MW

New bike - the thing that puts Handsling a step above, is the extra help when you’re sizing and how to make sure you get the right fit. The communication / advice from people who have done it all before when you’re doing setup/component choices makes a real difference too. And of course you get a great bike too. Simon, Miles and the team have been great to deal with. Add in that they have chosen to support an up and coming road team as well. Fair play.

Bulk are quite hard to get a real answer from on product manufacturing - how these powders are tested for actual results - for example when you get pre workouts - how they can tell that the proportion of ingredients still exists post-processing. And no science (eg trials using before/after tests).

Edit: in response to Waterstones - “still being prepared for dispatch” on 2/1/25
And I provided the order number in the initial review (or I thought I did).

Sadly Waterstones have become one of the companies who promise they have something in stock and that they’ll dispatch it in 1-2 days, but don’t. The worst of it though is no communication.

(this time I bought a signed copy of a book - which was (and still is !) in stock and dispatched within 1-2 days, on the 14th Dec.
23rd December —- still being prepared for dispatch. Yup - well done again Waterstones for zero communication and not keeping your promises.

An unfortunate experience trying to have a photo book printed. So wish I’d checked TrustPilot first.

Snapfish have an option ti pay for next day delivery, and they charge a peak time of year fee (only £0.49) singing selected both of those and been provided with a date, I’m thinking that’s plenty contingency.

But no, the order just ‘sits’ there saying processing, day after day. Which would be fine if it was going to be delivered in time but the order never updates and then the date passes.

All of the above would’ve maybe been ok if it wasn’t for over 3 hours on a customer service chat line trying to talk to someone. The chat mechanism throws you out if your phone screen goes dark, rather than holding the chat open. So if you engage in a conversation at home with anyone for 5 minutes and glance at your phone again and it’s locked the screen, the Snapfish tech then cancels the chat so you go to position 300(ish) again.
Takes about 30 mins each time ,. and then one wrong tap on the screen and you lose it again. They have chosen to implement a technology that chooses to end chats so you can just go back to them.

Then when you do get through you just get a standard ‘production delays’ response that’s generic. There’s no sense that they actually know where your order is … which makes me think the customer service teams don’t actually have any more info than we do.

It *feels* like a company that’s so large now and has so many layers that you just have to hope that things work.

I’m sure the products are fine, it’s the mechanism for telling the customer the status and querying and order that’s rubbish.

Edited after Evri response.
*I have done this multiple times. Evri have yet to honour the promise of a call back. It may be though that the team responding to Trustpilot haven’t experienced what actually happens when you are going through the automation - it offers a call back and no one ever does. ever. *

Evri choosing to ignore 6 separate requests over 2 months to provide a call back about 6 separate deliveries.

Evri should really be pulled up by Ofcom.
The appearance of Evri is improved because there’s a fleet of self employed drivers who are all fab, nice people who get in with things day to day. And in population centres, 10’s of thousands of parcels are delivered every day. So that’s all good.

The issue is when things go wrong. Evri have chosen to not provide any customer service.
When they say you can contact them, it’s only automation, which uses pre-written scripts signed. Y the same person every time which tells you nothing.

Even in Trustpilot Evri suggest they’ll call you back. I have made (I think, as I’m losing count) 6 separate requests for a call back about 6 parcels in the last few months. All to Scotland (not Edinburgh or Glasgow right enough), but hardly ‘remote’.

No call backs just the same ‘standard’ email that says they’re ’working in it’

Now OFCOM requires delivery companies to have a complaints process. Evri don’t. Again they say they do but they don’t allow you to log one.

It’s amazing that this kind of thing isn’t followed up by shareholders or regulators. No openesss, don’t keep any promises, don’t provide a route to complain about service received as a customer.

The irony is - the system is built now that Evri make it easier for the retailer you buy from to just mark it lost and start again.
Then - amazingly, the list item is returned to the retailer quite quickly. So much for ‘lost’. That’s actually dishonest.

Edited in response to Evri:
That phone number just asks me for my parcel reference and to leave a message with my name and delivery address. Thing is - the automation just repeats itself every day … oh your parcel missed a connection with a courier - how many days in a row doesn’t happen. Doesn’t ring true. It *feels* like there’s just no deliveries on Scotlands primary trunk road just now.

