand for the damage payment and the promise of costly use of a debt collection agency. For a case that they acknowledge is being disputed this is disgraceful behaviour. The amount of 626 EUR is relatively low but imagine if it was for the whole car - they'd be asking for tens of thousands of euros and the ECRS could rule against them a week later and the renter would then deal with the struggle to get a refund. This is just bizarre.

The also included a charming statement that this puts at risk future rentals in the sense they will not allow me to rent from them. That's not an issue in a large place like Lille Europe Station but that could be very problematic in a smaller place where there are only two rental operators.

This feels very typical of the bullying tactics of a large company who is aware of and enjoys abusing the asymmetry in the relationship between the individual renter vs the behemoth with an international legal team at hand.

I heard about the Chernobyl Spirit Company a few years ago when the BBC News web site covered their launch and their brush with bureaucracy. Christmas is coming and I needed a few gifts so I ordered some 50cl bottles of the Apple Vodka (42%) directly from their web site. It took about two weeks to arrive, turned up last week. I tasted some at the weekend and it's very good, the apple taste is there with a delicate sweetness, far more subtle than the common schnapps I'm used to. This is far from the diluted industrial alcohol labelled as vodka that's pervasive on off licence shelves.

This is a great product if you want a unique, boutique vodka with flavour supporting a social enterprise, the regeneration of the Chernobyl region and now the rest of Ukraine.

A few decades back it was common to hear talk about how large US companies could deliver an item to the UK quicker than most local competitors. The world has changed a lot since then.

However, I ordered some obscure items on Monday morning (due to no stock elsewhere) and they surprised me by turning up early this Wednesday morning from the US. Very impressive.

And nice to see the use of non-plastic protective packaging.

I've hired from a few places at Europe Lille Station including Sixt before. This time was a bit different and ended up with an extra charge of 626EUR for a one day hire of 115 EUR. Ouch.

I certainly damaged the car as I returned it but it's worth examining how that occurred as it's a salutary lesson for any prospective users of this service here and applies to the other companies who use this particular car park, the one that's part of the station.

The Sixt area was almost full when I returned the car. I think in the past I looked for an easy space with two adjacent spaces and had no problem. This time it was a choice of two spaces. I had a go at the first space between two cars and realised it was very tight and the manoeuvring is hard in this car park as there's not much space between the rows. I moved to the second end space which had a wall to one side and a large car on the other. This was also very tight. The parking sensors are near useless when things are this cramped and I shuffled back and forth maybe 8 times before I thought I had it lined up with a slight turn. I was on my own so had no one to guide me and as I reversed I heard the scraping of the right hand side against the wall (no corner padding there) and felt an inevitable bill coming my way.

I mentioned this in the office as I returned the keys and we went to have a look together. It looked bad but most of it was the dusty white paint from the wall which brushed off. I could feel the scratches were proper ones with my finger nail, no dents that I noticed. The Sixt member of staff thought she could squeeze into the driver side but I told her I had exited from the passenger door as it was too tight. She also had to use the passenger door. That's a good indicator of how tight that space was. I hadn't noticed it but the car in the next space had its tyres on the white line - I think everything would have been fine if it was centrally parked.

So the moral of the story is this car park can be easy or highly problematic/unforgiving. It's built in a compact way probably under commercial pressure intended for medium size cars but populated by some large cars that may not be centrally parked in their bay plus there's a lot of concrete walls and pillars. I asked if I could leave the car where they wash the cars in the future if it was tight and she said this was possible but inadvisable as I would still have liability for them moving/parking it.

I would advise against using all of the car rental places at Europe Lille in the off peak season who use the station car park OR make sure you linger until a decent, viable space appears - this may put you past your rental time and incur a charge, of course. If there's more than one of you and it's tight then get luggage and passengers out first and have them guide you in very slowly.

Enterprise and Budget (and maybe one other) use the car park under the nearby casino. It's a 5 minute walk outside and slightly inconvenient with luggage but it's more spacious and you can use the toilets for free. With Enterprise I have always left the car with staff unparked.

I was looking for the new Behringer JT-4000 MICRO Synth as it's a great gift for those getting into synths. I had a look at Amazon (UK) and they don't even list it. I had a look at Juno and sadly no stock. I did a bit of searching and a few places came up but few had stock. Anderton's came to the rescue and I placed an order at the weekend.

