Sarahpinkflower

This is a hidden gem of an online store which I'd never heard of until they popped up when I was searching for an unavailable product.
Prices are excellent. Communication is excellent. Packing is excellent. I tried them for the first time and will now buy again and again. Thank you for being so great!

Everything arrived warm. The freezer stuff had defrosted and I sent the chicken back but I didn't realise everything had defrosted until I noticed water on the other products. The fridge stuff was cupboard warm.
The delivery man had dumped our freezer stuff on top of our fridge stuff and squashed the sausage rolls. He parked and blocked the road and when I asked him to move, he kept unpacking our stuff. I asked him not to unpack it and to let our neighbour go past but he seemed to have no awareness of the fact that he'd kept the guy waiting. He didn't apologise and he left without closing the gate. I forgot how dreadful Sainsbury's is and remember last time I vowed never to use them again as the food quality was atrocious.

Update 17.7: I spoke with Sainsbury's customer service. The chat took a WHOLE HOUR; most of this time was waiting for the assistant to respond. I think she was catching up on an episode of Love Island while chatting to me :)... Joking aside the response has taken my opinion of Sainsbury's down to the lowest of the low. They REFUSED to refund the spoiled products. Instead they want me (I have a disability and no car) to somehow make my way over to our Sainsbury's store that is 3 miles away and would require a taxi journey or 2 buses, just to return the stuff that they ruined because it wasn't kept cold.
Now you can make your own minds up about how Sainsbury's treat customers.
Update 18/7: Sainsbury's asked me to contact them via social media but I don't have a Facebook or Twitter account! Why not just give me an email address??? DREADFUL service.

Our Evri driver just turned up half naked, shirtless. My teenage daughter opened the door and was horrified by what she saw. That is not an acceptable way to do business. This delivery man needs disciplining.
UPDATE 1 HOUR AFTER POSTING: So you can see from Evri's response that they DON'T CARE about customers. They didn't even read this review; it's just a bot response. SHOCKING.

I ordered 2 pouffes and one was faulty so I asked for an exchange. This process worked ok.
However the replacement pouffe was also faulty (even though in a different colour) and I asked for a replacement and was told I had to wait until I had my tracking number. I got the notification Dunelm had received it and then contacted them for a replacement to be told that since I'd been given a refund I had to reorder a 3rd replacement. I did this.

The last pouffe was fine and I thought no more of the issue until I was checking my bank statement for a different reason and see that Dunelm had NOT refunded me for the 2nd return even though they said they had.
I contacted them and received a reply that had nothing to do with my initial email apologising for lack of notifications (this was not the case).

I then emailed them again and said I needed help with a refund that they told me they'd processed (at this time I was not sure which order I had not received a refund for so I gave them my order number and explained the situation, I also explained that I am dyslexic so find it hard to look information up in these kind of situations. When I type I can run the information through Word to check it, but when I am trying to match order numbers with orders it is not easy.

They seemed to ignore this and came back and said even though they could see the return tracking on their system they still wanted me to look up the tracking and give it to them. That's ridiculous. It was their error and they made me jump through hoops to give them information THEY ALREADY HAD!

So I am left now realising that I cannot trust this company. I also realise that if there are any issues that are 100% their fault they will still make me do all the work to rectify it.

It's almost like they wish they didn't have customers....

Well... guess what... they've lost my business after this episode.

Dunelm: You need to bring your store into the 21st century and automate your systems. There is NO excuse for 'overlooking' a customer refund from a return - your systems should be notifying you automatically. How many other people are being affected by inefficient processes?

I bought some expensive garden lights from The Range and 8 months later they have all but one broken.
I checked my rights as a consumer and found that by law the lights must last a reasonable time. 8 months is not a reasonable time. In order to get my money back, I have to prove that the lights have broken which I did.
The response I received from the supplier of these lights to The Range, which they passed onto me, was shocking. I didn't realise that The Range dealt with rogue traders. Their Head Office representative wrote: "As this item is over 6 months old, we would require for this to be assessed by an independent VAT accredited third-party company sourced by yourself to determine whether this is due to a manufacturing fault.

Once the assessment is done, if it is deemed a manufacturing fault, please provide a copy of the report and we would look to assist you further."

