Laura An

Global Blue applied forced currency conversion with high, undisclosed margins when refunding my VAT. Over 20% of the refund was lost compared with the VAT due. No consent, no clear disclosure, and no option to choose another provider. And the worst thing is - nobody asks you if you want them to do your VAT return.

UPDATE 2 Feb 2026:
Despite refunding the faulty cooker, Appliances Direct are refusing to cover the engineer call-out fee incurred because the appliance turned out to be faulty upon an qualified engineer’s attempt to install it. They now claim “no fault found” after the return, leaving me out of pocket for a cost caused entirely by their failed product.

This has been the worst appliance purchase I’ve experienced.

I bought an electriQ 60cm Double Oven Dual Fuel Cooker with Mirror Door from Appliances Direct and it was faulty immediately upon installation:
• No connection cable supplied
• One of the corbs fell off straight away
• The oven does not work at all (bottom oven completely dead)

So I’m left with a large, heavy cooker that is effectively unusable and moreover - unsafe.

I submitted a return request via my customer account, but there’s no confirmation it’s been processed. Trying to get help has been pointless — I waited around 30 minutes in a phone queue, only to be disconnected without ever speaking to an adviser. This is clearly very bad news.

Selling a cooker that arrives broken and incomplete is bad enough. Failing to provide basic customer support when things go wrong is unacceptable. This feels like a company that’s happy to take your money but disappears the moment there’s a problem.

I would strongly recommend avoiding Appliances Direct as well as the elecrtiQ brand if you value quality, accountability and customer service — especially for major appliances.

Extremely disappointing experience for a so-called premium brand.

My order was sent with DPD to a pickup point that was closed most of the week. The courier even attempted delivery while the shop was closed — and since then the parcel has been effectively inaccessible.

I copied Isabel Marant customer service into all correspondence and have received no reply whatsoever. No acknowledgment, no assistance, no solution. Just silence.

Right now the situation is simple:
• I paid for my order
• I cannot access my parcel
• the courier failed
• and the seller is not responding at all

A brand at this price point should take responsibility, actively intervene with the courier, and ensure the customer receives the goods they paid for. Instead, there has been zero engagement and zero support.

Beautiful marketing and high prices mean nothing if the customer is abandoned when something goes wrong. This experience has completely undermined my trust in the brand.

DPD managed to mess up the simplest tasks by attempting delivery to a closed DPD pickup point — their own official location — and now claim they cannot help me. The pickup shop is closed most of the week, which is publicly visible online, yet the courier still “attempted delivery” there.

When I contacted support, I received only vague, copy-paste answers and no solution whatsoever. No confirmation of when or where I can actually collect my parcel, and no reassurance that it won’t simply be returned to sender. I am expected to travel a long distance and even cross a border without knowing whether the parcel will actually be accessible.

This is an absurd situation:
• delivery attempted to a closed DPD location
• zero accountability
• no practical solution offered
• scripted replies, no real customer support

I just want basic competence: deliver to an open pickup point or hold the parcel until I can collect it. DO NOT USE.

I’ve made two fairly significant purchases from this shop so far, and I’m thoroughly happy with both. One of them was a carpet—its quality is outstanding and it actually exceeded my expectations. The price was unbeatable, too. I 100% recommend this shop and will definitely be coming back.

Microsoft seems to have moved far beyond reducing human support for their products (including the Hotmail domain) and is now falling short of providing any meaningful support at all. I only managed to speak to someone after selecting an unrelated issue, because Outlook/Hotmail support options lead nowhere. The person I reached attempted to redirect me to a support team that, in practice, doesn’t seem to exist - the steps they gave me simply don’t work. The situation keeps deteriorating, and it’s hard not to feel that companies of this scale have stopped prioritising their users’ needs.

Produkty są jak w opisie, sweter który zakupiłam bardzo dobrze mi się nosi, naprawdę go lubię. Przesyłka jest szybka i bezproblemowa. Nie miałam kontaktu z obsługą klienta ale też nie musiałam, co jest dobrym znakiem.

I bought a fridge freezer from Currys and, to be safe, I added the extra £15 installation service. The installation wasn’t carried out – not blaming the delivery team, it just wasn’t possible on the day. All I asked for was the obvious: a refund of the £15.

