David Ellis

We've been using Mindful Chef for a few months. As someone who's pescatarian and gluten intolerant, it was a big plus that Mindful Chef has gluten free dishes as standard. None of their competitors offer this. But, as the months have gone by, we've become frustrated by MIndful Chef's use of rather tasteless pastes and sauces in pouches and mediocre spice mixes. Recipes have also become rather samey, with the same ingredients cropping up time and time again. I know it's difficult to innovate, but I do think that Mindful Chef has lost its mindfulness in becoming part of the Nestle empire. Do the 'chefs' even try their dishes? It's pointless offering feedback as it just gets ignored by the conglomerate.

Although I already use high end Signia hearing aids, I was intrigued by what Trysmarthearing appeared to be offering for a frankly silly price, supposedly with the backing of a disenchanted UK audiologist. The interesting thing about the reviews on Trustpilot, which I hadn't noticed until after I placed the order, is that 72% are extraordinarily positive and 11% are extraordinarily negative. That sort of dichotamous split is unusual, statistically speaking, and hints at something fishy going on. Unfortunately, Trustpilot's so-called AI didn't pick up on that. What's more, the negative reviews are full of exactly the same comments as the Trustpilot reviews for the now liquidated company, Smart Hearing. So, even before receiving the hearing aids (on their way from China, surprise surprise), I've requested a full refund and plan to send them packing without even opening the box. Sadly, this has all the hallmarks of yet another scam, and it's the vulnerable and elderly who are being left out of pocket.

Update: the refund arrived in my bank account roughly two weeks after returning the hearing aids, so at least the company does comply with their refund policy for the unopened product. One further observation: lots of positive reviews appearing on Trustpilot, maintaining the 72-73% five star and 11% one star split. That's hinting at something ...

Further update: Trustpilot are now investigating this company. Take a look at the four 4 star reviews from gobbledegook Smith; the review-generating bot must have been having a bad day!

The Auk system looks beautiful, but it's style over substance - and expensive. Watering was hit or miss and sometimes the light didn't come on. The tiny disc for 'programming' the feed is a gimmick and doomed to getting lost/eaten by the dog, etc. Plants grew, but it's easy for one plant (e.g. mint) to crowd out the rest. Cleaning the watering tray is a nightmare. Soil/nutrient refills are absurdly priced. We ended up using our Auk to keep supermarket bought basil plants alive, but the watering has finally stopped altogether. At least the plastic can be recycled.

Although HelloFresh is a bit cheaper than some other food kit companies, it's difficult to dial down into more complicated dietary requirements (e.g. pescatarian and gluten free) and the focus is more on family friendly food (curries) than interesting combinations of ingredients. The biggest annoyance for me was their unorthodox approach to making a dish like a curry, where they add mango chutney to the so-called 'curry', like a throwback to Franny Craddock and her bizarre concoctions. Some of the ingredients are bagged up, and some are separate, making it a bit confusing when constructing a dish.

Excellent gluten free pizza bases that are thoroughly authentic, with a rolled edge, crisp (but not biscuity) base and a good taste. They're a little on the expensive side for just a base, but gluten free never comes cheap. Lovely, friendly company, too. One thing that could be improved is the packaging, as the cardboard gets crumpled in transit.

A380 First class flight booked with British Airways from LHR to JNB, then with SAA from JNB to CPT. Email from SAA informing us that business class seats had been downgraded to economy, with no explanation given. Then, a month later, another email from SAA saying that we'd been booked onto an earlier flight, giving us just 90 minutes for the transfer. Given the frequent delays with the A380 service, and therefore concern about missing the connection, we decided enough was enough, and we've rebooked direct from LHR to CPT, bypassing JNB and the hopeless SAA altogether.

If I could give this appalling airport zero stars, I would. From the ridiculous overcrowding at every turn to the disgusting toilets, there's simply no letting up in the hell on earth place that Stansted has become. And to think that they want to increase the capacity by 30%? Unbelievable. I wouldn't return to this embarrassment to the UK travel industry on any account.

Leten is a Chinese company selling a bewildering variety of sex toys aimed mainly at men. The toy I ordered, the Cannon King Mini, proved problematic because the liner in which the stroker sleeve fits had a maximum diameter of 4.8 cm and that was too small for me. I reached out to Leten, suggesting that they produce an XL model, but I don't think they understood the issue. Unfortunately, the reality is that sex toys are designed for the average man, and if you happen to be bigger than that, you might get stuck with a lemon - and intimate products don't usually qualify for a return.