This is in direct contravention of the UK Consumer Rights Act 2015 that governs this purchase. I do not have to prove WHY these lights have broken, simply that they have broken, which I did.

Effectively The Range are acting illegally and bullying me to pay hundreds of pounds for a report just to get my money back on lights that cost just over £100.

The UK Consumer Rights Act 2015 was created to protect people like me against rogue organisations like The Range. Under this law I am required to give The Range one chance to repair or replace these lights WHICH I HAVE DONE. I am also required to prove that the lights are faulty, WHICH I HAVE DONE. However, I am NOT required to prove HOW the lights became faulty. Therefore, by law, The Range can NOT demand that I get pay to have an investigation done as to how the lights broke.

By requiring me to take this action, The Range are attempting to:

1. Break the law
2. Deceive the consumer into believing that their rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 do not exist.
3. Bully a consumer into spending hundreds of pounds just to get their money back on a faulty product that cost just over £100 originally

It is shocking how UK trading companies can be so ignorant of the UK law that governs their transactions.

The Range is great until things go wrong but dire when they do...

You have been warned.

Everyone Active is a terrible company and seems not to care about health and safety in the slightest. They also don't serve their customers online effectively even though they want to force everyone to go online to get information. The website is appalling; whoever created it was clearly not a professional developer. The information provided online is disorganised and also inadequate.

I am really unhappy about the communal changing rooms for the pool. I get men staring at me which makes me feel really uncomfortable. This is such a safety risk for young girls to be put into the same space as older men - Everyone Active what were you thinking? Clearly the changing rooms were designed by a man.

The pool is filthy. The changing rooms are disgusting. The loos are in an appalling state. Don't get me started on the disabled loo.

I am waiting on the phone to talk to the centre about a booking and have been waiting for well over 30 minutes. I do not believe that this is because there are customers online as I'm calling quite late but well within opening hours I think that Everyone Active just doesn't care about serving customers and wants to force everyone to use their chaotic, difficult to navigate website (which I just tried to but couldn't find the information I needed).

Generally it's a dreadful leisure centre. The only saving grace is the staff on reception who are lovely. If there was another leisure centre locally I'd use it for this one is awful.

Morrisons have mistreated an amazing member of staff Sean Egan who worked at the Aldridge store for 29 years and turned around various underperforming stores. Morrisons you should be ashamed of yourselves. You prioritise a criminal over a loyal member of staff? I used to buy loads of Morrison's food but will never again buy anything from Morrison's as a result of your actions.

Update 22nd April. You can see from their reply how Morrison's is a supermarket that truly cares... Make your decision about where you shop - they've lost my custom.

When we first had a Connexin connection our speeds were amazing and we were super happy. We live in a new build estate and gradually our speeds have got slower and slower to the point now where they are ridiculously slow. Our current download speed is 42.51MB/s and upload speed is 45.44MB/s. We've been having issues for months and contacted Connexin about this reduction in quality. They get us to do a long list of checks that take us a lot of time. And then they come back to us and say 'we can't find anything wrong with the connection'. So they've made us spend our time trying to deflect blame for their inadequate service.

In fact they KNOW that their service has an issue and they know it's because the cables are not adequate for the demand but they don't want to invest in putting it right.
AVOID Connexin and find a better provider that is prepared to invest in infrastructure that actually supports demand.

DREADFUL company!
They sent me an email saying our bill was over £1100 and I went into shock. But... when I logged into our account, it turns out this is our entire annual consumption and we were in CREDIT on our account and our monthly payments had REDUCED.... BUT... There was absolutely NO mention of this in the email.
What a horrible way of scare mongering customers. Imagine if I'd been a fragile elderly person; I'd have been distraught or even had a heart attack.
Southern Water: do you treat all your customers in this abysmal way or were you just singling us out???
DISGUSTING, UNWARRANTED TREATMENT of customers who are paying your salaries!!!

Horrible, horrible horrible company.

They actively steal from customers.

I returned everything on my returns forms and someone in Reserved warehouse stole loads of the stuff. Then Reserved steal from me because they say I didn't return the items even though I sent proof I did.

This is the LAST time I will ever shop with Reserved.