Shockingly, Currys’ driver marked the job as completed – claiming installation was done when it clearly wasn’t. Ever since, I’ve been stuck chasing a simple refund that should have been processed within 24–48 hours. Instead, I’ve been left waiting over a week, with no resolution. All this over £15 – a trivial sum for Currys, but one that speaks volumes about how little they value their customers.

To make matters worse, their “customer support” is a nightmare. The chat system takes forever – on average, a basic query drags on for an hour because you’re left hanging between responses. And if you don’t reply within just two minutes, they disconnect you altogether. That’s not support – it’s obstruction.

Currys are damaging their own reputation by dragging their feet on something so small and so clear-cut. If this is how they treat customers over £15, why would anyone trust them with bigger purchases or services?

Update: JL hasn't resolved the situation - they haven't arranged for shipping of the return nor promised sipping costs reimbursement. And they haven't offered full refund.

I’ve been a loyal John Lewis customer for years, but this experience has been deeply disappointing.

I ordered a pair of £77 shoes to a UK address (I live abroad in Europe) and had them brought over by a friend. I discovered however that John Lewis had sent me the wrong model — not a minor detail, but a completely different wedge height than ordered.

Despite the mistake being 100% their fault, they’ve refused to offer a refund unless I pay to ship the item back to the UK, then arrange for it to be sent to their returns centre — a complex and expensive process that could cost more than the shoes themselves. They also refuse to arrange collection from my location, despite acknowledging the error and being legally responsible under UK consumer law.

So to summarise:
• They sent the wrong item.
• They expect me to fix it — at my own cost.

They don’t care about clients’ long-standing loyalty.
What kind of customer service is this?

If you’re ordering from JL, be very careful. If anything goes wrong, you’ll be left with the consequences, and no practical solution will be offered.

John Lewis used to be known for integrity and service — sadly, that no longer seems to be the case.

I was shocked to find Airbnb charging my card for upcoming bookings a full week before payment was actually due — even though the hosts’ policies clearly allow free cancellation up to 24 hours before check-in.

This isn’t just poor practice — it’s deceptive, coercive, and potentially unlawful under UK consumer protection law. Specifically, the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 prohibit charging for services before a legal obligation exists. Airbnb’s “charge now, refund later” approach ignores your cancellation rights and shifts the financial risk onto you.

Moreover, the card Airbnb used for the charge was only used once for a reservation fee and was never designated as a stored or default payment method on my Airbnb account. My Airbnb profile explicitly lists a different card as the authorised and stored payment method. Yet Airbnb used a card I used for a one-off payment without my consent.

When I raised the above issues, Airbnb kept using arguments irrelevant to my complaints (e.g. but you're eligible for a refund anyway) and completely ignored the not authorised card issue.

Airbnb clearly knows better. For a company this size to flout basic consumer protections is unacceptable. I’ve filed a complaint with the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and urge others facing similar practices to do the same.

I expected more from a platform that claims to empower guests. Instead, I got a forced transaction based on terms that hadn’t even taken effect yet.

Be warned: Airbnb may charge you before your booking is even due and use payment methods you never consented to — and against their own stated rules.

I am extremely disappointed with BlaBlaCar. I had a confirmed booking for myself and my mother on one of their buses — the first leg of our long-planned journey to Italy via Milan. Suddenly, without warning, BlaBlaCar cancelled the bus, leaving us completely stranded and making it impossible to reach Milan on time for our connecting train.

What’s worse, they offered no alternative transport, no real assistance, and no compensation equivalent to the damages they caused — even though we explained that this cancellation sabotaged our entire holiday, including accommodation and non-refundable reservations.

This is unacceptable customer service. When a company cancels a key part of a confirmed journey, they should take responsibility, especially when it directly leads to further financial loss and distress for the customer.

I strongly do not recommend BlaBlaCar based on this experience — unreliable, unhelpful, and lacking accountability.

Ive had some issues with returns via Waitrose with JL in the past, the process wasn’t tracked very well by them. But overall and using other methods of returns JL remains my go to shop for a range of stuff from fashion to beauty and home and I think they do a good job.