I realised I wanted something else and consolidating the orders to get free postage was attractive. The web site can't do this which is frustrating but a phone call and the first order was cancelled. It doesn't update on the web site which is a bit poor but it did get cancelled. I placed a new order for two synths on Monday which qualified for free delivery and they arrived the next day.

It's an interesting twist that knowledgeable specialists now have better stock and better prices sometimes than the behemoth box-shifter Amazon.

I wanted a few lighting supplies and found AJ's Studio & Camera Supplies after a bit of searching. The prices were good and the (standard) delivery turned out to be fast and efficient.

The packaging was thoughtful to protect the products. One filter swatch pack fell out of its protection and got a little bit squashed.

My main issue is they signed me up to their mailing list twice, my email for the order plus my paypal account. I didn't want that, minus two stars for that.

I used to use Cafepress for t-shirts but the range seems to have diminished in recent years and there's something weird going on where some products are shown but aren't available in Europe, hence I went looking elsewhere and found Redbubble.

Ordering and delivery (to the UK) was fine for three t-shirts. They arrived as two packages for one order for some reason. The quality of the adult t-shirts isn't great. They are branded Gildan and 100% cotton. I have a few of those but these ones feel unusually rough and that gives them a "cheap" feel - I don't think I'd buy a t-shirt like this if I picked it up in a shop and definitely not if it was for a gift. The printing isn't vivid although it's difficult to judge that on a small, simple design (a line of text). That's one star off. The feel of the children's t-shirt was far nicer, it's branded Live and Tell, LAT Apparel.

Looking back at my emails, I have the order acknowledgement and shipped ones (good), and the review/feedback one (ok but will they actually act on anything I say??). As is sadly typical I have four junk ones advertising/promoting stuff already and if I don't act I'm bound to get a stream of these now. I have to pray that I can actually unsubscribe from these successfully. That's another star gone.

I've just looked at the site again and there are some options for different t-shirts. I must have left them on the default, the Classic T-shirt. There are some more expensive options, perhaps those are nicer or maybe they aren't, who knows?

I'll probably give Redbubble one more go before I try elsewhere.

I flew in and out of Geneva Airport around Christmas time for the first time with BA. Arriving went well and I have no issue there. On my journey home I thought I'd be responsible and allow plenty of time to get to the airport in case of a delay. I turned up 3 hours early and was told I couldn't check in my luggage for another 45 or 60 minutes, I forget the detail now. As a business class customer I don't expect that and I don't really want to pay for that shoddy service. The handling of oversize luggage was rather haphazard too, of all the places in the world you'd think it was very organised and regimented there.

For comparison, I flew via Heathrow two months later where, as you'd expect, I checked my heavy luggage in 4 hours ahead of the flight and then went off to the business lounge for lunch.

Others might need to work and sitting in a crappy corner of Geneva airport waiting for another stroll over to the check-in desk isn't optimal.

I've used Austrian trains on holiday over last decade and have found them to be reliable, comfortable, punctual and occasionally very busy at peak times. The trains have very good digital displays and they have announcements in English for tourists.

Perhaps to state the obvious it is worth getting a reservation on long journeys or at peak times. Like any train this can still be problematic if you have loads of huge luggage as it may be tricky on a packed train to store your luggage near your seat.

For long journeys there are discount tickets available in advance, maybe at least 2-3 weeks? I think my Vienna to Worgl (just under 4 hours) last year was only about 40 euros.

The transport system seems fully integrated and the tickets can be end to end. That includes buses at no extra cost so there's no need to buy separate bus tickets for a journey.

I have found once I could not buy a ticket from a machine in Munich (Germany) station to Austria because there were no seats left. The ticket counter did sell me a ticket and said I might have to stand. In the end the train wasn't super busy. Puzzling. I thought I'd share this tip.

I've used Enterprise a few times now near Lille Europe rail station. The first time was very good (see my previous review) but I've now seen a few issues.

First issue was I accidentally hired an EV car without noticing. That's probably my fault but anything that can be done to make that super clear on the web site would be great. They found a manual petrol car to deal with range anxiety.