In response to the reply from Reserved: This is the second time I have raised the same issue with them and each time, they make me jump through hoops to prove I returned everything (which I did) but they STILL haven't given me a refund. I will reply to this comment, but they will ask me to fill out more, complicated form and then they will still keep my money because they are THIEVES and their system is structured so that when their warehouse staff steal returned items, Reserved don't make a loss because they keep the customer's money to cover these thefts. So the customer loses out from a corrupt, illegal system.

Ocado used to be excellent. Their customer service is still excellent. Their food stocking is now better than it used to be so I get few undelivered or substituted items. However.. their IT system is still a shambles and far worse than before the 'upgrade'. They told customers they wanted feedback on the upgrade and would work to improve the errors but they've made no improvements and, a year down the line, we still have to use a non-intuitive, badly designed interface.
However, their marketing department are absolutely AWFUL. They advertise offers that don't work, they spam my inbox with unwanted email, they treat customers appallingly (eg they told us one week before New Year that they weren't going to deliver my order because it fell on the wrong day - they would have known this months in advance). Recently they've started spamming the checkout with adverts that I don't want. Even when I say decline, they pop back up again. Why do Ocado operate such diverse divisions? I give 5 stars to customer services; 4 stars to purchasing; 1 star to IT and 0 stars to marketing.

Thieves! I returned all my items from an order, beautifully packed in perfect condition and Reserved didn't give me any of my money back but kept all £100 worth of the items I had paid for. Reserved STOLE from me.

This is about the Winchester Bistro which we visited for Valentine's Day 5 course pairing menu. We'd opted for one meat version and one vegan version and had high expectations based on previous reviews. However our experience fell way short of these expectations. Here is why:
1. Four days before I had visited the Bistro and requested if it was possible to reserve a warmer table (I run cold!). The very helpful Bistro worker said absolutely and he allocated us a table on the upper floor, next to a radiator.
2. When we arrived (on the day, promptly at 6pm) we found that the restaurant had given our table away to someone else and there were no tables available on the (warmer) upper floor next to radiators so we were offered a table in the emptier lower floor. The area was pretty cold so I couldn't take my coat off. I was told that the place would warm up soon. I did wonder why couldn't they have switched the heating on earlier?
3. The server was lovely. In fact everyone was super helpful and attentive (at least initially). Our first course and drinks to go with this course were served within 10 minutes of us being seated. We both really enjoyed this course's food and wine.
4. The next course was served incredibly promptly; literally as our plates were cleared, the second course food was served. However, I was given the meat version even though the restaurant knew who was having which option. And we did not receive the accompanying drinks until we asked, by which time my husband had finished his two mouthfuls of soup (served in the tiniest bowl I've ever seen!). I really loved my salad but had waited for the drink to be served to start to get the full experience so it wasn't really a warm salad anymore!
5. The restaurant then took nearly an hour to serve the main course and, again, I was served the meat course (by the same server to whom i'd previously explained I was vegetarian when she served me the fish soup!). The wine was served 10 minutes after we received our food. so we were half way through our mains by the time we got the wine. However we both really enjoyed our main courses.
6. For the next pudding course, we both received our drinks nearly 25 minutes before the food. My husband's drink was Le Lanson which looked completely different from the (delicious, well balanced) version I'd been served with my first course. His drink was cloudy and had an overpowering smell of herbs. There was no detectable champagne in it and we think that he was served the mixer and the restaurant forgot to put in the champagne. It was pretty horrible. His drink was also going warm by the time his pudding arrived.
7. My pudding - again served in the tiniest bowl - was a chocolate pot with cranberries, pistachios and pomegranate seeds. However, although the chocolate mix tasted nice, the pistachios were stale and the pomegranate seeds were missing. I was also starting to feel incredibly hungry because the portions were so tiny and there was so much wine being served. I toyed with the idea of ordering some chips but realised that, based on current service, they would likely take 2 hours to be served so we gave up! For the record I'm a very slim person and eat a small to moderate amount of food but the total volume of food served so far would fill 1/2 a main dinner plate, which for me was not enough to balance out the 4 glasses of wine we'd already had.
8. The cheese course was served 20 minutes later and drinks were served soon after, so no 30 minute wait for the accompanying wine. This was a really good course.
9. Finally we were served some little hand made truffles which was a lovely surprise and really helped stopped me from feeling as hungry as I had been!
10. Overall the food was of an excellent standard and the wines matched perfectly and, apart from the awful second Le Lanson, all drinks were of a really good quality. However, the meal was served over 3 hours which I feel was too long. Also the wines that were supposedly to accompany the courses were served 15-25 minutes earlier or later than the courses so that by the time we received the food and wine, either our food was cold, had been already eaten or the drinks had started to go warm.
CONCLUSION: This was our first time eating in the Bistro at the Hotel du Vin and, based on this Fawlty-Towers-ish experience, we wouldn't be in a hurry to go back. It's a shame as the chef clearly knows how to make great food which is rare for vegan food. However the servers need to pay more attention to the lower floor as everyone around us were waiting for their meals. We watched in horror as one table was served it's main course when there was no one sitting at the table, since both people had gone to the loo. The servers just left the food to go cold on the table! That is shocking service. So the poor service was not just us having bad luck, but clearly a symptom of a wider issue.