I purchased a Frontier X2 from Amazon on the understanding that I could use it to monitor arrhythmias, but belatedly discovered a comparison between the X2 and X Plus, which made it clear that only the X Plus could be used for this function and that it was a prescription-only device. The website really doesn't make this clear and it's ridiculous to offer a continuous ECG monitoring device that doesn't include analysis of arrhythmias. So, the X2 has been returned to Amazon.

Ordered an Allen & Heath CQ-12T mixer at 5 pm and it was delivered at 9:45 am the following day. Incredible service! Excellent website, too.

A promised delivery date before Christmas hasn't been met and there's been no communication about the delay. No response to emails, either.

I recently purchased Loop Engine 3 for the enticingly discounted price of $23.90. Actually, all of this company's products seem to be on perpetual discounts, which is rather disingenuous. I tried the plugin in Ableton Live and it crashed as soon as I accessed the presets. Two more attempts resulted in exactly the same crash - right to the desktop without error messages. Two weeks on, and depite numerous support tickets, I'm no further on receiving either a solution or a refund, and I've removed the wretched plugin from my PC.

We're in rural Suffolk, which seems to be a blackspot for the internet. Since switching from Three to Smarty, download speeds have deteriorated significantly, frequently dropping to below 5 Mbps. Smarty uses the same network as Three, so that shouldn't be the case, but the signal strength is noticeable weaker (1 or 2 bars vs. 5 on the router). Support is dreadful, too.

The gut microbiome wasn't even part of the syllabus when I was a medical student in the 80s. Now it's on the tip of the tongue of every nutritionist, and even the NHS is starting to wake up to its relevance. So, for anyone interested in discovering what makes their gut tick at the most primeval level, it's a matter of paying for the microbiome analysis privately. Not surprisingly, this can be a minefield, as just like gut bacteria, there are good guys and bad guys in the business of telling you about your poop. The first time I used Atlas Biomed, in Feb 2023, I put them in the former category, as the result was back just two weeks after sending it off and I had a helpful 30-minute Zoom call with a nutritionist. The second time, their service has gone seriously downhill, as I'm still awaiting the results 8 weeks after returning the sample. I wouldn't use them again.

The Zoe programme is expensive and arrives in colourful, over-the-top packaging. The three-part tests (fingerstick blood sample, continuous glucose monitor and poop) result in a report some 6 weeks later. One is encouraged to diarise meals in the Zoe app, although it's tedious to do this if you're cooking dishes from scratch. I became preoccupied with the glucose spike following breakfast, but eventually gave up trying to find the ideal cereal. I already had poop analysis results from Atlas Biomed, so I was interested to see how the results tallied. Zoe's insight into one's microbiome is rather simplistic - good and bad bacteria given cuddly names - and wholly nutrition focused, whereas Atlas Biomed's analysis is more comprehensive and includes general health. The dietary advice that the Zoe app offers is personalised according to the analysis, but as my microbiome already scored top marks on diversity and good vs bad bacteria, and my fat metabolism was optimal, there wasn't much to be gained from lengthy dietary hand-holding. Carbohydrate-rich granolas were easily jettisoned. But that's me; others with more to optimise may benefit most from the Zoe programme. So, I'd advise against buying a lengthy subscription until you know your results.

Soak&Sleep's French linen bedding may look "charming", but it felt a little coarse for comfortable sleeping. So, it was back to Egyptian cotton for us and a request to Soak&Sleep for a refund. Alex at Soak&Sleep was super helpful in responding to our request and arranged a DPD collection the following day. Fantastic customer service!

Box of advent chocolates were well presented, but the chocolates were difficult to extract from the packaging and tastes were strangely uniform and uninspiring, with little resemblance to what was promised.

I've used Xe.com for some years in order to transfer funds to a bank account in South Africa. Generally, this has been efficient and uneventful - until today. This time, it was a comparatively small amount of ZAR 40,000 which seems to have opened the floodgates of money laundering protection in the form of some company called Sikhona who can't seem to accept that we're resident in the UK rather than SA. Xe.com's website wasn't much help and we only found an email address after scouring the small print. Their help wasn't that helpful either and a further attempted transaction went around in circles with timeout messages. In the end, we used an alternative provider for the transaction.

The Indian Coastal Feast by Gunpowder was a pretty intense exposure to some strong spicing, which makes up for the rather hesitant spicing one usually finds in High Street restaurants. The sea bass in banana leaves and potato cakes with a tamarind chickpea sauce were the standout dishes. Portion sizes were generous. The weakest part of the meal were the banana crisps which could have been made from anything.