The car I ended up with, a Renault Clio, popped up some odd amber warning as I drove out of the level -4 car park. I wasn't sure what this was but it looked like a routine maintenance reminder or some issue with the car's "emergency phone home" system. Both sounded non critical so I continued with my driving. The biggest problem here was the warning would sometimes go away and then flash back on perhaps every minute or two. That's distracting and potentially dangerous. Eventually this settled down and an SOS thing near the mirror went green.

When I returned the car the member of staff mentioned it was due to Enterprise not paying for the subscription. I can understand that a rental car company would not necessarily wish to do this but it's important not to distract the driver so either this functionality needs to work or be properly disabled. Perhaps this is an issue Renault needs to address but either way it needs dealing with.

The last car I hired had a minor issue with not thinking the boot was closed. Reclosing it firmly seemed to deal with that. I also had a problem with rear windscreen wiper but that then worked later when it actually rained so perhaps that was user error?

I also had a car previously which came up with a tyre pressure warning. That wasn't a flat just a low pressure. I pumped up all four to the manufacturer's recommended level at a Carrefour petrol station and all four were low at around 1.6 bar. Would be nice if this was checked a bit more often by Enterprise.

Some better signage would be useful in the (Casino) car park that the rental car companies use. I've had one occasion where the Casino had fenced off the ramp down to lower levels and I ended up driving out of the car park in a confused state! If the Casino is going to put barriers up occasionally then it would be good if there was both signs on the wall for rental parking and the barrier itself in the way had a note on it in at least French and English indicating to ask for it to be temporarily moved. This is the sort of thing that could easily cause people to miss their Eurostar train.

It would also be very useful if Enterprise staff could change the car's computer system into the appropriate language for the driver. This can take a while to find if you're not familiar with the car and it's easy to forget to do this before driving off. They already check mileage so this would be a quick, low effort task.

I bought a t-shirt as a gift which I'm sure was fine. The tedium started afterwards with the unsolicited bulk emails. These reached a frequency of several a week. At that point I made a formal complaint to the intermediary as it was not only annoying but it looked like it violated the T&C. A second attempt at unsubscribing from this drivel appeared to work...

Months later I've received another email from them begging for 5 star reviews and mentioning 10 USD coupons.

This is not the way to conduct business. I will never buy anything from them again.

Good value at Little Europe station. The office is just outside the station, a few more minutes walk than some of the other car hire companies but it's still easy to get to. They use the Casino Barriere's underground car park opposite on level minus four. Friendly staff and I was pleased to find a very good standard of English, great for tourists.

Finding the car park entrance to return the car can be a bit tricky. Worth paying attention to the leaflet they hand out with directions to avoid 15 minutes of driving in circles.

A few weeks ago someone buzzed my intercom wanting to enter the building to inspect the smoke ventilation system. I told him there wasn't one but he said he'd buzz everyone else so I said I'd meet him on the top floor. I thought he was just trying to con his way into the building but I found him and he agreed there wasn't one. This a minor example of Montalt Management's incompetence - sending a contractor to inspect something that does not exist.

A more concerning issue is a "statement of estimates" which appeared last week in the post. I was initially very puzzled by this as there's been no notice for any work recently, apart from a fiasco with our lift in 2020. I looked more closely and it's referring back to notifications in/around early 2018! I'm not sure what Montalt Management have been doing for the 3+ years since but this sort of delay is very typical. Apparently each leaseholder is going to be expected to pay around 7.5 thousand pounds for internal decoration, renewal of carpets and upgrades to communal lights. There's roughly one communal light per leaseholder...

Montalt Management keep our property in poor condition so I have no disagreement that some touch up work is needed and it's outrageous that they don't do this on a regular basis. In the past, I have documented this to prove that they do not conduct the regular property inspections that they are contracted to do. As for our carpets, they are grubby but not worn, they would benefit from a *clean*. I struggle to see how that could ever cost 7.5 thousand pounds per leaseholder. The last time they replaced our carpet, six months later it looked the same as the prior one - a wholly pointless and expensive exercise funded by the leaseholders.

I wrote to them recently to describe and show them the blistering paint in my flat and my neighbour's. They dismissed that concerning damage and clearly stated they were not going to do anything despite the position being indicative of water leaking into the cavities of the external walls. This has happened after they used 10 thousand pounds of my money to replace a non-leaking roof and that work happened to include work on the parapet walls...