Evri were the courier for one of my orders. They wrote to me saying the parcel had been damaged beyond repair (it was clothing and well packed) and they wrote:
'We've attached confirmation of the damage for you to share with Vinted. Please contact them to discuss a refund or replacement. They will coordinate with us directly to resolve the issue."
BUT...
THERE WAS NO PHOTO!!!
THERE WAS NOT A SINGLE BIT OF PROOF THERE WAS ANY DAMAGE.
I think someone at Evri knicked my jacket and wanted to keep it for themselves.

ASOS don't care what their customers think so will never read this review or bother to respond to it. But I wanted to share my experience with other potential customers as a warning. In December I placed an order with ASOS and their system showed me I qualify for free returns. These were the terms under which I engaged into contract with ASOS. However AFTER I placed the order, they CHANGED the terms of business (this is illegal) and wrote to me saying that I had to pay for returns. This is in breach of UK Consumer Rights Act 2015. I wrote to explain this was illegal and they responded, clearly not having read my email. I then wrote back asking them to read my complaint in full and they have ignored this.
ASOS are a rogue company and knowingly break the law. You have been warned: you cannot trust ASOS.

Shopping at Waitrose (the Winchester store) is a delight because the service is outstanding. The staff are so friendly and go out of their way to help if you have a question. The staff never rush you at the tills or make you feel you are an inconvenience. This year they even managed to deliver everything we ordered in our Christmas delivery (a first!) and the entertaining item we ordered was excellent quality.
After 5 years of using both supermarkets (Winchester locals will know which other one I'm referring to!) we've now stopped shopping at the supermarket next door simply because it's so much nicer to come to Waitrose. Yes Waitrose food overall is definitely more expensive but we pick carefully and buy food on offer so our bill is about on a par. That choice is entirely down to the way in which Waitrose staff treat us, so thank you.

I placed an order in December and was told I qualified for free returns at the time of the order. These were the terms under which I engaged with the company. These are therefore legally binding. However ASOS subsequently told me I would have to pay a returns fee. This is illegal.
ASOS are a rogue company. About 80% of the products I received were appalling quality. Their sizing recommendations are way off; I followed them and ended up with clothing that was completely the wrong size. They backtrack on agreements. You cannot trust them because they are effectively liars.
AVOID AVOID AVOID (unless you're happy to receive shoddy clothing and be scammed).

This is a SCAM company. They send unsolicited emails and provide no option to unsubscribe. I do not even have an account with this company and yet they still sent me a marketing email.
However, they provide no link to unsubscribe or even a contact email on their website to request they remove me from the marketing list, even though this is a UK legal requirement.
I had to search off site to find a contact email and sent a request for them to remove me from their mailing list, however, my email was bounced back despite the fact they'd sent the initial email to the SAME email address they bounced back.
I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS COMPANY.

