Tom

Generally a good idea to attempt to hold companies to account, or indeed to offer praise for good customer service.

Shame there's not a way of marking a company's reply as "accurate/resolved" or "inaccurate/unresolved".

giffgaff e-mailed for a review. Generally much improved compared to before, and overall quite satisfied. Main reason for 4 stars and not 5 is that still can't quite consider them as an option for my "main" SIM (that honour goes to vodafone).

Whilst giffgaff has embraced a lot more modern tech recently, and has a very good roaming offering, including add-ons, their voicemail is still absolute trash and has the drunk sounding guy on it. Very unprofessional sounding to someone, such as an employer or other professional leaving a voicemail.

Also, VERY concerned that if I did try and transfer over that my number might get lost. Lots of threads on their community forum about people having delays with number port ins (to be fair... I think this an O2 problem in general, as the likes of Tesco Mobile has issues with this as well).

If, and it's a big if, when my Vodafone contract is up, might well consider them, but only if voicemail (both the voice and enabling Visual Voicemail) and port ins improve!

***Update given their company reply***

"You will recollect that we did telephone to confirm that we were running late..."

Absolutely not! This is a barefaced lie! No-one telephoned at all to say you were running late and this was part of the problem!

We have indeed got a pump replacement booked in now (at our expense!) and look forward to get the problem sorted once and for all. But the sheer nerve of this company to gaslight is extraordinary.

***Original Review below***

A few years ago we went with this company to have an additional AC unit put into our bedroom and connected to the external condenser. The install itself seemed fine, but a year later, despite us having them come and service it all, we experienced water leaking down from the unit on the wall. After a while, we managed to get them out again to look at it and their engineer (whom apparently they’ve since sacked…!) told us he needed to blow down the tube to clear it to external drain and all would be well. We carried on for the rest of the year, and mostly (apart from some very noisy gurgling) all was well.

However, fast forward to this year, and we have been blessed with an indoor waterfall of condensation coming down from the unit, accompanied by significantly louder gurgling from the separate pump. After this year’s visit, the engineer told us that they “don’t install these pumps now as they’re not very good” but the company seemed to have little sympathy and said “oh well, not included in the warranty, so you’ll have to buy a new one.”

Fine. We took it on the chin, and agreed to have a new pump fitted, and as with all of our attempts to book in a home visit, we had to conform to their schedule as they try and dictate a date of their convenience, not what was convenient for ourselves. Naturally, this was a bit annoying, but my husband agreed to take a half-day from work, to wait around for this to be done. So eventually, their allocated time slot came and went (0800-1200) and no-one appeared. My husband had to then go to work for the afternoon and is now faced with the task of attempting to get them back AGAIN (3rd time this year now…!) to replace a pump, that they installed, that doesn’t work, and was serviced by someone that they sacked because he didn’t do his job properly, and ALL of this at great expense to ourselves!

As I’m sure you could imagine, we are furious. We are reasonable people, and will happily make allowances for the fact it’s been an exceptionally hot summer, that they must be busy, mistakes happen, sometimes you have to sack poor staff etc., etc., but today’s “no show” from the engineer was the final straw.

We’ve already been in contact with the company, and should they fail to rectify this to our satisfaction; we will be exercising our rights as consumers both within law and to go to a couple of the national newspapers’ “consumer champion” columnists.

We had multiple dealings with Craig Ridge, one of the Wealth Managers at HSBC, and he guided us through the process of arranging both Income Protection and Critical Illness policies.

He was very knowledgeable and patient in explaining all of our options, and this added to our confidence to choose the right policies for our situation.

Certainly much improved from the last time I was on vodafone (over a decade ago). Website is much more usable these days, and network coverage and usage is generally excellent.

Main reason for 4 stars is that the ordering online journey is a tad clunky still - ordered an eSIM expecting it to be within 20 mins or so, but it took vodafone 10 hours to send the email with the eSIM QR code.

No idea how to explain how bad this company is now. They’re now trying to bring in a “subscription service” to use your inverter/batteries remotely.

Something that was sold to consumers as being a free function of the system you’ve paid thousands and thousands of pounds for.

The sheer nerve of this company is something you can see from space, they’ve all-but done away with ANY customer support now, just funnelling people to an AI bot that does nothing, and to throw salt in the wound they want you to pay to use monitor/adjust your system if you’re away from your home WiFi.

Avoid, avoid, avoid!! Utter shambles of a company.

They constantly ring our doorbell trying to door-step us to buy their broadband. We. Don’t. Want. It!! We have a sign up on our door saying “No Cold Callers” and they ignore it constantly, we would NEVER sign up to some dodgy door step sales tactic.

Genuinely should be avoided, very aggressive sales tactics, hope it puts more customers off!

Hard to recommend Netflix anymore, I live in a main household, but travel for work and am now unable to sign in to use Netflix on a TV that's not on my home WiFi. Well dur - of course it's not on my home WiFi because it's 130 miles away from my home!

No way will I be paying for ANOTHER subscription, so you can get that out of your head Netflix. Once our Sky contract comes to an end (we have Netflix via Sky) will probably bin off Netflix and continue with Disney+ or one of the other, better, streaming services.

Genuinely a great way of using the EE network without having the misery of going through EE directly.