I've lived in eight places in three countries over my lifetime. Oddly, the one with the poorest property management is the only one I've ever owned. This is the joy of Montalt Management. In my opinion, it would be wise to avoid purchasing properties or entering long-term rental contracts for properties managed by this atrocious company.

Click on "Read 4 more reviews about Montalt Management" below to read more detail on previous debacles entitled, "Twelve, then eight months without a lift, now broken again", "Incompetent, negligent and deceitful - not a good combination", "Unable or unwilling to maintain our vehicle gates" and "Very low competence". YMMV but I doubt it.

I think I found PostScript (PS) Books because they are on Amazon or eBay. I normally order directly with a company if they have the same prices and delivery options - I've now placed two orders with them and have been satisfied on both occasions.

They have a good range of books and some of the (heavy) hardbacks are excellent value. Delivery charges are low and reasonable particularly for a decent size order. Well worth a rummage for Christmas gifts.

Our lift is broken again and there's been no notification from our property manager, Montalt Management, about when this will be fixed. Anywhere else this would not be a concern as lifts are normally fixed in a day or two, but this is far from the case if your property is maintained by Montalt Management.

The lift was out of action in 2020 and eventually a letter from Montalt Management turned up in August 2020 giving notice of proposed work with a single sentence describing the work, no justification and no estimate of cost. The lifts here are serviced and this sort of work would normally be planned in advance and carefully scheduled by any competent property manager. My past experience indicates Montalt are not trustworthy and I wanted to see a justification of the work and an independent, unedited one. After some further badgering and a letter to our freeholder Montalt finally forwarded a detailed report, albeit one dated after their demand for money. That whole palaver left us without a lift for about 8 months.

The previous episode left us without a lift for 12 months. A mysterious, partial explanation about "reprogramming" was used then. It'll be interesting if they beat their prior record this time around.

I now need to spend my evening writing to them to tell them how to investigate a possible water leak. I paid ten thousand pounds for some recent work to replace a non-leaking roof and 18 months later there are multiple signs of water damage here. Tut.

Click on "Read 3 more reviews about Montalt Management" to read more about their other debacles including the previous one entitled, "Incompetent, negligent and deceitful - not a good combination".

I discovered Cytron Technologies from a Kickstarter campaign for their edu:bit. I bought five of those as Christmas gifts as they looked really good, making use of the BBC micro:bit with its strong presence in schools and abundance of support material. Since then I've had feedback from parents and I've had a play with one myself and it's a very affordable, well designed start to physical computing targeted at young children (maybe 7-12 depending on help?) but with a lot of possibilities for older ones and adults!

The quality of the English language tutorial book which comes with the edu:bit is very good too. That's atypical for a small manufacturer in Asia and shows the commitment to their international market and the education sector.

For those in the UK, Kitronik and The Pi Hut sell some of their products.

This is a very unusual issue but it's often the exceptions that reveal how a business really operates.

I was a founding member of StreetCar, a company that Zipcar acquired in the UK. At that time I received an offer of a transfer deal which was subpar compared to other customers. I wasn't really happy about that and left it. I hadn't used the cars for a while as the prices had crept up and they weren't near me anymore. Many years later I realised Zipcar still had my deposit from the original StreetCar scheme. I contacted them and asked them to refund this and they refused. I contacted them again and pointed out this was in direct contradiction to previous written correspondence from them but they were resolute. To their minor credit, they were very prompt in their replies.

I used the online County Court Money Claim service to file a claim for this. They didn't reply to the court on that and a County Court Judgement was issued against ZipCar which they paid last week.

They wasted my time and the Court's time. I'd say this was frustrating, rather odd and disrespectful of the customers who helped found their company.

EJ Roberts won the bid to replace three roofs where I live. This was organised by our property manager, Montalt Management who selected ATP Group to manage the project.

Just from casual conversations and a few emails from neighbours, during the replacement EJ Roberts caused SIX leaks to our development. These are just the ones I've heard about. I have not received any explanation for these despite a complaint to our disinterested freeholder, Freehold Managers plc.