My husband and I booked a table for a special wedding anniversary and noted this in the booking request. When we arrived there was no mention of this by the staff and the restaurant was not busy.
Our meal started out OK and we both liked our starters. But then it all started to go downhill.
My supposedly vegetarian main was served and tasted of meat; clearly the vegetables had been cooked either next to frying meat or in a less than clean pan. The server asked if I wanted a replacement but I didn't want to make a fuss because it was a special evening for us, so asked if I could just have some chips instead so I would be eating my main alongside my husband. My husband wasn't terribly impressed with his chicken which wasn't served nicely as it looked as if it had been thrown onto the plate.
While we were eating our main courses, we saw a party of 4 at the table next to us asking where their chips were but, when their chips finally arrived, everyone had finished their meal and their chips were cold. I hope that my chips weren't intended for their table!
Anyway after we'd finished our mains, we wanted to order our pudding but waited at least 20 minutes for someone to notice that we wanted to order. A different server finally came up and, as I didn't know what to choose, I asked for a recommendation from the server. I explained that I liked dark chocolate and asked for the most chocolatey pudding. She recommended I pick the chocolate praline tart. My husband chose the chocolate fondant. Sadly, my pudding was definitely not very chocolatey but I ate some of it.
However, my husband's pudding was served cold. Now, we have been to Côte many times over the past couple of years and, on the 4 occasions when we have ordered chocolate fondant, it has been served cold. So this is clearly an ongoing issue. On 2 occasions we asked for a replacement which arrived at the perfect temperature. So you would have thought that the restaurant would be aware that they're sending out cold chocolate fondants and work to avoid this.
After we'd finished the original server came to clear our table and asked if we'd like coffee or anything else and we said no thank you. We expected him to return to ask if we wanted the bill but after 30 minutes waiting for this to happen, I gave up and got up and asked to pay. This process also took a while.
Now I didn't jump straight here to write a review as I thought I'd go in and speak with the management and give them our feedback and explain we were disappointed and why. We like Côte and wanted to give them a chance to improve. The manager seemed very concerned, almost dramatically so, and acknowledged they had an issue with late serving of chips and also that they were already aware that chocolate fondants were being served cold (so why had they not taken corrective action on this???). He finished by saying that he would send me an email to follow up and thanked me for coming in rather than giving them a bad review.
However, he sent no email. I have waited 2 months in case it was on his to-do list and he was just busy but he clearly was all words and no action.
So I now don't believe that Côte actually care about improving food or service and, as a result, we haven't been back and have no intentions of going back. I guess the good that comes out of this is that the other restaurants in Winchester are going to benefit from our custom :)

Note their reply: We have received so many apologies from Côte over substandard food or service over the past 2 years but their apologies are clearly meaningless since they don't do anything to put right their mistakes (which have been the same ones, over and over again). You have lost our business now for good based on this apology which is clearly only lip service.

Yet again, GoDaddy broke my ecommerce company website... I've now lost count of the number of times that a customer services rep has taken my active site down over the past 3 or so years....

The support agent, Alec, who I spoke to was great and got a fix - this process took over an hour of my time.

However despite his promises that my site would be fixed within 90 minutes if I republished it, the site is still down 2 days on after republishing, logging out and republishing and then republishing for a 3rd time.

And then, to make matters worse, GoDaddy thought it would be appropriate to arrange a call with me to sell me more even services so I could 'maximise my website' at the exact time when they broke my site and didn't fix it as promised.

GODADDY EMPLOYS ABSOLUTELY INCOMPETENT, WOEFULLY IGNORANT AND LACKSADASICAL CUSTOMER SERVICE STAFF.

I do not recommend GoDaddy unless you don't care if your website gets taken down on a fairly regular basis by their sheer incompetence.

Update 18/12/25: GoDaddy have now told me that, despite the fact it has taken 3 hours of my time to fix THEIR mistake and I lost a customer order, they will not compensate me for this loss, despite admitting the error and misleading information provided to me in due course was ENTIRELY their fault.

BE WARNED: If your GoDaddy website is a company website and they take it down through their incompetence, you may lose a LOT of business and it may cost you MANY HOURS of your precious time to get THEIR ERROR fixed. I would not recommend you taking out website hosting with GoDaddy if you rely on a site to generate business income. It's great while it all works but as soon as it goes down it will be your loss and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. GoDaddy is a rogue company run by poorly trained staff who have manipulated their T&Cs so that they are biased in favour of the company, which is illegal in UK contracts law, but which I only just discovered.