Evri are choosing not to deliver parcels in less than a week (if at all) and choosing not to provide any sensible updates on parcel location or when I can expect a parcel to be delivered.
In sharp comparison to Royal Mail, DPD etc who without fail deliver next day, or 2 days at most.
Evri are also refusing to allow me to speak to anyone about my parcel which is a bad sign. Location - Scotland.

Alan arrived early and got on with the internals, helping me sort out carpets, underfloor access and came up with a plan to get a non intrusive cable in to the middle of the house. With Nicky, Garry playing ‘catch’ with some fibre optic cable I was connected without a garden dig (all good fun up tall ladders in -2C). Altogether very impressed with the way this all got installed without any significant intrusive stuff. Thanks to Gavin for getting under the floor (hope I got the name right). Alan stayed behind after to get the main routers signals sorted, carpet re-laid and tidied up as if nothing had ever happened. So yeah - all fab.
Looking forward to the next few days.

Updated in response to MYP reply.
There isn’t an order associated with this because the app will not allow me to access my account details to update my address. Just end up in an eternal loop. Happy to speak to the IT tech’s though if they need info for the testing cycle.

Orders tended to be fine historically, but the app (which we are being pointed at continuously in banner messages) doesn’t work on my iPhone 15. Login is successful but then try and access account and it asks for login again. There is no contact info anywhere so can’t contact the company at all (not a good sign for any customer service needs in the future). Not sure if this is just maybe a white label site for another company or something. Seems strange to hide contact details (I’ll take that back if those details are actually visible somewhere in the app. I just can’t find them though). Ps. Clicking on the Myprotein banner then takes me to the US site from the UK.
Might be useful info for the company - and I it way I can see to message them.

What was a go to site (for photo products), with occasional hiccups in delivery, but seems to have gone all ‘difficult’.
EDIT: something has changed at Photobox because what they’ve just down to me is promise something will go out (albeit late) and instead just updated the order with a complete ‘Cust and paste’ excuse type text that says due to them being busy order is delayed. Well that’s just silly. Because these reports are regular in reviews so it appears Photobox have reduced their capability to match normal demand. Get in touch and say when it will be produced- people order these things for special occasions.

The software being used to ‘create’ is really difficult to use, which is a bit sad. But it was possible to do it in the end - just very clunky in modern software terms. The biggest disappointment, and wish I’d checked Trustpilot first, is production and delivery times when paying for the express service. If I had come here first and found out they’re so far down the rankings list compared to peers in their category I would maybe have reconsidered.
To be balanced - the scale of their reviews is huge so there will always be hiccups .. but it seems anything other than something they produce automatically and ‘standard’ is now an issue.
They also seem to be a different company now .. storiogrouo? So have all the people and software and hardware all moved to somewhere else - but that’s not visible. That’s just a guess.

It’s quite difficult to describe how frustrating and difficult this company make it to change your package.
1.5hrs in a chat, transferred to two new people, each one asks for the same Information all over again, and no progress. All I wanted to do was reduce my service.
This stuff about making it hard to leave should be illegal. It’s been wiped out in some industries but for some reason the TV and mobile companies still make it incredibly hard and stressful

EDIT: Paul - that looks like a cut and pasted reply that has nothing to do with my review. I wished to downgrade my service, all that happened (it actually ended up being over 2.5 hours) was person 1 asked me questions and passed me to person 2. They repeated the questions and then passed me to person 3 ... and so on and so forth. Person 4 .. I just lost the will to live and cancelled my service completely. Possibly the worst experience ever

Recently bought my second terra nova tent, based on the outstanding quality and usability and ‘bombproof’ nature of our Ultra Quasar (now has decades of use). And the Laser Compact 1 is the same. One wee query to customer services replied to inside the hour (wanted to check something re pitching) which made my life even easier.
Pitched in minutes, easily (just as well when it’s subzero) in the middle of the night, and inside and protected in no time.
Terra Nova tents meet my two criteria outside simple stuff like pack ability and usability and then some
1. Easy to put up (in inclement conditions)
2. Can handle anything the weather (or I) throw at them.

How I wish I’d checked Trustpilot first.
Switched from Vodafone to EE, and also took out an Apple Watch contract and the experience was terrible. First of all - advisers promise simple things in the chat (thank goodness was I kept the transcript) like ensuring the delivery address is correct. Then they hide costs in pages of t’s and c’s. But worst of all is broken promises, and instead they prioritize thr completion of a sale over doing what they’ve put in writing that they will do.
For example - delivery address - I check that they’ll send my device to the alternate delivery address. Adviser confirms that they’ll check the address later in the call - then he completes an order and tells me he can’t check the adddress. Basically just wants the sale.