They also repeatedly left a ladder against the scaffolding at ground level giving access to windows, leadwork (attractive to thieves) and potentially an open roof and loft space during some phases of the project. This included a long period when they would have known the scaffolding alarm was inactive and when a vehicle gate was left open for several weeks.

After the scaffolding has been removed multiple neighbours complained about the hardened concrete splashes adorning their windows.

A few months later, they are now back on site inspecting their work for leaks and have left scaffolding against one building without an alarm.

Montalt Management have repeatedly shown they are incompetent and untrustworthy (see my detailed, evidenced reviews). It appears there is an unfortunate chain of incompetence with ATP Group and EJ Roberts. Caveat emptor.

I ordered an item from Andertons Music last week. I'd initially looked on Amazon and spotted it there but the price was the same at Andertons. I've used them before and found them to be efficient and reliable. I enjoy Jack's videos on YouTube too, entertaining and informative!

They answered a question I had via their contact form very quickly - that's impressive considering current events. I decided to support a specialist music company rather than the mail order behemoth for this purchase. The loyalty points scheme yielded a few quid off too so it actually turned out to be cheaper than Amazon.

Their communication is very good. It's odd how many Firms get this wrong and either do too little or, more commonly, bury you under a pile of uncoordinated, bulk mails in a desperate attempt for sales.

I see a range of glowing reviews for Montalt Management on here. We are not fortunate enough to get service from Kenan Necchi who appears to be their superstar. My experience differs wildly to these super-vague reviews. The reader will have to judge if these are just a dollop of "review astroturfing".

We have had a number of issues with the vehicle gates on our car park over the last few years. My previous review chronicles a prior episode where Montalt Management put the security of residents and our buildings at risk and then very actively obstructed my attempt to find out how that exactly happened. More recently, we've had further issues and ones with worse consequences.

In Nov. 2019 a rough sleeper appeared under our stairs with some rolling tobacco, 3 apples, an improvised tourniquet and a strange brown smear on the wall which was either mud or human faeces. He re-appeared about a week later. This time the rear door facing our car park was damaged and the lock was jammed on the front door facing the street. During this time one of the vehicle gates was left wide open for over 3 weeks providing access to that rear door.

I'm not sure that any property owner would leave a vehicle gate wide open for such a long period of time. The gate could have been temporarily padlocked either for manual access or using the other vehicle gate in preference. Montalt did not notify me about this risk and certainly did not address it in any of the obvious ways I have just described. They just left it open for over three weeks.

I made a complaint to our freeholder, Freehold Managers plc, about this. In general, I would advise other leaseholders to ensure they keep their freeholder fully informed if there are serious issues with service from the property manager. I think Freehold Managers plc is actively trying to avoid too much involvement as a form of wilful blindness in a foolish attempt to protect themselves from liability, particularly around criminal issues.

One particular aspect of this incident was the damage to our rear door. That damage was the result of a criminal offence and one that's useful to report to the police. Even if it's not investigated the data is used for statistical analysis. I asked Montalt if they had reported this to the police or ensured that it had already been reported. I got back what could be best described as a confused, stumbling response. They could not immediately tell me if any leaseholders or residents had reported this despite the fact that I was discussing this with the nominated person who looks after our property, presumably with access to the property's database. A few hours later I received an email update which included, "I have spoken to my colleague and the resident that contacted him did not provide any personal details just made him aware of the situation and advised him that he had contacted the Police." At best that seems very, very peculiar. In my complaint about this to Freehold Managers plc this was referred to as an "anonymous report". This implies Montalt are discussing matters with residents or leaseholders and asking them for the property address but not their name. Or perhaps the caller inexplicably refused to supply their name? Or maybe this is just another pathetic lie in a feeble attempt to absolve themselves from their responsibility to manage our property properly? Unfortunately with Montalt's track record, I think this is yet another implausible lie.

I also enquired if Montalt were going to pay for the work to fix our rear door as they had indirectly caused this with the neglect of our vehicle gates. Of course not. As always, leaseholders are footing the bill for their incompetence.

When I have time I'll add a review on the six leaks that have occurred while they have been trying to fix some leaks in our roof and a lot of implausible nonsense from Montalt about scaffolding alarms...

Click on "Read 1 more review about Montalt Management" to read more about their debacles.