Would be 5* were it not for the fact the website is pretty clunky at times, although when it works it is very functional and good to be able to do so much self-service vs. other networks that don't let you do much.

Also, shame you have a really naff sounding name, just sounds super cheap and nasty, perhaps "Penny Mobile" would at least sound better.

Absolutely brilliant experience, they turn up when they say they will, the installers were brilliant. Had not heard of this retailer before, but after our initial order and delivery was cancelled by Currys (they couldn't fulfil it) and Currys left us high & dry, a friend recommended Marks. Will definitely be using them again, much better than Currys.

Rarely have I felt the need to praise a mobile network, but Talkmobile is a bit of an exception! They’re owned by Vodafone so you get the same coverage, but at a fraction of the price and have excellent customer service. The inclusive EU roaming is excellent!

Ultimately, makes for a good all rounder. Only a few minor criticisms, such as no Visual Voicemail (unlike Vodafone) and a basic implementation of eSIM (no Quick Transfer on iOS), but am sure these will come in time!

Solid effort by giffgaff - they're (finally) in the 21st Century and have enabled WiFi Calling/VoLTE; their website and app are both very user friendly.

Only real gripe is their voicemail system. For a start, it has the worst voice I could imagine for a voicemail service, and sounds as though someone recorded it in a public toilet, sound quality is all over the place and needs to be re-recorded by a professional voice artist, not just someone off of their community forum. Also, they don't have Visual Voicemail, which is ridiculous in this day and age.

Please take note and consider fixing your voicemail system and then you'll get the 5 stars!

Solid day-to-day banking, gets the jobs done for most things required in financial life. The app is fine, it's not great to look at, and even after the re-launch it's still a bit lacking in visual appeal, but the functionality is excellent.

Main areas HSBC falls down vs. a more retail bank (such as Lloyds/Halifax or NatWest) is that they don't allow you to do much in terms of account management without going into a branch. HSBC has shut loads of branches, but if you want to change your account type (such as upgrade it to Advance), or open an additional account, they make you go into a branch to do this, which is a faff. Lloyds lets you do this from within online banking - much easier.

Other reason for not giving 5 stars, is you won't get any special offers, they are pretty decent for processing transactions etc., but you won't get any special offers, or rewards for being a customer unless you earn a fortune and qualify for Premier.

The concept is sound, but their online account and app is pretty shoddy to use.

Always an okay experience.

Generally easy enough to use, but frustrating they always say “oh, here’s your entry number, save it, check it online…” erm… why can’t you save it for me in the Omaze app…?

Further confusion follows as they then say “oh, if you win, we’ll contact you anyway.”

Please just make it easy to see if you’ve won or not in the app without copy and pasting enormous codes.

The actual website and customer service from Laithwaites is generally brilliant!

By far what lets you down the most is your dodgy delivery; for a start, if you order around a Bank Holiday (e.g. the Tuesday after a BH Monday) their website is too dumb to understand that they need to pack and post this on the Friday before for a Tuesday delivery. Resulted in about 3 phone calls to get it fixed for a week later (I had to arrange it for a day off).

Similarly, they use Yodel for delivery who are okay, but let’s be honest you have to wait in the entire day “just in case” Yodel feels like delivering it about 4 hours + or - their delivery window.

Have just moved over from BT (yes, aware PlusNet's been owned by BT Group for nearly 20 years) and the difference is night and day. Even their website and customer portal is easier to use than the BT one and they don't harangue you constantly to move to EE, (which am not doing as EE is by far the worst of all Broadband/Mobile networks for customer service).

Elderly mother has also been with PlusNet for years and never had a problem, their customer service is great, although only minor issue (and loss of 1 star) is at times it can take a while to get your call answered if you need to speak to them. Overall, highly recommend if you want BT Group's level of reliability and connection without paying the BT or EE price premium.

Giving Spusu a go as a secondary, back-up SIM and overall have had a very good experience with them.

So, the good points include the fact you get full access to the EE network (even the 800MHz bit of the network) and the online account/app is very easy to use even if it does lack a few useful controls such as the ability to cancel the plan if you choose to. Customer support however is lightning fast and good to use, so not a huge issue as such at the moment. eSIM from the moment you purchase a plan is fantastic as well, great to see.

A couple of points I'd like to see if I were to consider them as my main number include:

*Becoming a proper Apple Carrier - a bit surprised this wasn't already the case.
*Improving the voicemail system (Visual Voicemail would be nice).
*HD voice on the network - again, a bit surprised this isn't included as standard (not talking VoLTE here, they do have that, but the actual quality of the voice call is the old style "narrow band" codec and not HD Voice so can sound a bit tinny).

Overall, a good back-up SIM, but be lovely to see some improvements and, in time, would happily switch to them for my main number!

Only gave them 2 stars as the FTTP connection is flawless. However, the customer service side of things only exists to super aggressively upsell stuff you don’t need.

Gave BT a ring to see if there was a chance to move over to EE (so called “new” EE) and told no, not while in contract, not even if I wanted to start a new contract with EE. Well, despite that they were unbelievably keen to sell me a load of EE SIMs I don’t want as EE is terrible for mobile voice quality.

As soon as the contract is up will be off very, very quickly to either plusnet (yes, owned by BT Group) or Zen.