So I call (instead of chat). Next person says they’ll sort it but it’ll be a day later. No problem says I. And then of course they haven’t. It’s still going to a house hundreds of miles away.

Nice one EE.

Thankfully I’m doing all of this inside cooling off periods and I haven’t activated my SIM to move my phone across.

Terrible company to deal with.
As an aside - the number of things that are ‘hidden’ which isn’t the right word as most things will be there if you have the will to find it, but things that feel like they should be communicated up front.

EDIT: In reply to the comment below - unfortunately I’ve now spent a further 10.5 hrs on a chat to customer services and two long phone calls. It appears that the EE staff have not been trained on how to enable the technology you sell - two more ‘it will work in 4hrs’ promises broken in the last 12 hours.

IHerb are choosing to hide costs - which should be illegal, but presumably isn’t.
IHerb have an app, and. ‘Uk’ site so it all ‘looks like’ a UK thing.
Postage is by ‘global air’ which may trigger some of us to ask first but many won’t.
The ship from the USA or Far East. Therefore there (depending on how the package is treated) may be a) VAT to be paid b) import duty (on top of VAT) and c) a handling charge by the UK carrier (eg Royal Mail)

If this was made obvious day the company during ordering it would be fine - their range is huge and lots of choice etc. But trying to hide these costs is a horrible way to treat customers.

Edit: if there’s a direct link to you Shaun then happy to receive it for the purposes of process improvement for future customers.

Axa provide my health insurance. I am going through an issue just now which requires specialist help. The reason they have 2* is we at least got to the point of specialist help before it all breaks down to 1*. The processes (for example being handed off three times just to speak to someone), the different app and website contact info, the inability to communicate with the customer to let me them know next steps, is very wearing when you’re trying to resolve a health issue. Confirming eligibility, then booking the wrong specialist, then changing their mind without telling the patient. Basically left me somewhat depressed and visibly upset. And that’s just trying to arrange a single specialist appointment. Complaint raised but not clear if anything will improve.

Thing about these guys - keep their promise on when they’ll come and do the aerial work, they confirm in advance again, clear price in advance, and then make a great job of a new aerial, and sensible cable routing inside a traditional flat. Couldn’t really be better !!
Turned up on time, did everything as promised, kept us up to date, took photos of the aerial install as well from the roof so we have that for the future. Bang on.

Aliexpress are terrible when something goes wrong. They seem to just automate the issue process, and because they choose to use Evri, they choose not to chase Evri on missing parcels. Which is their accountability. So when their shippers don’t deliver, they won’t chase it, and then the choose to release the funds anyway - citing lack of evidence - despite sharing the status of the parcel in Evri’s systems (which they can see)

EVRI have been unable to deliver a single parcel to one of the lockers (suggested by EVRI) in the last week, despite the parcel showing as being at the local depot for 8 day now. Delays happen, but what is terrible is that EVRI will not communicate in any meaningful way to say what the parcel position is. Having removed human contact on their chat facility, and making it very hard to actually contact them, when something goes wrong at the EVRI depots, the customer is left high and dry (and of course out of pocket while a website just says (every day) it will be delivered tomorrow). My criteria for a companies rating is as much based on how they handle problems, rather than when something simply happens automatically. It feels like something has changed, as I thought (though can’t prove this) there was a way to contact them when they were called Hermes - is it just the removal of customer service teams? Either way - it sadly appears that EVRI have joined the ranks of ‘great when they’re great, and rubbish when they’re not’

Been trying to use the app for a while with no success. No matter where I go I get a ‘seems to be a connection problem’ error. And as I’m writing this with an internet connection ……
Time to remember and use non Esso where I have a choice until this is sorted I guess.

Keep up the good work folks - caffeine free pre workout combined with the caffeine free optimal sport - great to have a UK source, a trusted supplier, and one who takes the time to explain products

Really wish I’d read these reviews first.
One thing - the products here seem to be more expensive than similar products by other brands in the UK.
The FedEx delivery service ((next day)) is hopeless - things aren’t sent out on time, aren’t delivered on time, so all in all, I chose in the end to stop at one order with these folks and back to buying other brands from recognised retailers (eg polishedbliss today)