Ricardo's system is highly flawed without access to a real customer service and results in charging selling fees for items that were eg bought (anyone can press the buy button, this doesn't guarantee payment) but not actually sold and not paid for. I raised 3 transactions where the fees shouldn't be charged as per the above, with supporting information. Ricardo cancelled one and ignored the rest. I guess they think they can selectively decide on the charges, ignoring facts. Additionally, they bundled the illegitimate fees with the legitimate, so I can't pay the legitimate without paying what I shouldn't be paying and are threatening me with late payment fees. This is classic money extortion. Ricardo - I'm giving you until Monday to cancel the fees, after that we will speak via SECO.

I have a strange and major issue with my email. At some point the address started displaying without a dot between my first and last name whereas the actual email has the dot. I didn't alter this. Now, whenever someone wants to email me, they naturally get confused which email is the correct one. I can't change this in the account settings. Also there is no access to gmail human support and none of their articles can help resolve this. It's a typical case of a business that chose the easiest and cheapest solution for them, not for the actual user. So if you use gmail, be mindful that if any issue arises, you won't get any actual help.

I raised a complaint on my only local two UPS drop off points as neither functions properly - at one they wouldn’t accept my return parcel against UPS rules and the other where the shop assistant simply doesn’t like to accept parcels due to “lack of space”. I exchanged a number of emails with UPS where they kept responding to my request wirh information that wasn’t relevant nor helpful, as if they were purposely ignoring the substance of my complaint or had very very low IQ, one of the two. It’s a disgrace.

Tried to benefit from a promo as advertised by JL - added eligible items to my basket and followed the steps. The promo code didn’t work. I used a different one instead and contacted JL asking that I do want that cream free of charge as advertised and asking to assist. JL replied that I needed to contact their customer service when there was an error - well it was 11pm last night but ok, where is the resolution? I added eligible items to my backed and replied asking JL to cancel current order and apply the code to my basket so I could buy again. Get a reply from another person commenting on the original order that I applied another reward so it didn’t work - like what a discovery 🙄 still no assistance nor resolution from JOHN LEWIS - you desperately need to invest in new customer service talent, this one is brining your business down and makes your brand look stupid. And most importantly, provide the resolution!
I’m giving it you on a silver plate - cancel my original order and apply the code to my basket.

The ZKB owns Frankly app. I recently redeemed my investments and an amount of cash is left on the account. I re-invested some of that cash and wanted to see the performance before I potentially decide to invest more - I can’t do it. Once there’s any cash in your Frankly you can’t see investment performance- it somehow combines two and as a result you can’t see performance of your investments.

Additionally they use a really derogatory wording on their app advertising - it’s likely just lack of relevant language skills but at this level such things should really be done by professionals.

Update: this penalisation by refusing a customer a credit card payment is a repetitive but illegal activity by MyTheresa. If you've been a victim, please inform in the EU your local European Consumer Centre (ECC) or in Switzerland the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs SECO.

I raised a dispute with my credit card as MyTheresa was unable to locate the return I made and as a result I had no guarantee I’d be refunded even though I had the evidence. As a result MyTheresa implemented this abusive practice where they keep cancelling my orders where I pay with my credit card and try and force me to make a payment by bank transfer to an account in Germany. Therefore stripping me of security a credit card provides and making me incur additional charges. It’s a form of abuse and putting it lightly not great for their brand. I am appalled at this totalitarian behaviour.

Poor experience. I ordered a bunch of stuff with delivery to Waitrose. Some stuff strangely got lost in transit, other I never received but they were registered as received. There is no track of what I picked up - I was handed over a bunch of bags and was only able to review at home what I actually received to find stuff were missing. At point of return, I got no confirmation of stuff being returned and later received some refunds but the amounts were random, some combined, making it difficult to keep track. I’m still waiting for more refunds. It’s just chaos.

La Redoute has low customer service standards. They provide insufficient info and then are surprised why customers are upset. They recently provided me a POST OFFICE returns label for a return that was supposed to be free. They mentioned at some point that I could return the item at some kiosk but that was said casually without providing important context. So I took that parcel with the POST OFFICE label provided to the post office and they made me pay nearly 10fr for the return. I raised that with LR for refund as I thought they made a mistake and they refused. Turns out that that POST OFFICE returns label only is free when returning at some kiosk which is A CRUCIAL PIECE OF INFO LR failed to highlight. Be mindful when you deal with them cause they will not provide you all the info and then won’t support.